Entertainment For Lively Minds
The Hidden Places
Within an hour of my mentioning the Crossbones Graveyard in Southwark on this thread http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/spotted-david-hepworth David said that he had been there that very evening, NickW posted a link to an FT story on the site and robram said that he planned to visit it the next day. Clearly there is enthusiasm amongst the Word Masive for these sorts of hidden treasures, the spots which tourists don't usually discover. Robram says he works within spitting distance of the Crossbones Graveyard but had never heard of it, and I wouldn't have known about it but for a Guardian feature.
So what are yours? Where are the places, music related or not, which you would take a visitor to see because they would never have heard about them otherwise?
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Postman's Park
Right in the heart of London, near St Pauls. One of my favourite places.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postman%27s_Park
It's not exactly picturesque
Across the road from our office is the Public Carriage Office, which is where London cab drivers do The Knowledge. If you want to see burly men in suits either punching the air or literally weeping on the pavement, this is the place.
Golders Park
An abandoned hospital with a wildly overgrown gazebo and the ghosts of consumptives past. An adjoining llama enclosure. And spies.
Is it still there? Are the llamas? Or even the spies?
Not exactly hidden...
... but years ago I spent an awful lot of time at Voltaire and Rousseau, a completely mental bookshop (more of room full of books piled up at random) in Glasgow run by a man who I don't think I ever heard speak once. The very wonderful Tchai Ovna is on the same street, a lovely place. Been a few years since I visited, I hope it's still there.
Oh yes
It's still there and as chaotic as ever. You have not lived until you've toppled a pile of books over in V&R. There is a shop just next door that sells 'records'.
Formerly pink tank
When we had an office down at the bottom end of Bermondsey Street, I would occasionally pass the pink tank located on Mandela Way when going to pick things up from the postal sorting office (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandela_Way_T-34_Tank ).
Sadly, I think it got repainted some time after - anybody know if it's still there?
The south will rise
The keen eyed will notice in "proper" London we use domestic cats as a skirmishing screen to protect our armour...
It's definitely
on Google Earth
Dawson's Hill
barely a couple of acres of scrubland and a tiny patch of woodland on a hillside at the arse end of East Dulwich, with these loony ex council blocks at the top:
but it is just one of my favourite places in the world - the view of London is truly spectacular - you can see right from Wimbledon to the Estuary, and as far as the Wembley arch and beyond in the opposite corner of town... I have had many quite contemplative moments up there when not dodging over-excitable Staffs.
http://www.dawsonshill.org.uk/
More South-of-the River spots
A couple which I haven't seen but would like to:
The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_dinosaurs
Severndroog Castle - http://www.severndroogcastle.org.uk/home.htm
My old flat
My favourite place in London is the roof terrace of my last flat, on top of Shoot Up Hill in Kilburn. It had a 360° panoramic view of London, and quite often I'd sit out there, day or night, with a bottle of decent wine, and suck in the view. I lived there for close to ten years, and left when I finally bought my own place. These days I have a bay window with a first floor view of a dilapidated community centre.
(click image for big version)
I love
the captions on there.
City all over!
I used to teach at a primary school very near there, Fraser - Beckford Primary. The smokers' balcony, which was accessible only by vaulting over the staffroom sink and out of the window, had a very similar panoramic view.
Rock connection: Tony "Shadows" Meehan and Annabella "Bow Wow Wow" Lwin are amongst the rock alumni.
Also, I taught a lovely kid called Billy, who one day admitted that his dad (also lovely) used to be in a band. He was too embarrassed to say the name of the band in front of his mates, but by the end of the week he'd revealed that his dad was Duncan Sanderson, the much-admired bassist in drug-fuelled anarcho-prog-punks The Pink Fairies. http://tinyurl.com/d2doer
Oh, and Chaka Khan lived round the corner.
Meanwhile, far from London...
Go to Assynt in Sutherland. The coast is strewn with perfect, hidden sandy beaches, happed by craggy upland.
My other half and I were there over the weekend and it was splendid. The sun helped, especially as we were staying in a small cabin with no running water and no electricity.
A couple - one in London, one on Skye...
in London, the foot tunnel under the Thames from Isle of Dogs over the Greenwich is quite an experience - never knew it was there until earlier this year.
