Pleasurably perplexing perceptions

 

Bong, bong, bong, bong; bong, bong, bong, bong;

bong, bong, bong, bong; bong, bong, bong, bong:

BONG !!!

Sorry, did I wake you up?

Among the more unlikely benefits of growing up in the vicinity of Nottingham was the occurrence of features which encouraged interesting misunderstandings, although I suspect that many localities offer equivalent examples to a perceptually wayward child. There was, for instance, a cinema called the ‘Globe’, which was squeezed  between Arkwright Street and London Road as they converged onto the north end of Trent Bridge. How could such a tiny site contain a cinema, I wondered? From the outside it looked as though its seating capacity would be about four. Well, as I later discovered, many buildings deceive.

Again, not a unique occurrence (the Severn in Shrewsbury can offer a similar experience, as can many places along the Thames), the large bend in the River Trent between Wilford Bridge and Trent Bridge induced in me a pleasurable kind of controlled puzzlement, so that while walking along the Victoria Embankment I could amaze and amuse myself at how distant views shifted, how the war memorial which was over there a minute ago was now over here, and how the buildings of the city centre a mile or so to the north had suddenly moved somewhere else – as had the distinctive profile of Sharphill Woods away to the south-east.

Nottingham, conventionally starting out as twin communities dating from Saxon and Norman times, is relatively unusual as British cities go in possessing a large central space, the Old Market Square, as indisputably the nodal point of the city, a place where people “just go” for what it is. Uncouth people call it Slab Square; more familiarly it is just “the Square”. A few years ago it had a makeover that has done nothing to enhance its appeal, unless you like tripping over micro-steps, being nice to weirdoes, scarfing pop-up streetfood, or riding the occasional big wheel. The Christmas tree, placed in the centre of the Square (in other words at the centre of the centre) and throughout the ages notoriously of variable degrees of weediness, has in recent years been partially obscured by the shabby sheds of seasonal retail tat and by festive amusements both high-adrenalin and high-cholesterol. Trams come and go; buses and trolleybuses no longer do so. This vertically slightly warped quadrilateral was always awkward and asymmetric, but I was happier with the deco-ish layout from between the wars. Even the pigeons seemed more stylishly urban in those days; the lamp standards certainly were.

Although common in many continental cities (Brussels, Barcelona, and Krakow being among the most spectacular), only a handful of other UK cities have a definite focus in the form of a market place or square that unarguably celebrates the centre, while not necessarily being the main hub of commercial activity. George Square in Glasgow is the only comparable instance that springs readily to mind – Piccadilly Gardens and Albert Square in Manchester, Colston Avenue in Bristol, Donegall Square in Belfast, and the area around St George’s Hall (St. John’s Gardens) in Liverpool all approach the ideal but don’t quite succeed. The market places in Cambridge and Norwich are also feasible candidates, and there are surely others, but not many. Trafalgar Square acts as a magnet for tourists and for public gatherings in London, yet is only one of several contenders (Piccadilly Circus and Parliament Square among them) for being the very heart of the metropolis or, indeed, of the nation.

Given the existence of the Old Market Square, Nottingham’s residents may have an unusually strongly developed concept of the role of centrality in urban places. I certainly grew up with that kind of awareness and expectation, and I think it aids both navigation and the development of a sense of place. This centrality is emphasised by the location on the east side of the Square of the Council House, the edifice that most other communities would call their town hall or city hall. It really is a glorious pile, a magnificence of civic pride and municipal splendour, undeniably powerful while not overpowering. In front of the building, with its eight enormous Ionic columns, sit two stone lions, Leo and Oscar. Their faces are so un-leonine, in fact so human, puzzled-looking rather than snarly, that you know they aren’t meant to be taken seriously. They’re friendly lions.  More familiarly known, respectively, as the left lion and the right lion, they serve – as befits the guardians of a central place – as popular meeting points. “See you by the left lion” is implicitly understood by every Nottinghamian - except those who can’t tell right from left anyway. The lions were designed by local sculptor and art teacher Joseph Else, who has a Wetherspoons named after him just across the road from here.

While the Council House is still used for ceremonial events, the city council some years ago relocated most of their office space elsewhere. Designed by T. Cecil Howitt and completed in the late 1920s in a cheerfully successful bastardised fusion of architectural styles in Portland stone, the Council House assists the feeling of centrality by virtue of its bulk and height – the golden ball on the top of the dome is at exactly 200 feet above the ground. Until the eruption of the typical and mostly unlovely highrise from the late 1950s onwards,  the dome was - together with the Castle half a mile away on its sandstone outcrop - absolutely dominant over the cityscape, and visible from many miles around. The chimes (similar to those of Westminster) of the Council House clock ring out every quarter of an hour, and incorporate the famous bell called Little John. This bell, cast in nearby Loughborough, weighs over 10 tons and has the deepest tone in the land, providing a regular audible reminder of the centre of the city for everyone within earshot – up to seven miles away. Earlier this year, when we went outside on Thursday evenings  to “clap for carers”, we often heard it chiming eight o’clock, providing a kind of reassurance of normality, a connection with the centre of local life.

