Monopoly Challenge Go To Jail

When I reached Jail I decided to draw London’s Newgate Prison. Now I’ve reached Go To Jail it only seems right to draw the Old Bailey. After all, we know that the instruction Go To Jail means go directly to jail. Prior to the demolition of Newgate Prison, the Old Bailey Court stood as part of the prison complex, so it really was a direct route from one to the other. After Newgate was demolished, the current Old Bailey building was erected on the same site.

The Old Bailey is more correctly called The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales. It has become known as the Old Bailey because that’s the name of the street on which it stands. Bailey derives from the old roman wall of the city of Londinium, and Old Bailey Street follows part of the course of the wall.

The current building was opened in 1907. It’s possibly best known for the statue that tops the dome. If you ask a majority of Londoners I’d guess that they would tell you the statue is called Blind Justice. Yet she’s not blind! It’s common to depict the personification of Justice as a young woman, holding a sword and a pair of scales, who is blindfolded to represent impartiality. Yet the Old Bailey statue is not blindfolded and is actually called Lady Justice. She wears a diadem from which sun rays radiate, and looks a bit like the Statue of Liberty’s younger sister who has given up enlightening the world and taken up swordfighting and greengrocery. 

Monopoly Challenge Piccadilly

Many people think that Piccadilly on the London Monopoly Board means Piccadilly Circus. Well, that’s understandable. Piccadilly Circus is probably the most important road junction in the West End. However, it is also at the end of a mile long road, called Piccadilly. Piccadilly is a small section of a main thoroughfare leading West out of London, connecting with the M4 motorway.

So, let’s start with Piccadilly Circus. Throughout the 20^th century it was particularly notable for its huge neon advertisements displayed on the side of some of its buildings. Through my childhood there was a huge one advertising Coca Cola. The word circus in this case has nothing to do with the type popularised by the Ringling Brothers in the USA and Billy Smart in the UK, but simply refers to the round shape of the junction. At the other end of Regent Street the junction with Oxford Street is called Oxford Circus. There is also a Cambridge Circus within walking distance.

The most famous feature of Piccadilly Circus is the statue of a winged archer. Ask most Londoners who it represents and they will incorrectly tell you it is the Greek God Eros. Some who think they know better might tell you that it is the Spirit of Christian Charity. Both are wrong. The statue actually represents Anteros, the God of requited love, brother of Eros. It stands on top of the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain. The 7^th Earl of Shaftesbury was a Victorian philanphropist who successfully campaigned to end child labour in the UK and replace it with free education. In the 1980s extensive repair work was done to Sir Alfred Gilbert’s aluminium statue. It had to be removed from the square, and as work was completed put on public display in London’s Festival Hall, where you could view it from a platform.

Bearing in mind the names of the other properties in the yellow set you might be forgiven that the street was named after Sir Absolom Piccadilly, King Charles II’s ceremonial bottom-wiper. However since he never existed, this is not true. It takes its name from the piccadill. During the time of King James I – Charles II’s grandad – a man called Robert Baker bought land in the area and began to manufacture piccadills. If you think of portraits of prosperous Jacobean men, like the engraving of Shakespeare at the front of the first folio – they are often wearing broad, white cut lace collars. These are piccadills. They probably derive their name from a Spanish word meaning pierced or cut.

Piccadilly has been home to many grand and stately houses. Most of these are long gone, although Burlington House still stands an is the home of the Royal Academy of Arts. It’s also home to the very exclusive Burlington Arcade of shops, and Fortnum and Masons. You could argue that Fortnum and Masons are the world’s oldest department store, opening in 1707. However they were specifically a grocers until much later. The Ritz hotel is only one of several along the length of Piccadilly. While we’re going through the edited highlights it also boasts the church of St. James, designed by Sir Christopher Wren. Piccadilly Circus Underground station with its underground circular booking hall was a pioneering achievement which caused a sensation when opened in the 1920s. The last remaining station surface buildings were removed at the end of the 20^th century.

All done

Just today I finished the last London Monopoly Sketch. I’m going to post all of them one day at a time as I have been doing which means I make it that there’s 8 days still to go before I’ve posted them all. If you can’t wait then I do have a page with all of the sketches already posted – its on my links under London Monopoly Challenge.

So I have spent just a little time reflecting on the challenge. Overall I’ve enjoyed it immensely. All of the sketches have been made in the month of April 2024, with the exceptions of Euston, Strand, Fleet Street and Piccadilly, where I used some of my old sketches. So that’s 27 new sketches. I would estimate that each one has taken an average of four hours. That’s over 100 hours. Not for me to say that it shows in the results. So I gave myself a set of questions about the challenge to help me get my thoughts in order about the whole thing.

Which set did you enjoy most?

