Tubewhore (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} tubewhore) wrote,@ 2008-02-06 18:36:00 |
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| Entry tags: | clapham south, colliers wood, morden, northern line, totting bec |
Power to the People! - the Tooting to Morden adventure.
The seven stations between Clapham South and Morden were opened as a block as the Morden Extension in 1926 and were all designed by Charles Holden. There's a deliberately modern feel to the architecture, and a uniformity to the look of the platforms with green, white and black tiling that we shall see repeated station to station on our journey this afternoon.
Despite my maudlin misgivings that no-one really, really wanted to go to a Sewing Machine Museum on a Saturday in February, after all no-one actually wanted to go to a real, proper art gallery with me, not long after 2pm on Saturday not only had I met gmul , (me taking the conversation from nought to Doctor Who in under 30 seconds) but there were a total of eight of us gathered in the ticket hall at Tooting Bec, with a ninth on his way (![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
poggs would arrive just as soon as his iPod had charged...now, there's an excuse - 'I'm going to be late because I'm so damn 21st Century I can't move without a plethora of personal electronic support', rock and roll dude...).
I now feel overwhelmed by a desperate need to try to be Clever and Entertaining for all these lovely people who've bothered to make the trek down the Northern line. No doubt this comes over as Loud and Annoying...After the usual shuffling of feet and indecisiveness we head off hopefully in the right direction. First thing is to get a picture, though. I try to get Random Member of the Public to take a picture of our merry band, but nearest chap refuses on the grounds that he doesn't speak English. What English do you need to press the button?...Christ I do it enough for Japanese tourists who just point and smile. Welcome to Britain, mate...so here's most of us squinting into the afternoon sun outside the fine Portland stone, with, I think, plinthy being David Bailey (do correct me if wrong).
We don't yell 'power to the people' en masse...perhaps we should have? I grew up on 70's sit-coms and my only previous experience of Tooting is via Wolfie Smith.
The museum is but a stone's throw away and we are greeted by the proprietor, Mr Rushton himself, in a pinstriped suit and puffing on a cigar. We're directed upstairs to a wonderment of machinery spanning 150 years - there are machines to sew gloves, to make ruffles, to shell-edge lingerie; to sew carpets or corsets or parachutes; machines with 12 needles for smoking, or that sew only welt pockets, or collars or buttonholes; machines for just hemming or only doing flat-felled seams, or putting braid on straw hats; handheld machines to pop in your Gladstone bag, toy machines in the shape of dolls or clowns, and even a machine that's a cast iron lion that folds open to reveal a cotton reel inside his maned head and the needle in his paw; there's the first model of Singer plus a bazillion other brands now long defunct, and pride of the collection is a machine made as a wedding present for Queen Victoria's eldest daughter housed in an engraved glass box with carved ivory spools bearing the royal crest. There's a collection of beautiful wooden desks made to house sewing machines as proper pieces of living-room furniture, including many that are sewing machine/writing desk combinations, the entertainment consoles of the 1870's complete with fake drawers and stamped leather blotters.
There are machines painted as imitation malachite, machines with Egyptian styled transfers, machines painted with cornucopias of flowers; an inconceivable array of shapes, sizes and specialisms. As we wander, a nice chap offers us glasses of wine from cut-glass snifters. We can take as many pictures as we like and get as close as we want and the staff are itching to share all manner of interesting details. Now this is a museum! Mr Rushton appears, smiling proudly at our marvelling and then gets us all to play the barrel organ. Yes! a Barrel Organ!!! Fantastic stuff... My bustle gets prodded by other visitors who want to know what I've got on under there to give me a rear you can park a teacup on.
Difficult lighting mean my photos can only give the merest flavour of how fun this place was, and I am certainly keen to go back as there are a ton of things I must have missed. This is exactly the kind of personal collection of strange and wonderful things that it's a joy to discover on my expedition around the Underground, put together by the love and willpower of that special breed: a proper English eccentric. Mr Rushton had the wooden cabinets lining the room of vintage domestic machine brought down from a jewellers in Scotland and carefully reassembled on site, and the Queen's sewing machine was the most expensive sewing machine ever to go to auction. This charming place is truly one man's labour of love - and the best bit is he doesn't even sew!
