Thames Tideway Tunnel Site – Earl Pumping Station
Index Thames Tideway Tunnel Sites Earl Pumping Station
Earl Pumping Statiuon is going to be upgraded for the Thames Tideway Tunnel. it is currently in use and is tucked away in residential streets to the south of Surrey Docks. This Google Earth image shows the area.
Earl Pumping Station
The Pumping Station is on Yeoman Street and is the rectangular building pointing to the north-east. There are labels and they may help. These are pictures I took of the outside of the pumping station.
It is a building of simple practicality rather than architectural merit. Hopefully the new building works will improve it.
Earl Pumping Station
This image was one I clipped from the Tideway Tunnel site.
This is one of those sites, which if they used some good project planning and got a keen architect to skin and landscape everything properly, they could create a building that fitted in to the area well.
Walking From The Museum Of London To Liverpool Street
I walked today from the Museum of London to Liverpool Street, looking for evidence of Crossrail and the area’s rich history.
Unfortunately, Crossrail has closed the archaeological site at Liverpool Street station, so they can start building the new station. So if you’ve not seen it, then you’ll have to make do with my pictures.
London Wall Place looks to be a quality development, that will sit over Crossrail’s Big Hole in the Barbican. I clipped this picture from their gallery, where it is one of several very informative images.
London Wall Place
From the picture, it would appear that the walkways that have been removed that connected the flats in the Barbican to walking routes to the Bank and the south, are being recreated.
It’s certainly a lot better than the dreadful square office blocks that used to line London Wall, when I lived in the Barbican in the 1970s.
Boring Architecture
I passed the site of the old Middlesex hospital, where two of my children were born today.
The building except for the chapel and the Nassau Street fontage could be anywhere in the world and it doesn’t really do the site justice.
I don’t like it, one bit!
Jubilee Line Vent Shaft At Durand’s Wharf
The pictures show the ventilation and access shaft at Durand’s Wharf for the Jubilee Line.
It is certainly a much more subtle and smaller design than the shafts for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link.
This Google Earth image shows that it fits well into the small park.
Durand’s Whaft Vent Shaft
It’s just by the silver line, which marks the Jubilee Line.
Crossrail 2 At Dalston
In a post called An Opportunity For Dalston, I looked at how a double-ended station for Crossrail 2 might connect with both Kingsland and Junction stations. I felt it could bring major advantages to the area of not requiring any demolition, except for the unloved Kingsland station, much better interchange for passengers and improved pedestrians routes in the area.
I concluded that all was possible because the Victorians spaced the stations to enable a modern Crossrail station to fit in between. This map from the Crossrail 2 web site, shows the two stations and the safeguarded area.
Crossrail 2 In Dalston
The rail line at the far right or north is the North London Line with High Speed One beneath. The safeguarded area would appear to follow the Kingland High Road, but it does pass close to both stations.
I just thought it was logical and never envisaged that those working on the project would entertain a similar idea. But after contacting my MP, I have received a letter from Michele Dix, who is the Managing Director of Crossrail 2. This is a paragraph.
We have been working closely with the London borough of Hackney on the early development of the proposals for how Crossrail 2 could ultimately serve Dalston. The work to date has been based around delivering a double-ended station, with one end being at Dalston Junction, and the other at Dalston Kingsland, thereby allowing the Crossrail 2 station to link to both existing stations. As Mr. Miller rightly points out, the distance between the existing stations is well suited to the 250m long platforms that will be required for the Crossrail 2 station, and the greater interchange opportunities to London Overground services also deliver significant benefits.
Various factors will also drive the design of the Crossrail 2 station and the related Dalston Kingsland station at Dalston.
1. Crossrail 2 will have to get past and probably under High Speed One and the Dalston Curve, that takes the East London Line to Canonbury and Highbury and Islington. So it will be a deep line, where any stations will need escalators and/or lifts. These stations will also probably be built from the tunnel up, as parts of Whitechapel station are being built for Crossrail.
2. Could Dalston Kingsland station be designed as a station with entrances on both sides of Kingsland High Street, perhaps with a single island platform served by escalators and lifts?
3. Demolition of any quality buildings will stir up a lot of opposition.
4. There isn’t many places to put a work site, with the possible exception of the Car Park in Bentley Road which is in the safeguarded area.
5.Surely the Ridley Road market could be improved by good design of the new stations.
I think there is a chance for a good architect with a bit of vision to create an innovative world class station.
Perhaps, we need our own versions of these distinctive fosteritos to access the Crossrail 2 station from the surface.
These were designed by Sir Norman Foster for the Bilbao Metro. Hence the name!