 As a child I loved to glimpse the Council House dome, especially if I caught sight of it unexpectedly, from different places in the city – Lady Bay Bridge, for example, or Thorneywood Rise, or the Victoria Embankment.  I also loved to be taken into town and to go into the Council House, or rather, the part generally accessible to the public, namely the Exchange, a T-shaped arcade then lined with upmarket shops (most famously Burton’s, the local equivalent of Harrods) that lay immediately behind, via an invisible segue between civic and commercial. The Exchange Arcade – usually abbreviated to “the arcade”, there then being no other, or known alternatively by older residents as Burton’s Arcade - was supposedly inspired by the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, a city with perhaps the finest central public place anywhere in the world, the Piazza del Duomo, with the Cathedral occupying the spot analogous to the Council House.

Long long ago and once a bong a time, I liked to stand in the arcade at the spot  immediately beneath the dome, in order to listen to the chimes of the bells, ideally at 12 noon, getting the benefit of maximum bong-count. I would look up to the underside of the dome, high above me, at the spandrel-filling murals featuring Robin Hood, Charles I raising his standard, and other scenes from the city’s real or mythical past. In passing, I should say that, visiting the city last week for the first time since before lockdown, I felt strongly - and sadly - that someone needs to raise the standard again.

 Only gradually, as a child, did I realise that something was wrong about what I saw from this perspective. It appeared that daylight was coming in directly overhead, yet how could this be so, given that the dome is covered in grey lead and by ever-increasing quantities of pigeon produce? My dad, who I assumed would understand these matters, tried to explain, and even made me a model “under-dome” out of strips of cardboard with cellophane layered over it. This made me very irrationally cross, for it didn’t make any sense to me. The whole thing appeared impossible, mainly because I assumed, wrongly, that the underside of the dome as I saw it from the arcade was immediately beneath the dome I saw from the outside. But , if so … where were Little John and friends? They were up there somewhere, but where, exactly? The sound of the bells was coming from somewhere … impossible.

To this day I’m not quite sure what is going on up there, but there must be a drum-shaped chamber that houses the bells, with the externally-visible dome sitting on top of that. In fact, seen from the outside it’s perfectly obvious that this is the case.

Well, I enjoy perceptual oddities. I find it fascinating that you can look at something from one side and, from the other side, see something completely different, and that between the two, there can exist a whole realm of the invisible and the unexplained, the delusional and the misunderstood. Like the Globe cinema, a space that seems geometrically impossible..A magical realm where Little John and the merry men will bong, loud and happy, every fifteen minutes for the rest of eternity. Ah ha, midday is approaching:

BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG BONG

So you think you could plan a railway?

We are in the final stages of waiting for a decision on HS2, although all the leakages suggest that it will be approved in principle. Well, I believe the idea is right, in principle – it’s just some of the details which appear far from sensible or satisfactory. One hopes, if it is approved, that in the long years ahead, until eventual completion, opportunities will occur to improve on some of the obvious deficits and absurdities – like having the Birmingham terminus at Curzon Street rather than within walking distance of connecting trains at New Street, and of having the East Midlands hub too far north relative to Nottingham and Derby; it should be at East Midlands Parkway, not Toton. I hope that some sense will be seen before it’s too late.

When Boris was returned to power in December 2019, with a massively increased majority, I wrote to his Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, with some thoughts on HS2, but so far I’ve received not so much as an acknowledgement, which is disappointing.

Never mind. Whatever happens with HS2 it is obvious that improvements to the railway network in many parts of the country are desperately needed immediately, as part of an overall environmentally friendly and socially supportive transport policy that includes regional airports – not just those around London. Among the issues that need to be fixed urgently are:

(a) inadequate capacity for commuters on certain routes in and out of several of our major cities, including London, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham;

(b) capacity on the East Coast main line restricted by the Welwyn viaduct, which needs in some way to be doubled;

(c) the need for faster services linking Manchester with South and West Yorkshire, possibly involving reinstating the Woodhead Tunnel or a new TransPennine line entirely;

(d) the congestion centred on the Manchester Piccadilly – Oxford Road axis;

(e) the strategically important provision of an alternative route between Exeter and Plymouth, given the vulnerability of the sea wall at Dawlish.