Another Scottish one that few people seem to know about - the Fairy Glen near Uig on Skye - an amazing landscape of small, cone shaped hills (there are supposed to be 365 of them) all clustered together in a valley - a total mytsery to me what geological forces would have created it.
Southern Comforts and one Northern Light
Eltham palace is worth a deco a wonderful mixture of 1930's and tudor with excellent gardens and wonderful views.
Also there's the horniman museum with it's famous over stuffed walrus and nearby the world's first public art gallery at dulwich (excellent Dutch paintings and some canellettos is you like that sort of thing).
Other than that the Thames river shore line is quiet reflective place just watch out for the tide and the mud.
As to North of the river the Sir John Soane musuem in Holborn is wonderful (architect of Bank of England and dulwich picture gallery!) it's a weird jewel box of rooms and stairways full of orginal Hogarths and a mummy's tomb. it's free and once a month they have candle lit evenings.
Soane Museum
I was there on Tuesday, and it's a new favourite. The candlelit evenings look like something very special indeed. If you're there you should cross Lincoln's Inn Field to see the Hunterian Museum too. It's inside the Royal College of Surgeons and full of medical curiosites - the skeleton of a 7'7" man, a false metal nose made for a syphilitic and all sorts of gruesome things in jars.
Nothing to see here
This is the place: http://www.nothingtoseehere.net/
Ghost stations
Anyone else unusually fascinated by ghost stations on the Underground? South Kentish Town, British Museum, York Road, and let's not forget Aldwych...
Just me probably.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A536140
http://underground-history.co.uk/front.php
I am!
I long for the tube to stop at British Museum or Strand or Post Office.
Not to mention…
… Hobb's End
Abandoned underground shopping mall
Someone told me - or I may have heard it on the Robert Elms show on GLR many years ago - that there was a shopping centre in London off Oxford Street that had been closed in the mid-Seventies and remains absolutely preserved in aspic to this very day.
Could it be true? If so, I'd love to know where it is.
Very VERY special places.
Everyone's got their own secret pubs that they try to keep to themselves..I've got two that I take people to. When in London, it's the Nell Gwynne up an alleyway round the back of the Adelphi theatre. There's just something a bit special about the place, particularly as it's right in the centre of town and not full of tourists.
Then there's Harvest Home on Åsögatan in Stockholm: As near as you'll get to a proper pub over here.
More in keeping with the topic, whenever I drive guests into the centre of Stockholm I park in the garage at Slussen built into the hillside. Then point out that the garage is actually a nuclear shelter capable of holding 30,000 people and is still fully functioning. You don't get that on your tourist walks.
In Leintwardine, Herefordshire…
… you'll find the Sun Inn, one of just two or three traditional 'parlour pubs' left in Britain. Basically unchanged in 100 years or so, there's no bar; the beer (Hobsons - a wonderful pint) is drawn from barrels in the kitchen, and you sit in the lounge on long tables and old wooden seats and chat to whoever else is there. It's owned by a lady called Flossie, who's in her 90s and (I believe) has been there all her life. She's too frail to tend the bar, so the locals pour their own beer and administer to 'outsiders'. Get there while you can.
Talking of hidden places
Has anyone ever been to the Secret Nuclear Bunker in Essex? Is it worth a trip?
Several times.
It's near enough London for a day trip, so that's a plus. The deal with Kelvedon Hatch is that the farmer who owns the land bought it back when it was decommissioned. When the government left, they took all their kit with them, stripping it almost bare (save the generators and air con kit). What is most charming about the place is that the farmer has tried to rekit it with stuff that looks about right - a Commodore PET here and there, a teletype printer there - but it's quite a way from authentic. What it is is very very charming because of this - as well as being very atmospheric. You have your own little audio guide and wander round on your own, so it's dead quiet apart from the odd PA announcement as though the bunker was still live. It's well worth a visit, and you'll see why it was included in the fantastic book 'Bollocks To Alton Towers' when you go.
Serious bunker nerds would be better off going to http://www.rafholmpton.com which is kept in the state it was when it was shut down and is both gobsmacking and terrifying at the same time.
There's a very nice point made elsewhere by someone more eloquent than me that these places are the modern equivalent of the Tudor and Norman castles that dot the country.
Great stuff
Thanks Jason. I may even go tomorrow.
The world's only sarcastic war memorial
Probably.
http://embra.org/2009/02/22/the-worlds-only-sarcastic-war-memorial-proba...