Bloody hell, since I was last there - a monstrosity of a new office/housing development has sprung up all around it !! wind back in time on Google Street view, and you can see how it’s changed in the last few years. ( thanks for the mention 😁)
Google street view also suggests that that ventilation shaft was recently mostly obscured by the builder’s site office of the new development- walking past without noticing it perfectly plausible!
In general,, and in my opinion, Frank Pick nearly always made the right call - there's no such thing as perfection in real life, and the cultural legacy of Frank Pick includes all the iconic branding that London enjoys, and a fairly substantial contribution to the capital's cultural capital. His greatest talent was an ability to spot those who were about to become great masters in their field and to hire them quickly for a few years, while they were already producing great works, but before they were able to command high fees. (I'm not saying he never made a bad choice, just that he made a surprisingly high proportion of good ones)
They were right for the time , the most interesting places in London now are those that quietly evolved away from the bustle of a busy tube station .. Ironically it would be handy if they did have a stop. As Jago says in the video a station wasn't built usually because it had access from buses and trams. Nowadays that just means buses which are invariably snarled in traffic.
This is mentioned in Frank Pick's biography (by Christian Barman): "this line was going to be a perfect model of the functional unification of the various forms of transport... where bus and tram routes converged on the stations from different directions. But between Manor House and Turnpike Lane there were no such points of confluence, trains ran parallel to the road services; if a station were to be built here it would be of no help in connecting rail and road services together." ... and the rest is history, as they say.
😠 - and I would be put-off from watching it ~ don’t like the selfie-addict/newsreader style videos where they show you more of their face and less of the subject, that is why I like Jargos videos = he only shows the scenery of the subject
Interesting that the ground floor brickwork is different from the rest of the building. It's almost as if they were planing for them to become internal walls of a single story extension.
I still think that Harrigay station on the Goblin Line would have been the best pick😊. There was an arena there for things like circus, (ice) hockey & Billy Graham crusades. Plus a track stadium for greyhound and stock car races. Great video, thank you, happy memories.
I'm certain that some ventilation shaft sites, could also be maintenance entrances, that people who are not employed by TFL, would not know about. This video is certainly interesting information.
JH - You should add to your bucket list getting into the this building for a look round. What might be seen from the inside may help to resolve this question.
Pick was right at the time, but the later closure of the Stratford - Palace Gates service has left this area without good railway service ... buses are needed to get to trains. There is also what I think is a ventilation shaft on Middleton Gardens, between Gants Hill and Newbury Park stations.
Worked on the Picc on the early seventies. Manor House to Turnpike Lane always seemed exceptionally far apart and I was told that a station named Haringey was considered on the site of the said ventilation shaft. But atleast the distance ensured that the 38/56/59/62 stock could reach the dizzying speed of 45 m.p.h. or so!
I have always felt that there should be a Tube station between Manor House and Turnpike Lane stations as the distance between these stations is too great. I have also felt the same way about the long stretch between King's Cross and Farringdon Underground stations as the difference is 1.1 miles. With London's population increasing I am certain that with continual property development and population growth there will be additional station built between Manor House and Turnpike Lane; as well as between King's Cross and Farringdon, this one will be named Clerkenwell.
With the Thameslink tracks dancing both sides and under the tube between KX and Farringdon, I think the chances of room being found for a station now are pretty slim, though it is a long stretch.
The section of track between Kings X and Farringdon runs through the Mount Pleasant tunnel. (A real tunnel not a cut and cover) When they originally built the line it was impossible to add a station there. (Tunnel stations and steam trains don't mix.) Of course, the original Kings X metro station was 150m closer to Farringdon than the current station.
Hi Jago, I was one of those that mentioned Colina Road in the comments of your previous video. I travelled to Southgate only last week and I thought about your video and my comment as my train left Manor House. I think that Frank Pick in this rare instance was wrong. There should have been a station between Manor House and Turnpike Lane. It's quite a long distance between the two stops and reminds me of the very long run between Kings Cross and Highbury and Islington on the Victoria Line.
I once lived on Green Lanes (it was a great place for kebabs and baklava). It is a very busy, densely populated area and there would probably have been as much or more usage of a tube stop there as many of the existing suburban stations on the underground network.