I have to say that my favourite set to sketch was the yellows. Alright, I’d already sketched Piccadilly a few years ago so that made it easier, but it wasn’t that, or I’d have picked the reds. I think that what I enjoyed was that for Leicester Square and Coventry Street I ended up using quite different subject matter than the majority of other sketches I made. For Leicester Square my main focus, at least at the start, was the two figures talking on the bench. For Coventry Street I ended up sketching a modern building, the Swiss Centre. Although I can see the mistakes I made clearly it’s still a sketch I really enjoyed making.

Which set did you enjoy least?

If you hold my arm up behind my back I’d probably say the pinks. I don’t think that any of them are bad sketches – in fact I think that the green Northumberland Avenue sketch is pretty good, but there was a sameyness doing Pall Mall and Whitehall. And by that stage of the challenge I had started thinking – I’ve done ten sketches which have taken ages and I’m not even halfway there yet. – It’s one of the reasons why I tried using the different colours as a way of maintaining my interest. In any 'long-distance' challenge that you undertake there's a pain barrier you have to go through. 

Which is your favourite sketch you made for the challenge?

Probably the Swiss Centre for Coventry Street. I don’t think it’s the best sketch out of the lot, but I just really enjoyed it. I don’t often sketch modern buildings, especially in this amount of detail.

Which is your least favourite sketch you made for the challenge?

Probably Free Parking. It’s not a bad sketch, but I wasn’t in love with the subject matter and I couldn’t find enough detail in the reference photos I’ve looked at to extend the picture into a proper street scene.

Do you think you’ve learned anything doing the challenge? If yes, then what? If no then why not?

Yes, certainly have. I’ve been showcasing the sketches in a Facebook group. There’s a lot of highly talented artists who belong to the same group, and some of them use a stippling technique. I haven’t used this before, but used it in several of these pictures for roadways and shadows.

Taking my two latest sketchbooks together I’ve done almost 100 sketches since Christmas and all of them have been detailed and carefully shaded. If nothing else I’ve developed my self belief that I can sketch anything I can see, and if I just keep working at it sooner or later it will become what I want it to become.

In terms of information, I did not know about the early London multi storey car parks before.

What’s next for you?

Watch this space.

Monopoly Challenge Waterworks

 

London has had many heroes throughout its almost 2000 years of History, many of them very well known, and some of them unsung. Such a hero was Joseph Bazalgette. He was awarded a well deserved knighthood during his lifetime, but it’s not that well known that thousands of Londoners owed their lives to him. It was under his direction that the sewer system was built, which finally relieved London from the great scourge of cholera.

So, for Water Works I have chosen to draw Bazalgette’s Crossness Pumping Station. This was a state of the art facility when it opened in 1859. It was decommissioned in the 1950s. Ironically the building and the machinery inside the building was only initially saved because the cost of demolishing it, and scrapping the machinery far exceeded any value to be gained by doing so. It wasn’t until 1970 that the building became a grade 1 listed building – if you’re not in the UK, this means that it has the legal standing of a building of huge national importance and virtually guarantees its preservation for prosperity. Work on preserving and restoring the interior began in 2008 and the building opened as a museum in 2015. The elaborate ironwork restored in the octagon hall is worth a visit by itself.

Monopoly Challenge Coventry Street

 

You can walk along Coventry Street from one end to another without even realising you’ve done so. It’s one of the shortest streets on the London Monopoly Board. You come to the western side of Leicester Square, and you’re near as anything already in Piccadilly Circus. Still, that short thoroughfare you’ve just walked down between the two is actually Coventry Street.

Like Leicester Square it does date back to he reign of Charles II. It’s named after Henry Coventry, one time secretary of state to the merry monarch.

For a long time Coventry Street had a seedy reputation, with gambling houses and prostitution. In the second half of the nineteenth century its reputation slightly improved as it became home to several music halls. In the last century it became particularly known for restaurants and nightclubs. Notable establishments have included the Swiss Centre, where Coventry Street becomes Leicester Square. This was a very modern building which lasted from 1966 until being demolished in 2007. Its most notable feature was a carillon clock which has been preserved on the site, which is now home to the M and M store. I wrote more about this building last week. Coventry Street is also home to the Trocadero, which has during its colourful life housed many attractions.

Monopoly Challenge Leicester Square

 

Leicester Square is very much an entertainment hub nowadays. London’s biggest cinemas are clustered around the square, and it is the venue for more film premieres than all other locations in the UK combined. Leicester Square is at the heart of the ‘West End’ of London, the theatre district. It’s also home to many restaurants, and is noted for Chinese cuisine, bordering as it does on Soho’s ‘chinatown’.

Like Pall Mall. Leicester Square came into being during the Restoration period , just a few years later in 1670. It developed around Leicester House, home of the 2^nd Earl of Leicester, Robert Sidney. For almost a century it was a highly genteel area, amongst whose residents included Frederick, Prince of Wales, the father of George III. Poor old Frederick never had much luck. He co-wrote a play which nearly caused a riot on the first (and only) night and lost a fortune giving the audience their money back. Like most of the Hanoverian kings, he never got on with his father, who refused permission for him to see his mother, Queen Caroline, when she was on her death bed. Finally he died at the age of 44, supposedly after being struck by a cricket or a real tennis ball.