Dotted around the Museum are letters received from visitors over the years. I am fascinated by one group called The London Appreciation Society: do they appreciate this sprawling metropolitan mass and want to spread the word on how great London is, or are they a society of Londoners that generally find things in life to be pleased about? I can find no information on them...but I took a photo of the letter so I shall write...I vow to send my own letter of thanks to join these other glowing missives of praise.
1870's musical box in the shape of a lady sewing ...
Transfer-decorated cast iron as far as you could see:
The museum is but a stone's throw away and we are greeted by the proprietor, Mr Rushton himself, in a pinstriped suit and puffing on a cigar. We're directed upstairs to a wonderment of machinery spanning 150 years - there are machines to sew gloves, to make ruffles, to shell-edge lingerie; to sew carpets or corsets or parachutes; machines with 12 needles for smoking, or that sew only welt pockets, or collars or buttonholes; machines for just hemming or only doing flat-felled seams, or putting braid on straw hats; handheld machines to pop in your Gladstone bag, toy machines in the shape of dolls or clowns, and even a machine that's a cast iron lion that folds open to reveal a cotton reel inside his maned head and the needle in his paw; there's the first model of Singer plus a bazillion other brands now long defunct, and pride of the collection is a machine made as a wedding present for Queen Victoria's eldest daughter housed in an engraved glass box with carved ivory spools bearing the royal crest. There's a collection of beautiful wooden desks made to house sewing machines as proper pieces of living-room furniture, including many that are sewing machine/writing desk combinations, the entertainment consoles of the 1870's complete with fake drawers and stamped leather blotters.
There are machines painted as imitation malachite, machines with Egyptian styled transfers, machines painted with cornucopias of flowers; an inconceivable array of shapes, sizes and specialisms. As we wander, a nice chap offers us glasses of wine from cut-glass snifters. We can take as many pictures as we like and get as close as we want and the staff are itching to share all manner of interesting details. Now this is a museum! Mr Rushton appears, smiling proudly at our marvelling and then gets us all to play the barrel organ. Yes! a Barrel Organ!!! Fantastic stuff... My bustle gets prodded by other visitors who want to know what I've got on under there to give me a rear you can park a teacup on.
Difficult lighting mean my photos can only give the merest flavour of how fun this place was, and I am certainly keen to go back as there are a ton of things I must have missed. This is exactly the kind of personal collection of strange and wonderful things that it's a joy to discover on my expedition around the Underground, put together by the love and willpower of that special breed: a proper English eccentric. Mr Rushton had the wooden cabinets lining the room of vintage domestic machine brought down from a jewellers in Scotland and carefully reassembled on site, and the Queen's sewing machine was the most expensive sewing machine ever to go to auction. This charming place is truly one man's labour of love - and the best bit is he doesn't even sew!
Dotted around the Museum are letters received from visitors over the years. I am fascinated by one group called The London Appreciation Society: do they appreciate this sprawling metropolitan mass and want to spread the word on how great London is, or are they a society of Londoners that generally find things in life to be pleased about? I can find no information on them...but I took a photo of the letter so I shall write...I vow to send my own letter of thanks to join these other glowing missives of praise.
A big favourite with everyone was the steampunky yarn-winder with a little bell that was rung by a tiny axe when it reached 120 yards. Functionally, it's completely unnecessary to make the bell ringer an axe, or have winding paddles with brass curlicues, but that's pride in a beautiful piece of engineering! Apologies for the fuzzy photo. That gearing mechanism is particularily splendid.
1870's musical box in the shape of a lady sewing ...
Transfer-decorated cast iron as far as you could see:
Several hours pass in the museum before we decide it's time for tea and a rest. On my way out, I find Mr Rushton in the huge warehouse of a shop that the museum sits above and say 'thank you' for a lovely visit. I am rewarded with a gentlemanly kiss on the cheek.
Getting us all into to the nearest cafe proves to be an adventure in logistics. We annoy another customer who wants to be alone with her toasted panini and chest infection as we have to share tables. I had no concrete plans for the rest of the afternoon, but people are keen to knock off the rest of the Morden extension so althoughbelle_fille1982and jessamyn19 have other places to go, the remainder of us carry on to Tooting Broadway where there's a rather Narnian lampost in the middle of a traffic island. Brighton is straight ahead, apparently. The siren call of fabric shops is firmly resisted.