Two comments,1) Frank Pick,had a habit of station picking[Bad Pun]! 2) With the destruction of the Tramways,it seems now,that they(London Transport) overdid it! Los Angeles has had to,literally recreate the old Pacific Electric from scratch,and the current light rail/interurban set up,is an idealized Pacific Electric! Thank you for your attention ☺️! Thank you 😇 😊!
I do think that Frank Pick made the right call - local trains should be a primary means of transport, buses and trams secondary with closer spaced stops. It's good that the Piccadilly storms through stations without stopping on the way to Heathrow and likewise the Metropolitan on the way to Buckinghamshire.
Thanks again for sharing yet another most interesting and informative video. Here in Melbourne Australia, we had a name change to one of our underground stations. The original station name was Museum, but as the museum wasn't quite directly near the station, they renamed the station Melbourne Central.
Slightly OT but I've just been reading an article in November issue of Railway Bylines about a 978 yard railway tunnel near Cheadle, where the constructors, starting from each end, were 15 feet apart vertically when they "met" in the middle. This was around the turn of the 20th century, but even so! As a result half the tunnel had a ferocious gradient that caused terrible conditions as steam engines were worked hard to drag their trains along.
That brought back some memories when from childhood to my early twenties I lived just off St Ann's Road and used to frequent Harringay stadium for dog racing and Banger racing. Green Lanes station was in those days called Harringay stadium. Shame it disappeared but a failure to modernise it resulted in fewer patrons.
In my opinion I feel frank pick made the right choice because there will always be stretches of tube lines where this is a large gap, another example is Stratford to Mile End. The large gap keeps the service relatively fast as more stops slows travel times for passengers etc
Geoff & Jago that would be "Mmm" educational in the least , at best BLOODY BRILLIANT. On the subject I've been informed by an old harringey employee that there are full plans with planning permission in there archives. Hope this helps .
I recall opening a bank account in Green Lanes when I lived in the area, circa 1982. I remarked, in passing, that Haringey the borough was spelled differently from Harringay the district. The bank employee absolutely refused to believe me, and must have thought I was either stupid or had sinister intentions. But I still don't know why the spellings are different.
It seems that the area always had various spellings, all originally derived from the Anglo-Saxon for a place where hares live. Haringey was first recorded in 1387, and Harringay in 1569. In 1792, Harringay House was built, which gave its spelling to the area. But there were always people who wanted it to be Haringey, and they finally got their way in 1965 when the London Borough of Haringey was formed. My guess is that the genteel residents of Hornsey and Muswell Hill didn't want to live in a place known for its greyhound track.
No comment! No, I'm not going to pick on Frank Pick. However I'm coming to your defence. Don't say you are not a proper Journalist Jago, for you are, and much more. You are hard working, devoting a lot of time to research. You are passionate about your subject matter. You are not a shock journo raking up mud and throwing it around. You present your work in an appealing way for the broad cross section of your supporters and followers. You are a unique journalist with a style all of your own. I urge other Jagoholics to get on board with some of their own comments to display some solidarity forthwith!
Excellent analysis! The fact that trams served the area - until they didn't... - makes sense, as well as the stated reason of slowing up the Piccalli Line. Then there is York Road, which TfL won't reinstate despite all the Kings Cross development, but kites have been flown re reopening Maiden Lane on the Overground to the north of the development which closed in WW1. As to a tube connection at Harringay Green Lanes Goblin Line - why not? It is rather close to Manor House, however, which I believe has the Victoria line underneath, but doesn't connect to that either. It is also an an unstated 'Out of Station' interchange for Harringay Station on the - non-TfL - Main Line, that crosses the Goblin but not nearby. Similarly Bounds Green and Bowes Park on the - also non - TfL - Hertford Loop. All a legacy of the disparate railway development - go figure..
The argument of buses providing a sufficient link would be true on this stretch if Haringey council did not prioritize providing parking along green lanes over having bus lanes. As it stands, it turns out the fastest way to get to roughly this spot from, say, kings cross is to walk all the way from seven sisters having taking the Victoria line. A major transport not-spot!
Stratford - Mile End - Bethnal Green - Liverpool Street stations on the Central Line are _really_ spaced out but it does get you into the city from the eastern suburbs much quicker than if there were intermediate ones. Just like here on the Piccadilly.