Reflecting its connections with the theatre and later, with cinema, the gardens in the Square contain a famous statue of William Shakespeare and Charlie Chaplin and more recently statues have been added including Paddington Bear, Mary Poppins, Harry Potter and Bugs Bunny. Mind you, you’ll have to really look to find some of them, for example, Wonder Woman is halfway up a wall, and Batman is standing on the roof of the Empire Cinema.

You’re really spoiled for choice for things to sketch in Leicester Square. I settled on this view from the mid fifties. The film showing in the Warner cinema is Hondo, which was a Western released in 1953. I just really liked the two Londoners chatting on the park bench. Even now in the third decade of the 21^st century, you can’t beat yakking on a bench in Leicester Square on a sunny day.

Monopoly Challenge Fenchurch Street Station

There aren’t many London Monopoly Board properties that I have ever visited in real life. In fact Fenchurch Street station is the only one.

The world’s first railway linking two cities, the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, opened in 1830. The railways reached London in 1836, with the opening of London Bridge station. By the middle of the 1830s new railways were booming and would go on booming for 10 years until the crash of 1845. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie and although he majority of planned railways in his period were never even built, a large number of companies had their eyes on London.

Fenchurch Street Station was built in 1841, for the London and Blackwall Railway. Through acquisitions and mergers it served a number of different railway companies. When the vast majority of Britain’s railways were rationalised into four companies in the 1920s,Fenchurch served the LMS (London, Midland and Scottish Railway) and the LNER (London North Eastern Railway). This is why it’s included on the London Monopoly board, as an LNER terminus.

Fenchurch Street is the only London terminus which is not also a London Underground station. In the 90s it was planned to either connect Fenchurch Street with the Jubilee Line or to extend the Docklands Light Railway a few hundred yards to Fenchurch Street, which would put it onto the network, but neither of these plans came to fruition. Fenchurch Street largely connects the City of London with Essex. The current building dates back to 1854.

Monopoly Challenge - Trafalgar Square

 

The name Trafalgar Square references the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. What is now the square once housed the Royal Mews, until King George IV moved the mews to Buckingham Palace in the 1820s. John Nash was asked to develop the site, but he died and work progressed very slowly. In 1830 the site was going to be called King William IV Square after his accession that year. Finally in 1835, the 30^th anniversary of Trafalgar, it was decided to name the square Trafalgar Square, and include a memorial to Nelson. One can guess that the owner of the square, King William must have been enthusiastic, bearing in mind that he had been a brother officer and a personal friend of Nelson during his own time in the Navy.

The Square wasn’t opened until 1844. Its most well known feature is Nelson’s Column, a 145 feet tall Corinthian Column topped with Edward Hodges Baily’s statue of Nelson. This has become one of London’s most iconic and recognisable landmarks. The base of the statue is flanked by four pedestals, each bearing a bronze statue of a lion, sculpted by Sir Edwin Landseer.

Throughout its history Trafalgar Square has see a huge number of mass gatherings and demonstrations. It became the unofficial focus of London New Year celebrations, and I remember dancing in the fountains on New Years Eve in the early 80s very fondly. I remember the 2 hour walk home sopping wet less fondly. The Square is still home to a large number of pigeons. Up until the 21^st century feeding the pigeons in the square was seen as an essential component of any visit to London. Then people began to realise the public health risk of a gathering of 35,000 pigeons in such a small space. Feeding the pigeons has been banned since the early 2000s.

There are four plinths surrounding the square. Three of them have permanent statues – George IV, General Charles Napier and General Henry Havelock. The fourth plinth was unoccupied until the 21^st century, since when it has been used for temporary displays of sculpture by some of the leading names in contemporary sculpture in the UK and the rest of the world.

Let’s come back to Nelson. In July 2020 protestors in the city of Bristol pulled down a statue of the 17^th/18^th century trader Edward Colston. The statue was supposedly erected by a grateful city, as a way of memorialising his charitable support of almshouses, churches, workhouses and schools. The protestors’ argument was that in our modern, multicultural Britain, glorifying a man who organised and greatly benefited from the Slave Trade is untenable. to me, tha makes sense, bearing in mind that the city authorities seem

This action focused public attention on the question of public memorials to men associated with the slave trade, and Nelson’s Column became the subject of public debate. This is a question which leads to very heated views on all sides. The older generation as a rule don’t even want to discuss it – my mother and stepfather both being examples. Look, I’m a Londoner myself, and I get an emotional buzz whenever I see an iconic image of the city like the column. But. . .

Symbols matter. Images matter, and the messages that they convey matter.

Now, as I understand it Nelson did not own slaves. As far as I know Nelson did not trade in slaves. Okay. However, he was certainly opposed to Wilberforce’s campaign to abolish the slave trade, and he seems to have been very friendly and protective towards the slave owning elite in the west Indies. I’m not saying this in itself means we should convict him and tear his statue down at once. But I am very much saying it is at least grounds for a constructive public debate on the subject. If Nelson was as great a hero as his defenders think he is then his reputation will survive any amount of public debate. But if he wasn’t, then we certainly should be discussing it.

