I’ve been a bit on the quiet side recently. It’s not that I’ve not been busy, it’s just that I’ve been chipping away at a string of longer term projects and time consuming failures as we all encounter from time to time. Marcel Proust once remarked that
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes”
and, for the most part, I agree.
It’s just that it’s much harder to crack new stuff in your rinsed hometown than piss off daan saaf and gobble up the readily available fruity treats of the capital. Besides, where is Proust now? Dead, that’s where, so fuck modernist philosophy and get me some tunnelz.
Met up with analepsis in town and set off strolling, weighing up what we were going to do in the few hours we had before we had to rendezvous with a couple of others to tackle a more concrete itinerary. First on our list was the old Kingsway Tram tunnels, most recently documented by OliverGT in October. I rather liked the look of this, being a nice easy warm up and full of lots of old bits and pieces scattered through the length of the tunnel.
The tunnel itself was built in 1902-1905 using the cut and cover technique, to connect the northern and southern tram lines, made possible by the then recent slum clearance in Holborn. The tunnel opened in 1906 and ran until 1952, when the tram system in London was scrapped. Since then, it has served as a film set, an art venue and a storage facility and retains a pick ‘n’ mix selection of random crap from all of these uses. As always, there is plenty of info on Wikipedia.
We went the full length of the tunnel, which terminates in a set of modern substations and a new concrete ‘Willy Wonka’ passage way, which gets smaller and smaller until the tunnel finishes. The shots here are from the much more interesting older bit on the north side.
200 year old gas lamps
Still in situ, some of the props and set dressing from one of the TV shows/films shot down here. Any ideas of which film ‘Union Street’ station was from should on a postcard to the usual address…
Analepsis.
The old station platform.
Once we finished up here we went north and spent a few minutes getting thrown off a construction site and then on to pastures more epic. .
Happy days.