I grew up opposite St Anne's Church, in Top Ryde in Sydney, where Granny Smith was buried. It would've been really useful to have a station there… I'll bet it'd be apple-themed.
Looks more than just a ventilation shaft , I wonder if also a switch room for Tube electric supply or some other related purpose always tantalizing these buildings that keep us guessing .
One of the tube stations with a non-indicative name is South Wimbledon, a fictitious place, which is actually Merton or on Merton High Street and originally had platform signs with both name on them.
After watching your previous video on the topic, Jago, I rushed to look up what Croome & Jackson said in "Rails Through The Clay" - sadly, they only mention, in passing, that a station was planned by the St Ann's Road junction but never completed.
it's not one of the former London civil defence regional controls - it may have been a borough one (each borough had one, including pre-GLC boroughs). I do want to find out more about this. It's clearly not just a vent shaft.
As funky apartments appear to be following Jago around London, the particularly funky ones seen in various parts of this vid, are going for an eye watering amount of money. Too eye watering for a genteel channel like this!
Note Bus services have been reduced in recent years, and Pick referred to Trams (in a time of fewer private car ownership and use) so Pick was correct. However times change and in a spirit of better transport integration the policitians may be wrong (perish the thought) but it would be expensive to the point of not being financially viable on an economic case of making a direct station to station interchange at Harringay Green Lanes ( unless one wishes more light blocking aparthotels that pass for the standard london leasehold flat these days ) , though TfL could have replied with they would create and publicise a Out of Station Interchange
You can't win with the tube. Whatever you do, someone will say you should have done the opposite. But as ever, we would not have this problem if we still had the trams...
It is worth looking at Green Lanes before the building on its frontage isolated the vent shaft building onto Colina Road ( which in fairness must be why you missed it) there was fenced off open parking back in 2008 implying a much larger area looking highly suitable for a station sized building , likewise opposite in Green Lanes, which was a Turkish Bank in 2008 (and is in 2022) is a two storey (lowered? the adjacent building is unclear), which is of a different style (not in itself problematic - it might have been the sunday school for the church but to me it looks "railway like" or readied for possible demolition for a second station entrance (similar is a Colliers Wood where there is an apparent cleared area / unbuilt area opposite a station building ). This does ignore any remodeling of the area by WW2 ariel raids , but certainly needs investigation, only the minutes of the railway companies involved along with draft engineering plans would confirm the thinking and decision making along with any deeds or other documents of land ownership
Brilliant spot! It doesn't seem unlikely that TfL probably owned that open parking area and were "sitting" on it just in case minds changed and it ever became useful. An acquaintance of mine used to do research into unused bits of land in London, primarily so he could contact people to see if they could be rented or bought and used purposefully for businesses or retail spaces. He claims a lot were owned by TfL who were just clinging on to them speculatively in case either the land value increased greatly, or they became useful to them for expansion projects at a later date. This would probably have ticked both boxes.
@@23Daves the land to the "rear" which Geoff M notes has been developed was a sort of cash and carry warehouse and older maps had other semi industrial use , again it looks to me as if the whole plot back to the road (to the eastish) was acquired at one time by the Picc Line promotors - board notes etc would confirm this
Where about’s was Colina Road station located at. Was it built near to Wood Green and near to Alexandra Palace. Very interesting to know about where the station used to be before it was closed.
This is the Colina Road shaft house, providing ventilation between Manor House and Turnpike Lane stations. The site was considered for a station, but the London Passenger Transport Board decided that it would be better to keep average train speeds higher and omit this stop.
My buses are always crowded when there is a perfectly good tube service for the same journey. But the bus is 15p from being half price. At the end of the month its about a £50 difference.
Colina Road is very close to Turnpike Lane (about two thirds of the way from Manor House) so would surely be a redundant stop in a suburban area. St Ann's Road is little better. In 2023 Harringay the action is down at Harringay Green Lanes so that's where a station would make sense. A hundred years ago, there might not have been a massive Sainsbury's or McDonalds but nonetheless the buildings down that end are bulkier than the ones up at Colina Road implying more people wanting to visit that end of Harringay.