The Swiss Centre, Leicester Square

If you’ve followed my blog at all recently you’ll know that I’ve undertaken a challenge to produce sketches of every property on the traditional London Monopoly board. Where I’ve made decent sketches of the properties in the past I’ve allowed myself to use them instead of making new sketches. Nonetheless, by last Saturday I had made 18 to take me up to Coventry Street. Ok.

If you’ve seen at least a few of the sketches I’ve made, you’ll know that they largely depict scenes from the end of the 19^th century or the start of the 20^th century. What can I say? I like old buildings. I like drawing scenes that depict what London was like.

I am not a lover of many modern buildings. I was born in London in the mid-60s. Now, I’m not totally blind to the realities of life in the modern world. I’m fully aware of the fact that London took a real hammering in the Second World War. The Socialist government elected in 1945 had a lot of big promises to fulfil and no money with which to do it. Personally I think it’s remarkable how much they managed to achieve. Still, with so many Brits, so many Londoners homeless, or living in untenable cramped conditions because of the number of homes destroyed during the war, it was imperative to build cheaply, to build quickly and to build upwards. So for the next few decades cities and towns across the UK saw a growth of brutalist concrete office and residential blocks.

Change is one of the few constants in life. I know that you can’t keep something just because it’s old. Otherwise we’d all still be living in bronze age round houses. But from a very early age I formed strong opinions about the architecture around me. I knew what I liked and I knew what I didn’t like, and I didn’t like concrete blocks. Large, monolithic, unadorned, these monsters just chill the soul. Concrete may be a very useful building material. . . but it is just not suitable for life in the UK climate! It doesn't take many years before the concrete looks awful.

So, yes, I’m largely not a great fan of post-war British architecture. Which is maybe why, when I find a postwar British building that I actually like, then I tend to make more of a fuss over it. Such a building is. . . was, the Swiss Centre in Leicester Square. So when I came to sketch Coventry Street, the Swiss Centre right on the edge of Coventry Street is what I chose to draw.

The Swiss Centre’s whole working life fitted within my own lifetime. Work began on it in 1963, while I was born a year later. However it didn’t open until 1966. Its original purpose was as a showcase for Switzerland and its products - hence the name - and it contained a ticket office for Swissair and various retail outlets. The Swiss Centre closed in 2007 and was demolished in 2008. The distinctive glockenspiel clock from the front of the building was restored, and eventually returned to the area of Leicester Square now named Swiss Court. As for the site of the Swiss Centre, a new building was put there, which contained M&M’s World when I last visited in 2021.

The Swiss Centre was designed in a modernist style by architect David Aberdeen (1913 – 1987). I also like his modernistic Shrewsbury Market Hall, although not as much as the Swiss Centre. I’m afraid that I really don’t like his Congress House, opened 8 years before the Swiss Centre as the headquarters of the Trades Union Congress. To me this is a  nondescript generic, post war concrete block – yet it’s this one and not the Swiss Centre that became a listed building! Go figure.

I think that the problem the Swiss Centre faced was that by the end of the 20^th century the land it stood on was a lot more valuable commercially than the building. The last time I saw it the ground floor outlets seemed to be almost exclusively flogging tourist tat, and the place looked run down and a bit seedy. Whether it will turn out to be one of those buildings which will see people in the future start to say – why did we ever pull that down? – well, I don’t really know about that. It only had a working life of just over 40 years. In an internet search I found many photographs of the building, but only the one painting showing it, and no sketches. But I liked it.

Monopoly 18 Fleet Street

 

Allow me to indulge myself with a little more Old English. Fleet derives from the River Fleet, one of London’s lost rivers. The word fleet derives from the Old English fleot, which has several meanings, one of which is stream.

The Fleet ran in the open from Hampstead down through London to join the Thames. Fleet Street was originally called Fleet Bridge Street, since the road was bisected by the Fleet. By the 1870s the whole course of the Fleet was covered over.

Fleet Street runs up Ludgate Hill past St. Paul’s Cathedral. There are many interesting stories about St. Paul’s, and its destruction in the Great Fire and subsequent rebuilding. Many people have read Samuel Pepys accounts of the fire, and very informative they are too. However if you’re interested you should also have a look at John Evelyn’s diary too. I like the story that Christopher Wren visited the burnt out shell of the old cathedral and found a broken stone with the word ‘resurgam’ which of course means I will rise again.

Fleet Street was also the home of the (probably) fictional Sweeney Todd, the barber who killed his customers and had them baked into pies. I say probably fictional. There have been some claims he was a real person, but there’s been nothing I’ve ever seen that would stand up in a court of law.

