Walking the Circle Line: St James’s Park to High Street Kensington
After a two month hiatus, my walk continues. I am travelling above London Underground’s Circle Line and aim to veer no more than a couple of hundred yards from the line itself. The walk is recorded with a primitive pinhole camera. Little more than a wooden box with a tiny pinprick sized hole to let in light, a pinhole camera is as basic as photography gets. Prone to error and open to guesswork it has no lens, no viewfinder, no light meter, complicated shutter, or electronics of any sort. A few pieces of wood and brass are glued together and everything else is up to imagination and luck. ‘The Tube’ is much like that too, Victorian engineering that owes more than a hundred years of success to imagination and a bit of luck. It’s passengers are often another story. Shutting out the world with iPods, newspapers and talk of the weather, I’ve always imagined that they are largely oblivious to what the world looks like just ten feet above them. So, this walk. A mix of psychogeography, photography, history, and self education.
Now almost half way through the circuit, I’ve travelled from Barbican to Moorgate, then Tower Hill, Blackfriars, Temple, Embankment, and Embankment to St James’s Park. This latest chapter takes me from St James’s Park to High Street Kensington.
I start at Westminster Cathedral, near to Victoria Station. Just 400 metres from the ancient Westminster Abbey, the century-old Cathedral is often confused with the millenium-old Abbey. Rumour has it that the proximity was something of a deliberate challenge. In July, the innocent Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead on the Tube by police. His service was held at Westminster Cathedral. How symbolic then that the tube itself runs almost directly under the cathedral (not symbolic enough for any news organisation to mention it).
On to Little Ben, one of London’s many peculiar monuments. A miniature version of Big Ben’s Clock Tower this clock sits outside Victoria Station. Forever confusing visitors, it shows the time in France. The dedication reads “My hands you may retard or advance / my heart beats true for England as for France”. The hundred yards between the cathedral and Little Ben is one of London’s hot spots for spotting another London peculiarity -”Chuggers”. These professional “charity muggers” accost passers-by and tube-riders hoping to sign them up for direct-debit charity donations. Universally despised, guilt is the tool of their trade (hence the reason they stake-out the largest Catholic cathedral in the land). Ask them to give up their £20 ($30) commission however, and they suddenly seem less friendly. Then the “winner or sinner guy” has his way with you beneath Little Ben.
I’m covering a lot of ground with this walk as the neighbourhood turns residential and the buildings more uniform. The architecture around here has led to this area being labelled “anonymous and unhappy” but there are spots of beauty to be found. On to Sloane Square, and the Sloane Rangers begin to appear. I’m mystified why tourists come to Sloane Square, to be honest, maybe they’re hoping to spot a Hugh Grant or Diana Spencer lookalike. I race on to the Victoria and Albert museum.
Above, yet another ’shot looking up at a building’. Next, the Natural History museum.
Finally, a photo looking down on of the many ‘mews’ around the area.
This coming weekend is London Open House weekend where hundreds of private buildings are opened to the public. To kick it off, the organisers are hosting an all-night walk around the circle line on Friday evening covering the same ground I’ve been covering here. In an interesting coincidence, like me they’re even starting at the Guildhall next to Barbican station. So if you’ve been following my photos here, it may be of interest to you.