And others, best summed up as a need for more trains, more staff, better customer service – a network to be proud of rather than embarrassed and made angry by. One obvious – probably too obvious - idea for pinpointing locations for improvement is to ask frequent travellers living in major rail centres around the country, where it is that they habitually experience problems or unnecessary delays, and what imaginative but probably small scale changes they believe could be made that would make all the difference to their journeys.

Well, here goes. I’ve asked myself!  Writing from the perspective of Nottingham, very central and once very well connected, but less so post-Beeching, I suggest the following three improvements for starters. None of them are original, and some are already under active consideration, but all would be relatively easy and inexpensive (in the scheme of things) to undertake. They just need to be got on with, pronto:

(1) Reinstating the Dore south curve, which would permit trains from Nottingham to reach Manchester without the detour into Sheffield and back, probably shaving 30 minutes off the journey time. In my experience, over many years, Sheffield is a repeated cause of delays. Nottingham to Manchester in not much more than 1 hour 15 minutes should be feasible.  As far as I can tell, all that is needed is relaying a short length of double track. Passengers going from Nottingham to Sheffield would use Leeds trains; passengers from Chesterfield wishing to go to Sheffield could also use mainline trains on the southwest-northeast route. This is a both-and, win-win  proposal.

(2) Using the existing freight line from Long Eaton through Castle Donington.to Willington, to provide non-stop through passenger services from Nottingham to Crewe and Birmingham. The track exists, although presumably it will also be used by the freight companies serving the new distribution depots near East Midlands Airport. Local stopping services could still run via Derby, but surely a non-stop Nottingham to Birmingham time of well under an hour is possible. Another both-and, win-win.  A grade separated junction at Willington would be even better (but expensive).

The Derby-Crewe line needs upgrading to take proper trains, not the poxy one or two car sets currently in use.  Keep the stopping trains for all the little stations but upgrade to a cross-country trunk route, allowing direct onward services through Crewe to Chester and North Wales, Manchester Airport, and to Liverpool Airport and Liverpool Lime Street.

(3) It is difficult to travel from Nottingham or Leicester to Coventry or Birmingham Airport by train – so much for “Midlands Connect”.

To start with, the Nuneaton fly-under scheme needs to be achieved (cost estimates are less than £120 million) to allow through trains to run easily between Nottingham, Leicester, and Coventry. Having reached Coventry, using the West Coast Main Line, access is possible to Northampton and Milton Keynes, and also to Birmingham International. Also from Coventry, via the link to Leamington Spa, direct access is feasible to Banbury, Oxford and Reading, and points beyond. None of these places are currently easily accessible by train from the East Midlands.

If a short chord could be built west of Coventry station it would be possible to run trains from Nottingham and Leicester directly to Birmingham Airport and the NEC. Nottingham to BHX in under an hour, bliss ! Without the torture of New Street, its crowds, fumes, narrow passageways and stupid unnecessary ticket gates, when in a hurry with heavy luggage.

Oh, and one other thing: if a rail spur is too expensive, a proper, integrated free shuttle bus service between East Midlands Parkway and East Midlands Airport would be most welcome.

We now have a Prime Minister who demonstrates a sense of drive and energy and a desire to get things done. I hope that, whatever his ultimate  decision on HS2, the powers that be will get their collective fingers out and rather than projecting vague and waffly visions into the next decade or two, just get on with it. Preferably starting with the above: options (1) and (2) could be completed in months. When oh when are we going to get our act together in this country !

One final thought. “Nottingham in Ninety”. It’s do-able now, with existing trains and track. HS2 won’t bring London any closer than that.

Recent Paintings at Bingham Library

Today marks the opening of an exhibition of 14 of my recent paintings at Bingham public library, Nottinghamshire. The library is in Eaton Place, close to the Market Place and to the main free car park.

Paintings are for sale upon enquiry to the library staff, and purchases may be collected on the last day of the exhibition, Saturday 22nd December. Prices are as follows:

Hyde Park Corner     £250

Portland Place     £250

St Pancras Skyline     £280

Secret Island     £150

Portobello Haar     £100

Fittee     £150

The Doctor’s In Winter     £100

Hot Prefab     £100

Awayday     £100

The Classic Murder     £120

Sissinghurst     £150

The Deal Castle     £200

Pavilion Gardens Café     £150

Dungeness     £200

The subject matter is varied, although some of the works recall the long hot summer this year. Scenes include Sissinghurst, Brighton and Dungeness in the south of England, and “Fittee” (Aberdeen) and “Portobello Haar” from north of the border. As usual, there are London scenes – busy traffic at Hyde Park Corner and in Portland Place, and the atmospheric tenements which used to fringe the eastern side of St Pancras Station, a familiar sight to many a rail traveller from the East Midlands.