In the 19^th and especially the 20^th centuries Fleet Street became synonymous with the newspaper industry and was home to most of Britain’s national newspapers. They’ve all moved out to pastures new now. Although the newspapers have gone, some printers still remain, maintaining an association with Fleet Street that goes back to 1500, when Wynkyn de Worde, the apprentice of England’s first ever printer, William Caxton, first set up his press here. 

Monopoly 17 - Strand

Many good things have come out of Germany, not the least of which is the original English language. Not surprising when you consider that the tribes settling in England in the fifth -7^th centuries, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were all from areas hat are now part of Germany. The language they spoke – which we’ll call Old English for convenience sake - was actually a dialect of Old German. If you know modern German, you’ll know that 'strand' is a word which means beach. This is also what it meant in Old English. After the Roman legions were recalled to Rome for good, Londinium (Roman London) was pretty much deserted. Over a period of time an Anglo Saxon trading settlement grew along the banks of the River Thames, extending along the shoreline – beach – of the Thames  from west of Londinium. His settlement was called Lundenwic.

In Anglo – Saxon times the River Thames was wider then it is now. The Strand is not very close to the northern bank of the Thames at all now, but this is a relatively recent development. At Lundenwic’s height, the road we call the Strand was right by the shore, hence the name.

King Alfred the Great, in the late 9^th century, ordered people out of Lundenwic and into the old Londinium. However the Strand remained an important thoroughfare, and retained its name unchanged for well over a thousand years.

The Strand is part of the main route linking Westminster with the old City of London. It ends where the medieval City walls once stood. This was marked by the gateway shown in the sketch, Temple Bar. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the relatively narrow gateways caused increasing traffic congestion and so it was carefully taken down. It was bought by Lady Meux, the wife of a brewing magnate, and erected in the grounds of their house, Theobalds Park. In fact I visited it in Theobald’s Park in 2003 on the day before work began to deconstruct it and rebuild it in the shadow of St. Paul’s, just off our next property, Fleet Street.

Monopoly 16 Free Parking

In the centre of London, which contains almost all of the properties on the London Monopoly board, there really is no such thing as free parking. The first multi-storey car park in London opened in 1901. It had space for 100 vehicles. I’d love to know how many motor vehicles there actually were in London in 1901. My sketch shows what is thought to be the oldest surviving multi-storey car park building in London. It stands in Wardour Street, which runs from Leicester Square to Oxford Street. It’s now a pub.

Free Parking as a square on the Monopoly Board was inherited from the original Atlantic City board. It’s hard to imagine that Victor Watson would have found many free places to park when he was scouting locations in the mid 1930s. But then Victor, clever boy, took the train into Kings Cross on his visit, and could afford to use taxis.

I can’t afford to use taxis. To be honest, after I moved to Wales, whenever I was visiting London in the 1990’s it was so much cheaper to drive that I would always park the car in a residential street in Ealing, then use public transport until it was time to go back home.

Monopoly Fifteen: Vine Street

 

Unlike Bow Street and (Great) Marlborough Street, Vine Street wasn’t home to a magistrates court. However it was at one time home to one of the busiest police stations not just in London, but the whole world.

Vine Street itself was named after a pub, the Vine. Its possible that the pub may have drawn its name from a roman vineyard nearby, but this is a matter of speculation. The street was laid out in the 1680s. It was originally longer than it is now, but when Regent Street was built it bisected Vine Street and led to one end of Vine Street becoming a dead end.

Vine Street Police station was built at number 10, and had to be rebuilt after a fire in the 18^th century. Vine Street nick, as it was colloquially known, closed in 1940 and services removed to West London Police station in Savile Row. Due to a rise in crime the station was reopened in 1966, then closed for good in 1997 and demolished in 2005. Incidentally Vine Street is one of the London Monopoly streets without licensed premises, so I’m informed that the etiquette for a London Monopoly board pub crawl is to take a drink in one of the hostelries on nearby Swallow Street.

Monopoly 14: Marlborough Street

 

As a quiz question master I have in the past asked the question – which street on the traditional London monopoly board does not actually exist in real life? – the answer to which is Marlborough Street. This is because it has never been called just Marlborough Street, but rather Great Marlborough Street. A bit of a trick question, but trust me, quizzes are full of those.

The street is named after John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, and in the view of Queen Anne, he was pretty great. It was first laid out in 1704, during her reign. Like Bow Street, Great Marlborough Street was home to one of the most important Magistrates’ Courts in London. This closed in 1998.

One of the most remarkable things about the street is that it gave its name to the Marlboro cigarette brand. Makers Philip Morris had a factory on the street at one time, and used an americanised version of the name for a cigarette brand that consciously plays on the image of the rugged, wild western Marlboro Man.

Monopoly 13: Bow Street

The naming of the street is a little confusing because it’s in the centre of London, and not really near the area of Bow at all. Bow street is actually very close to Covent Garden, the former fruit and veg. market, which is now London’s unofficial capital of street entertainment. Both the side entrance to the market and the Royal Opera House can be seen on the left hand side of his picture.

