November 2016 archive

1939: Northern Heights tube map

Just for interest, this pre-war tube map shows various Underground extensions which never came about. Notably it shows the “Northern Heights” developments of the Northern Line including a line from Mill Hill East via Edgware to Bushey. This line did not come about due to the post-war Green Belt – this meant that this extension …

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Mill Hill East

Mill Hill East is quite a curious name for an Underground station – being that there’s no Mill Hill anywhere on the tube. Putting East at the end is rather unconventional too since the nearest Northern Line station geographically is West Finchley, not Finchley West. The mystery – though not why East is at the …

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Mill Hill (The Hale)

Being that the following post will concentrate on Mill Hill East, still a station on the Northern Line, we thought we’d diverge away from the underground map a little and travel up to the next station on the old line to Edgware (closed 1964). This photo, from the Tony Harden collection, shows Mill Hill (The …

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The Kennington Chartists

The earliest known photo of a mass gathering of people – the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common 10 April 1848. The image is a daguerreotype, an early form of photograph. The Kennington Common meeting was the last time the Chartists attempted to present a petition to Parliament. Fearing an attempted revolution, the Government prepared immensely …

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Yorkshire Grey Yard, WC1

Yorkshire Grey Yard is one of the lost streets of London – confusingly it is not to be confused with the modern Yorkshire Grey Yard, also off Eagle Street but not in the same location as the nineteenth-century street of this name The 1841 census places it between 53 and 54 Eagle Street, on the north …

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London NW7

Mill Hill lay in the historic county of Middlesex until it was absorbed by London. Its London NW7 postal area was created in 1917 and small sections of NW7 overlap into Arkley and Edgware. The area was part of the ancient civil parish of Hendon within Middlesex. Mill Hill as part of Municipal Borough of …

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The Tate Gallery by Tube

The Tate Gallery By Tube; by David Booth of the agency Fine White Line, 1986 The Tate Gallery By Tube poster was commissioned for Art on the Underground, a poster-commissioning initiative launched in 1986. Quite separate from the Underground’s main publicity campaigns, Art on the Underground posters were designed to fill unused advertising space. This …

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1805: Islington

Dent’s 1805 map of Islington shows each property and field boundary and even indicates the layout of the gardens and trees. A vignette in the lower right corner shows a view of Canonbury from 1821. The note at lower left reports the increase in building over the last seven years and the population growth. Copyright and …

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1810: Kentish Town

Plan of the hamlet of Kentish Town and its vicinity (1810). The development of Kentish Town as a predominantly middle-class residential suburb began in the 1840s and the area lost the rural charm that had, along with its inns and public houses, made it a popular destination for day trips from London. Copyright and credit: …

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1828: Paddington

Entitled “Plan of The Parish of Paddington in the County of Middlesex by George Gutch 1828. Copyright and credit: Crace Connection, The British Library