I also think that if the design is right, Crossrail 2 can sneak its way through Dalston, with little disruption and no demolition of a building worth saving.,
Why shouldn’t us plebs in Dalston have the best?
Will Manchester Victoria Station Be Promoted To The Premier League?
When I arrived at Manchester Victoria station, I expected the usual mess and a walk to pick up the tram to Piccadilly.
But I was greeted by a dry station, where the trams were now sheltering under an almost complete, but spectacular roof!
Victoria may date from the 1840s, but look at her now!
There was also today’s news on the Modern Railway’s web site, that the Class 319 trains had started working from Liverpool to Manchester Airport.
As my train went past Liverpool South Parkway later, I got several glimpses of smartly refurbished trains cascaded from Thameslink.
Soon, they will be running between Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester Victoria stations via Wigan.
Are one sprightly Victorian lady and a set of reliable British Rail-era electric trains finally going to give Manchester and Liverpool, the first class train connection they need and deserve?
Strasbourg Station
Strasbourg station is unusual in that they’re put a glass canopy on a magnificent nineteen-century station.
I liked it. The design also allows the Strasbourg trams to be in a tunnel under the front of the station and be accessed by lifts and escalators.
As the building of these glass or plastic canopies and roofs is getting easier and cheaper, due to the work of structural engineers, I think we’ll see a lot more Strasbourg-style stations.
DAM – German Architectural Museum
The Deutsches Architektur Museum was recommended in my guide book.
It cost me nine euros to enter to see a presentation of photographs of the main modern buildings of Frankfurt with descriptions.
There is no directly similar museum in London, although Crossrail have recently put on some excellent free displays of both their archaeology and architecture.
I wouldn’t return to this museum, unless I was travelling with an architect, who thought it a must-see!
Islington’s Eyesore
Archway is once of those places on the London tube map, which unless you know someone who lives there or has unfortunately found themselves in the local hospital, has nothing iconic to be worth visiting.
I went to have a drink with a friend, who lives within five hundred metres of the Underground station and took these pictures.
I should say that Archway suffers from the same problem that afflicts the bus station at London Bridge station because of the station’s proximity to The Shard. Lots of wind and today, that was cold wind, that makes walking around the area challenging.
I met my friend in the Gate cafe in the middle of the roundabout and that was a pleasant oasis in one of the bleakest areas of London. Archway even makes the old Elephant and Castle and Vauxhall Cross roundabouts, look to be award-winning architecture.
If ever a traffic intersection, was designed by a team of sadists with all the design flair of one of the North Korean dictators, it is this one.
I would like to see the following happen.
1. Archway Tower should be taken down, as it creates too much wind. Incidentally, the Wikipedia entry for the building doesn’t name an architect for the 1963 building. I can’t find one anywhere on the Internet.Perhaps, he was too ashamed of his creation and wanted to save his reputation, by not having it on his record.
Sadly, if it can’t be taken down, then clever engineers at somewhere like Farnborough or a top class university, should be given a brief to sort out the dodgy aerodynamics of the tower.
2. I crossed from the tube station, after arriving by bus, to the middle island where the Archway Tavern sits and it was a long walk round over three separate sets of pedestrian lights. There should be a subway, but my friend told me that was closed some time ago.
3. The traffic patterns must be sorted out, as it was always a bad area for driving.
4. The disused cinema that my friend says has graced the area for forty-four years, should be used as rubble elsewhere!
It will be impossible that when the improvement scheme is completed, that a vast improvement will not have been achieved.
Eyesores On Haverstock Hill
Hampstead is a very posh part of London, but walk down Haverstock Hill and you see some of the worst buildings in London.
The church is having the cheek to object to the hospital building a new research centre.
A better solution would be to demolish both the Royal Free Hospital and St. Stephen’s church and use the enlarged site to build something that fitted better into the area. Like a prison or a factory making garden gnomes.
Seriously though, the hospital was built in 1974 and it can’t be many years until, it will need either severe refurbishment or replacing.
This would surely give a chance to improve the whole area.
The church is the sort of building, that gives the heritage industry a bad name. Wikipedia says this about its restoration.
A lease on it was awarded to the St Stephen’s Restoration and Preservation Trust in 1999 and, after this body raised over £4 million from English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund, local businesses and individual donors, it has restored it to a usable condition in three phases.
I’m sure all of those who play the lottery loved that their money went towards restoring an eyesore like this. I don’t play the lottery as it is a tax on the poor. I do object though that English Heritage put money in, as that could be part of my taxes. If individuals want to waste their own money on a building that would serve best as good hardcore, that is their own affair.
The Anonymous Widower 