Prior to being included amongst the orange set of properties on the London monopoly board, Bow Street was possibly most famous for being the home of the Bow Street Runners. This was a forerunner of the first police forces, a group of volunteer law enforcement officers founded by the London magistrate and novelist Henry Fielding. They were disbanded soon after the formation of the Metropolitan Police force. All of the properties in the London orange set have connections with the law and law enforcement. Courts were held in the homes of city magistrates on Bow Street – including Henry Fielding – and between 1878 and 1881 the current building which house the Magistrates Court – one of the most famous in England – and Bow Street Police Station was built. The Police Station closed in 1992 and the last case was heard in the court in 2006. The building still stands, but since 2021 the building has housed a hotel – how appropriate! – and a museum of local police History.

Coloured Fineliners

 This time last week my wife Mary bought me a pack of Staedtler fineliners. Each has a 0.3mm nib. This is about as thick as I like to use as the main pen for a sketch. In fact it's thicker than I would normally choose to use in my current and previous sketchbooks since they are a little more absorbent than others I've used in the past. For comparison you might compare the sketches of Pentonville Road, and Newgate Jail. Both were sketched with the same 0.01mm pen. The less absorbent paper on which I made the Newgate sketch resulted in a sharper image, I think. 

To come back to the coloured fineliners, I've used them for several Monopoly pictures this week. This wasn't the first sketch I used them for, but let's look at the picture of Bankside Tate Modern.

Okay, it does highlight an issue that I tend to have with colour. I'm not as good or as confident at using colour as I am at making monochrome sketches. But the colours have scanned rather well. Now compare it with this:-

Monochrome. What colour would you say that it is? To me, it looks black or grey. There's just a few railings in the bottom right hand of the picture which look brown. Well, it is what it is. Still, for me it means that it's a shame but I'm not going to be able to get a sepia tone with this pen.

The first sketch I made using one of these pens was Kings Cross.

If you look at the Bankside picture you'll see that I used dark blue and light blue pens on that one. This - obviously - is the dark blue. This is quite nice. I've made monochrome watercolour pictures before and tend to use dark blue, so I knew I could get decent results with it

In the pack we have light blue, dark blue, light green, dark green, orange, pink, purple, red, brown and black. To the best of my knowledge I've only ever sketched with black, blue, brown and red. So I was tempted to see just how sketches in other colours might turn out. Here's Northumberland Avenue in dark green- 

You know, I really like sketching in this colour and the consensus of opinion amongst my nearest and dearest who've see my recent sketches is that it's the best colour after black to use for monochrome sketches.

What colour would you say that this is?

Darker dark blue, perhaps? It's a decent shout, but no cigar this time, I'm afraid. No, this is actually purple. Again, I do rather like it, although the family thinks it looks like biro which is running out. 

This morning I completed this red sketch -

You can see on this sketch even more than the King's Cross sketch one of the drawbacks of using anything lighter than the darkest colours - they make dark blocks of colour look just too light, almost shiny, which I guess is part of the scanning process. 

Monopoly 12: Marylebone Station

 

Marylebone Station was the last of the London Railway termini to be built. In many ways it is the poor relation amongst them, having nothing like the grandeur of Kings Cross, St. Pancras, Paddington and the original Euston to name but a few but nevertheless I do have a wee bit of a soft spot for it.  One reason is because its the station the Beatles are chased through in their first and best film, A Hard Day’s Night. Another reason is that it was a project pushed through by one of my favourite crusty old Victorian/Edwardian curmudgeons, Sir Edward Watkins.

Sir Edward was chairman of several railways, most notably the Metropolitan Railway, the world’s first Underground railway. Watkin did not like the fact that another of his railways, the Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, had no line into London, and thus lost valuable traffic to the Great Northern from King’s Cross. He eventually obtained permission to extend the MSLR – now called the Great Central Railway – into London, at Marylebone. The station opened to traffic in 1898. The Great Central Railway became part of the London North Eastern Railway in the 1923 rationalisation of most of the railways in Britain into four large companies – the London Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS), the Great Western Railway (GWR), the Southern Railway and the LNER. Which is why Marylebone was chosen by Vic and Marjorie for a Monopoly Station – all four they chose were LNER termini.

By the 1980s Marylebone was a serious candidate for closure. This was due to its quietness compared with other large London stations. This is what has made it so popular with film makers over the last few decades – Marylebone has probably been a named or unnamed location for filming than any other mainline station in London.

Coming back to the great curmudgeon Edward Watkin, he delayed the building of London’s Circle Line, which would link the Metropolitan with the District Railway. He made Londoners wait for a good couple of decades just because he didn’t like the chairman of the Metropolitan District Railway – James StaatsForbes. This despite the fact that it would have increased revenue for both railways.

He's probably best remembered for attempting to build London’s answer to the Eiffel Tower on the site where Wembley Stadium now stands. The Tower only reached its first stage before it was found that changes to the original design meant that the legs were unstable. Work was stopped for good shortly before Watkins’ death in 1901 and the whole thing was dynamited and demolished by 1907. Aerial photographs of the building of the original Wembley Stadium in the 1920s clearly show where one of the footings had been on the area where the pitch was laid.

