Is this art?

All I really know is that I saw this on the back wall of Boradhurst Gardens, from West Hampstead Tube station and thought wow!

It stands out and is impressive and colourful - I was also interested to be joined by three other travellers who were admiring it...

The reality is railway graffiti is the norm now but with some basic imagination it could be developed... some of the graffiti is abusive and incredibly tatty and undermines a building and the area.

So perhaps as part of the London elections next year there could be an intelligent engagement on the issue and the tat cleared away and the space yielded up for better, more artistic features - such as this one?

A time to dawdle in south and west hampstead

Usually I'm full of praise of the natural environment or the pure design - but I'm really struck by the late victorian brickwork of West Hampstead/South Hampstead - it's actually incredibly ornate and deeply impressive.

I'm no historical architect by it feels like much of it was the work of one firm - both in style and in type - but considering we are looking at bricks it has a flair that is unexpected and impressive.

We're looking at a period of about 1882 - 1894 - the ones here are illustrated with date plaques that give them precise dates of 1887 and 1889 - and I reckon they are not just the sme style but in fact by the same craftsman - that certainly would fit with the perception. That teams of men (often Irish labourers) were crewed together and worked in areas for period sof 5-10 years during the construction.

Considering the buildings are four stroises high, often with basements too, you get a sense of just how laborious they would have been - and the intensity of the development is amazing - the streets would have been busy, packed and at times highly congested. It made me think, as I had heard that on some estates such as this the brick kilns were constructed on site to save the time. My instinct here though is that due to the good transport links the brick kilns of the midlands in fact serviced these building sites and there would not have been much local generation.

The speed of growth of the South Hampstead estates was pretty impressive so it should come as no surprise to find this quality of workmanship.

Tkae awalk down any of these streets - Canfield, Broadhurst, Goldhurst - there is so much to see and enjoy - I find it one of the most pleasurable dawdles around...

Granny Dripping's Stairs - West Hampstead

There is small footbridge in West Hampstead from where Priory Road meets Broadhurst Gardens. It's just an old railway bridge, but there is something of a story hidden behind it all - the reason why this arouses such comment at all is that it has as a route, gained a lot of traffic since the growth of the O2 Centre on Finchley Road and yet it has lain uncared for and increasingly unpleasant.


Locally the steps are known as Granny Dripping Steps [Granny's Stairs and also Granny Drippen's Stairs/Steps - apparently named from her bread and dripping sandwhiches] - named after the crossing sweeper who at the turn of the 19th/20th Century swept the stairs. The historical suggestion is that she was old ["looking for all the world like the witch in Hansel and Gretel"] and relatively ineffective at clearing the mud and muck that accumulated.


Now we have a need for Granny Dripping to return - in short the stairs are neglected and are a really unpleasant mess - graffiti, overhead wire meshing, broken bottles, litter under the steps and often dog mess... But of course no-one is clear who owns or maintains the steps. The network of rail companies makes for a labrynth of avenues.


So it's a cause that we have agreed to take up - working with Cllr David Abrahams we have started the task of unpicking the various responsibilities and seeing if we can allocate some direct and sustained improvements...


Local resident Jean Austin joined David and I when we looked at the steps and the need for a serious clean-up is pretty self evident - we'll keep you informed.