THE STORY OF PADDINGTON...

...is short, but eventful!

(pictured: P C Culverhouse's 1933 Art Deco North Side offices, with giant Gill Sans bronze lettering, viewed from the escalators up from Paddington Square)

'Short' because almost all its development occurred after 1800 and the 'station', which is what the name now means, is only the most recent chapter.

So we will meet at the most distant place in the far north-west of the old Metropolitan Borough of Paddington—Kensal Green Station.

We will see Harrow Road, an ancient track established in the Iron Age, and its early 'ribbon development'.

Later, four more major transport arteries were threaded through the area to reach London.

We will walk along the towpath of the first, the Grand Junction Canal* (1801), steadily, effortlessly (it is part of a 27 mile long, entirely level 'canal pound'), without a single traffic light, or cars**, crossings or kerbs, travelling about 5 km directly to Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s Paddington Square, the stunning just-completed 17-storey mixed use tower, floating above a new public space which replaces the original dispiriting station arrivals ramp.

Along the way we will see and hear the other 3 arteries (railways and a motorway) as they twist, turn and intertwine, hastening from points West and North-West, and:

• The 1833, 72-acre All Souls Cemetery, still in operation, oldest of London’s ‘Magnificent Seven’, and believed to contain ‘250,000 people, including 500 members of the British nobility and 970 people listed in the Dictionary of National Biography’, including Robert Owen, Charles Babbage, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel and his father Marc.
• The delightful premises of gravestone supplier E M Lander Ltd, at 605-609 Harrow Road.
• The Church of St John the Evangelist, Harrow Road, described by Nicholas Pevsner as ‘atrocious’ (I think ‘grim’ would have sufficed): it survives, is well attended, and has a charming interior, quite moving in its humility.
• Furniture Designer Tom Dixon’s 2012 'Water Tower House', converted from a 1930’s 5000 gallon emergency fire-fighting tank structure.
• We'll see a variety of recent commercial housing that has been piled onto valuable canalside sites. But one site, called 'Meanwhile Gardens' after the 'temporary' planning consent granted in 1976, has been saved from development as a community park****.
• Erno Goldfinger’s heroic but tragic 1972 31-storey Trellick Tower, and lower-rise 60’s and 70’s social housing, including curved deck-access blocks, part of the campaign to rehouse the residents of the original terraced houses thrown up during the 19th Century’s very rapid urbanization.
• G E Street’s 1872 masterpiece the Church of St Mary Magdalene****, and their ‘Grand Junction’ Café with loos and some good modern architecture (2019) by Dow Jones Architects.
• Little Venice: a picturesque triangular junction where the Grand Union and Regent's Canals meet.
• Paddington Central: a modern mixed-use development on the site of the 1838 temporary terminus of the Great Western Railway.
• Brunel's 1854 'London Paddington' (as everyone outside London calls it): the improvements of the 1870's, 1910's and 1960's, its growth from 4 to the current 16 platforms, and its rise up the rankings, following the opening of the Elizabeth Line, from 8th to 2nd 'busiest' station in the UK!
• Paddington Square: at first sight almost frightening in the completeness and order of its glass architecture, with many of the motifs and details Piano used at the Shard. But escalators lead to a new ticket hall and direct, step-free access to the Bakerloo Line platforms.

Post-walk discussion and drinks? Perhaps the coffee lounge of the 1851 French Chateau-esque Hilton London Paddington ...or?

Hope you can come!

Andy

*its name then
**but occasional bicycles
***a contemporary documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keNKnsQE848
****the canal and church can be seen the 1950 movie 'The Blue Lamp'