Monopoly 11) Northumberland Avenue

Northumberland Avenue is a relatively short thoroughfare which links Trafalgar Square with the Embankment. It’s one of the youngest streets on the London Monopoly board. Pall Mall was laid out in the 1660s, and Whitehall was laid out following the burning down of Whitehall Palace right at the end of the 17^th century. Northumberland Avenue was built between 1874 and 1876. It was built on the site of the former Northumberland House, the London home of the Percy family, the Dukes of Northumberland.

It's always struck me as a continental style Avenue whenever I’ve had cause to frequent it. Partly this is because although it’s short, it’s also very wide. This was a method the developers used to get around local building and planning regulations that stipulated that hotels must not be built taller than the width of the road they were on. Notable amongst these was the Hotel Metropole, which still exists, but under another name. Prince Albert Edward, the future King Edward VII was very fond of it. The building is notable for its striking wedge shape.

Another interesting building is a preserved cabmen’s shelter. Laws in London in the 19^th century stipulated that horse-drawn cab rivers could not leave their cab while it was on a cab stand. The cab shelter fund – which still exists to maintain the shelters - was established to build shelters for cabmen so that they could get a hot meal without risking their cabs being stolen, and that they had less of a risk of freezing to death in the depths of winter. At one time these distinctive little green buildings were a fairly common sight in London. There were more than 60 of them. I remember one in Ealing Broadway when I was growing up in the 70s. That’s gone, although it has been replaced by a new structure which is obviously inspired by the cabmen’s shelter. There are only 13 remaining now, but each one is a listed building. 

Monopoly 10) Whitehall

 

Whitehall is a thoroughfare connecting Trafalgar Square to the Houses of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster and to Westminster Bridge. The thoroughfare passes through some of the area formerly occupied by the royal palace of Whitehall, hence the name, and was the monarch’s principal residence within what we now think of as London from the reign of Henry VIII until it burned down in 1698. It was called the White Hall because of he stone from which it was originally built.

Nowadays Whitehall is a term which doesn’t just apply to the Street. Whitehall Palace was the centre of Government administration from Henry VIII’s time, and this continued even after the Palace burned down since many Government ministry headquarters were sited along Whitehall, and some still are. So the word Whitehall can also refer to government policy and to the Civil Service, who administer it.

Coming back to the thoroughfare, there’s lots of notable things associated with it as well as the Ministry buildings. Whitehall is where the Cenotaph stands, and the Remembrance Day Ceremony takes place. The entrance to Horseguards Parade is always flanked by ceremonially dressed members of the Household Cavalry. Dowing Street, home of the UK Prime Minister, can be accessed from Whitehall, but only if you have a pass. Just off Whitehall, linking it with Northumberland Avenue, is a street called Great Scotland Yard, where the original headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Force were located. Whitehall itself is punctuated with half a dozen statues and memorials, most of which commemorate figures from the history of the British Armed Forces.

Monopoly 9) The Electric Company

I was tempted to use a picture I sketched of Battersea Power Station a few years ago for the Electric Company. But Bankside is closer to the centre of London, and has a more remarkable story. Before the 21st century, London's Bankside Power Station was the kind of building that Londoners either tried to ignore, or to pretend that it wasn't there. Directly across the Rover Thames from St. Paul's Cathedral, and just a stone's throw from where Shakespeare's Globe Theatre once stood, the Bankside Power Station provided electricity for London from 1891 until 1981, although the current (should you pardon the pun) building only dates back to 1947. Decommissioned in 1981 the future of the building looked very much in doubt until, in 1994 London's Tate Gallery announced that the building would become the permanent home of the Tate Modern Art Gallery. The Tate Modern opened in 2000, and is now one of the most visited buildings in the whole of the UK.

The Tate Modern is one of the largest and most important collections of Modern and Contemporary Art in the world. I have visited it once, but I'm afraid that my visit only served to confirm what I have always suspected - that when you get right down  to it I'm a bit of a philistine. Particularly when it comes to abstract art, while I can appreciate skill, and occasionally respond emotionally, when you get right down to it I don't really get it. I'm willing to accept that this is down to my own aesthetic deficiencies. It still doesn't change the fact that I don't get a lot of it though.

I thought I'd use a variety of different coloured fineliners and see what sort of effect I could get with them. 

King's Cross Station

 A couple of days ago Mary bought me a packet of 12 Staedtler 0.3mm fineliners, all different colours. I was itching for a chance to try them out. So it struck me. I have completed the first side of the London Monopoly board, from Go all the way to Jail (Just Visiting). Of the seven eligible squares I've drawn new sketches for five of them - Old Kent Road, Whitechapel Road, Angel Islington, Pentonville Road and Jail. Which means I'd used old sketches for Kings Cross Station and Euston. Now, this is perfectly allowable in the rules I've set myself for the challenge. It doesn't stipulate that the old pictures I use have to be any good. Still, while I'm quite happy with the Euston Arch sketch, I'm not happy with the Kings Cross sketches. The interior one is quite nice, the steam locomotive is well drawn and shaded. . . but it's only the interior of the station and not instantly recognisable as Kings Cross. The exterior one is little more than a basic line drawing. So yesterday evening I took out the coloured pens and got cracking. 