It never ceases to beat me as to why when youngsters these days see a blank wall they need to deface it with 'tags'. Who the hell knows who they belong to?
@@TalesOfWar understood: you don’t care that the “art” is ruining the look of someone’s home or business nor that you have no right to put your “art” wherever you want just be a you can’t be bothered to find a legal place
How hard is it to prosecute someone who writes his identity at the crime scene? An individual is a nuisance that only costs about £1,000 to remove. (I say only. It's a lot of money if you're the one spending it but not if you're a judge ignoring the plight of the victim.) In Swindon they photographed all the tags and when they caught an imbecile defacing a wall, they charged him with several thousand cases of criminal damage. He was sentenced on the basis of a couple of million pounds of damage.
Always odd to see streets a literal minute from home on the interwebs, heh. Colina Rd strikes me as somewhere that'd be a bit of a pain to get in and out of were it to get at all busy… and is also so close to Turnpike Lane as for there to not be much point IMO; even St Ann's would be pushing it. :)
The width of the pavement by today's standards would indicate an area where pedestrians would gather. The standard pavement width is 2m except where pedestrians are expected to gather, such outside shops, schools, churches, etc, when the pavement has to be at least 3m wide. In order to determine if the pavement width is significant we need to known when the pavement was built to this width, when the current pavement standards came into effect and, ofcourse, which came first.
I posted a link to an old OS map yesterday but it seems to have been eaten by RU-vid. I can find the building on a 1933 OS map as a ventilation shaft, and I've found references to it being used as a construction site for the Cockfosters extension. I note that in the 1930s the Piccadilly Line was losing stations - Down Street, Brompton Road and York Road all closed at this time. Bunkers: LB Haringey was made from the boroughs of Wood Green, Hornsea and Tottenham. All of these pre-GLC boroughs probably had a civil defence centre. Haringey had a Cold War era nuclear bunker under the civic centre, that was the former Wood Green town hall and opened in the 1950s. There was also Tottenham Borough Control which has an archaeology report online. I don't know where the Hornsea one was. The Cold War era NE London control was in Wanstead and has been demolished.
Hi Jago, I love your pieces on the underground. I’ve just watched the one on Colina Road. I really chuckled towards the end. There is a shot of a rail bridge with a road sign in the same picture. Both have the name Haringey and Harringay Green Lanes spelt differently. Is there a reason for this🤔.
Frank Pick may have been right for the age he was living in, but probably was lacking in a bit of foresight. (we can all plead guilty to that from time to time). I dare say it doesnt prevent a station being built there now if it was thought appropriate. You are the informative video to my random conjecture.
Why am i still the lone voice, the one in the wilderness the one between san annes rode and the north of everywhere? As i commented on previous st annes video about the possibility the station being between Colina rd and the Salisbury pub you mr Jago offered me no reprise !!! How long are the platforms at manor house and turnpike lane and while you are at it you might as well include wood and bounds green and Arnos grove. i'm looking for a consensus on the line especially from extending line from Finsbury park out into the stix. and when the notion of putting a halfway station between Manor house and Turnpike was muted at least. The whole area would have had a milieu of reasons why a station with main façade was on Green Lanes and rear entrance/exit onto Haringay road heading directly to lordship park (some ways more direct than turnpike as closest station and not unheard of as an overflow on 'big days out' to the lido etc. Any way i look forward to your third instalment looking at the Haringay snooker club and or any other architecture of similar style anywhere on the underground, lol incidentally it is 100mtr from the corner of the building close to the pub end and to Colina road 'vent' As always, respect and enjoy
Jago Hazzard, check the Metropolitain railway, paddington tube station, Praed st. Not too dissimilar to what my view is beheld, lol (saw old photo of a bus outside station facade)
Wonder if it could have doubled as a stairwell & lift shaft too. Tho the way tube trains travel in tight tunnels, a lift might have been pneumatically operated the wrong way - pushed up to the surface as a train arrives, and pulled down underground as it left...
if that wasn’t the primary exit then that was definitely the secondary exit because my money is on The Salisbury building being incorporated into an exit as it’s the perfect spot for one with the intersection leading multiple directions this coincides with the money issues as it would require them to buy the rights to build into the building which if was refused would lead to the plans being scrapped while the already built shaft just gets reused and forgotten