Getting us all into to the nearest cafe proves to be an adventure in logistics. We annoy another customer who wants to be alone with her toasted panini and chest infection as we have to share tables. I had no concrete plans for the rest of the afternoon, but people are keen to knock off the rest of the Morden extension so although
belle_fille1982and jessamyn19 have other places to go, the remainder of us carry on to Tooting Broadway where there's a rather Narnian lampost in the middle of a traffic island. Brighton is straight ahead, apparently. The siren call of fabric shops is firmly resisted. 
No such joys at Colliers Wood. Opposite the station is one of the most hated buildings in London, the monolithic Root Tower. Just to the side of it is the equally architecturally boring Sainsbury's supermarket which is apparently one of the biggest supermarkets in Europe.
Heading down the line, next stop: South Wimbledon - only named so because it sound more upmarket than 'Merton' which is closer to where we actually are.
A correspondent of mine, Tubeprune, mentioned that South Wimbledon was one of the cleanest stations he'd ever seen. The white paint is looking a little grubby now, but the stylistic cleaness is still there in all its Deco beauty. Poggs however, is more excited by the fact that there's mystery train with no destination that he's been watching since Tooting Broadway, and the departure board south gives it's destination as Kennington, a stop 11 stations to the north of us...I think there was actual cackling going on...down on the platform, the errant train has no given destination...it's a mystery...where might it go? His request to wait for the mystery train is greeted with enthusiasm - we are geeks, hear us roar!
Not far to go now. We lose piqueenand plinthybut five of us continue the one stop to the end of the line.
piqueenand plinthybut five of us continue the one stop to the end of the line.At Morden the train emerges above ground into the darkening twilight. There was more land available for building here back in the 20's unlike further up the line, so Morden station is a large brick shell with metal gantries to the platforms and ticket halls suspended within it.
Outside the original Portland stone ticket hall was enveloped by an office block back in the 60s...all the stations on the Morden extension were built with flat roofs to allow for later development.
Outside the original Portland stone ticket hall was enveloped by an office block back in the 60s...all the stations on the Morden extension were built with flat roofs to allow for later development.
Poggs finds a visual bus gag to set him giggling again...
Next we lose sinmara as she lives just around the corner. It's like some Agatha Christie novel where we're getting picked off one by one. It remains for poggs, gmul, jim_revelator_1and myself to return north to pick up the final missing station in this section; Clapham South.
Outside it's now full dark. As well as flat roofs to allow for development, many of the stations on the Morden extension has shops built into the station fabric. At Clapham South, my eye is drawn to a wood-fronted florist. It's retro styling so vintage as to be hip again. I like to imagine this is the flower-shop Eliza Dolittle's opened*, named for the horse she backed at Ascot...
*the ending of the play is different from the movie My Fair Lady...she marries Jeremy Brett's character, Freddie, and opens a flower shop with backing from Captain Pickering...
...and so the day ends...changing for the Victoria line at Stockwell and over to Boston Manor far, far west on the Piccadilly to have supper with a convalescingvelvetdahlia. Six more stations done and the most southerley part of the network conquered.
I am deeply grateful to all my companions for braving the cold to play on trains and barrel organs with me. Plans were hatched to regroup for the London Transport Museum Acton Depot Open Day for a Tubewhore picnic, and I sincerely hope to see you again in March.
sinmara as she lives just around the corner. It's like some Agatha Christie novel where we're getting picked off one by one. It remains for poggs, gmul, jim_revelator_1and myself to return north to pick up the final missing station in this section; Clapham South. Outside it's now full dark. As well as flat roofs to allow for development, many of the stations on the Morden extension has shops built into the station fabric. At Clapham South, my eye is drawn to a wood-fronted florist. It's retro styling so vintage as to be hip again. I like to imagine this is the flower-shop Eliza Dolittle's opened*, named for the horse she backed at Ascot...
"c'mon Dover, mover yer bloomin' arse"
*the ending of the play is different from the movie My Fair Lady...she marries Jeremy Brett's character, Freddie, and opens a flower shop with backing from Captain Pickering...
...and so the day ends...changing for the Victoria line at Stockwell and over to Boston Manor far, far west on the Piccadilly to have supper with a convalescing
velvetdahlia. Six more stations done and the most southerley part of the network conquered. I am deeply grateful to all my companions for braving the cold to play on trains and barrel organs with me. Plans were hatched to regroup for the London Transport Museum Acton Depot Open Day for a Tubewhore picnic, and I sincerely hope to see you again in March.