“The Classic Murder” is an imaginary location inspired by Tolmers Square, Euston, while “The Deal Castle” is based on a pub just across the road from the wonderful church of St George in the East, in east London, but renamed and relocated to a fictional setting. “Hot Prefab” and “Secret Island” are idealised portrayals of humble surroundings on a summer’s day, while “The doctor’s in winter” perhaps recalls childhood emotions surrounding medical appointments. This painting was inspired by a visit to the Ranmoor district of Sheffield earlier this year. “Awayday” tries to recapture something of the childhood experience of waiting to go on a train journey from a country station, the location being very loosely derived from childhood trips on the Crewe line west of Derby.

 
If you can get to Bingham during December, please go along to the library, and enjoy.

HS2 and the Great Central : same vision, same mistake

This weekend the BBC News website for Nottingham has a story about a “secret” railway tunnel under the city. This tunnel used to convey the tracks of the Great Central south from Nottingham Victoria, beneath Thurland Street and the Lace Market area, to Weekday Cross and beyond. The only reason the tunnel is “secret” is that it has been disused and blocked off since the late 1960s, when the magnificent  Victoria station was replaced by an inglorious shopping centre of the same name. The photograph below, taken when the station was in its dying days, does not do it justice.

The Great Central was built to high engineering standards and with gentle curves and gradients in the last decade of the nineteenth century. It connected London Marylebone with Aylesbury, Rugby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and – via the Woodhead Tunnel – Manchester. Its stations were generally closer to city centres than those of its principal competitor, the Midland Railway, and many of the services it provided were excellent. The entrepreneurial vision of Sir Edward Watkins was that one day it might continue through a Channel Tunnel to Paris.

Construction came after the main boom of railway building, and while splendid in itself, and grandiose in its ultimate ambitions, the line had limited connectivity with the rest of the rail network. That – along with duplication of other routes - was among the reasons for its downfall post-Beeching, and in the late 1960s, it closed. Arguably, had its right of way been preserved rather than being encroached upon and much of its crucial infrastructure dismantled, it could have formed the backbone for HS2. For a long way north of London towards the Midlands the two routes are similar, teasing us with one of those great transport “what ifs”. Thus, half a century ago, a high speed line could have been brought into being without the massive building cost and the environmental blight – including ancient woodlands and residential areas - that the current scheme inflicts. However, it would have suffered from exactly the same problem as does today’s HS2 scheme, namely that it doesn’t connect well with the rest of the system, and much of it is in the wrong place.

To all but the most biased, the drawbacks of HS2 are glaring. Among the deficits, as proposed, are that it terminates at Curzon Street, well away from Birmingham’s cross-country hub at New Street, that its access to Sheffield is poor, to Heathrow it is awkward, and to Leicester non-existent, and above all, that the siting of its East Midlands hub at Toton is inappropriate. The projected line passes directly beneath East Midlands Airport, denying the airport rail access still, and it runs close to a large new commercial development and the major highway intersection near East Midlands Parkway - the obvious and sensible site for the local hub. As I’ve argued before, Toton is the wrong choice because, quite simply, it is in the wrong place, too far north to be of much use to passengers from Derby and Nottingham who want to travel to or from the capital faster and more easily than they can at present. As a rail transport hub for the East Midlands, Toton is a nonsense; it could only appeal to those with vested interests, or oblivious to the facts of geography, or devoid of experience of train travel.

Exactly like the Great Central, HS2 is a grandiose vision that is exciting in principle,  good in parts, and just not good enough in others.  The parallels – more than a century apart - are close.

But to return to the “secret” tunnel. Other former Great Central tunnels, still in existence but similarly “secret”, connect residential areas in the north of Nottingham (Bestwood, Basford, Carrington), with the basement of the Victoria Centre, where they link up with the tunnel that featured in the BBC report. This tunnel continues, as noted above, south to Weekday Cross and almost to Broad Marsh, which is another retail centre that is currently undergoing belated redevelopment. Also, very close by is the NET tram line, which leads to districts south and west of the city. A tram stop for Broad Marsh close to, or even in, the shopping centre, would be attractive. Besides serving the existing tram routes there could be an interchange here with an imaginative utilisation of the old Great Central tunnels. In other words, another cross-city tram route.

 
So many opportunities have been missed over the years, but here is still a chance for some daring connectivity to be exploited. Perhaps the planners from NET should be taken on a tour of the old tunnels.