I made this one on a cheaper, smoother paper than the Seawhite of Brighton sketchbook I've used for most of the other Monopoly drawings. The paper in this cheaper book is smoother and less absorbent than the Seawhite book, which made me more confident using a 0.3mm nib. Here's the result:-

It's not too bad and I think it sits better alongside the other Monopoly sketches than my earlier drawings of the station. I think. The horse drawn tram on the far right gives us just a little help with dating, although not necessarily as much as you might think. The first horse drawn tram in London was as early as 1861 while the very last horse drawn tram in London ceased in 1915. Like a lot of reference photos I've used in these Monopoly drawings and in other sketches of London, I would date this between the last decade of the 19th century and the first of the 20th.

One of the interesting idiosyncracies of he London Monopoly board is the choice of stations. Kings Cross makes sense and you can also make out a case for Liverpool Street. But Marylebone? And Fenchurch Street ?!? Surely Paddington, Euston and Victoria (or Waterloo) all had a greater claim. Well, our Vic Watson was from Leeds. And at the time of his fact finding mission, Leeds was on the London North Eastern Railway (LNER for short). So it seems that Vic just picked the four LNER termini in London at that time. 

Monopoly Square 8) Pall Mall

 

Aren’t word derivations fascinating? If your answer is no then you might want to skip the next few paragraphs.

Our 8^th stop on the London Monopoly Board is Pall Mall. The three properties in this pink set are linked by being thoroughfares radiating from Trafalgar Square. Whitehall is a major thoroughfare, Pall Mall and Northumberland Avenue, less so.

Pall Mall takes its name from the Italian game pallamaglio. The game was in some ways similar to croquet, because it involved hitting balls with mallets. The literal translation on the Italian is ball-mallet, and it’s clear to see how the Italian mutated into pall mall, the English name of the game. Charles II was fond of the game, which was played on a long, narrow rink, and so he had Pall Mall layed out so that he could stroll over from the nearby Palace of Whitehall for a leisurely game. Samuel Pepys mentions it in his diary, where he calls the game pell-mell. Nowadays to do something pell-mell means in a rushed and disorderly fashion. Sounds like the game would have been more unruly than croquet.

Pall Mall eventually developed with commercial properties a Gentlemen’s clubs. The name Mall thus became applied to many long, straight roads containing shops and commercial premises. From there, it’s only a small hop to applying the name to a building containing shops and outlets.

I used to think that Pall Mall and The Mall were the same place. No. The Mall is the long, wide road leading from Trafalgar Square to Buckingham Palace and the idea of developing the road with buildings or hotels is pretty unthinkable. Maybe the fact that Pall Mall was home to some of London’s most famous and exclusive Gentlemen’s Clubs appealed to Victor Watson. Then again, maybe he was influenced by the fact that Pall Mall was, and is, the name of a well known brand of cigarette. It’s surprising how many properties on a London Monopoly Board are or have also been the names of cigarette brand. Off the top of my head, Pall Mall, Strand, Piccadilly, Bond Street, Park Lane and Mayfair have all been cigarette brands at one time or another. Not to mention Marlboro. Yes, Marlboro, a cigareetebrand which could not be more American if it tried, was actually named after Great Marlborough Street, where the Philip Morris company had its cigarette factory!

Monopoly Square 7: Jail

So, is jail a property, then? No, of course not. You can’t buy it, can you? Still, it’s a specific square, and one which it is possible to draw. How? Well, London has never been short of prisons. Off the top of my head there were/are the Clink Prison (from which the slang term, being in the clink comes) the Fleet Prison, the Marshalsea Prison, the King’s Bench Prison, the Millbank Penitentiary,  Pentonville Prison, Holloway Prison, Brixton Prison, Wormwood Scrubs Prison and not to mention the Tower of London. But I wanted to sketch possibly the most notorious of all London’s prisons, Newgate.

Newgate prison was established by King Henry 2^nd in 1188. It came to take over part of the original Newgate, a ceremonial fortified gateway leading into the City of London. Amazingly Newgate Jail was still operating right at the start of the 20^th century, though it closed in 1902 and was demolished a year later.

Charles Dickens had a thing about prisons. It’s not surprising when you consider that his father John Dickens was imprisoned in the Marshalsea for a period during Dickens’ childhood. The Marshalsea is the backdrop to “Little Dorrit” and other novels he wrote feature episodes in the Fleet Prison and also the Kings Bench Prison. However Newgate recurs throughout his writing quiz, from an early article in “Sketches by Boz” through “Oliver Twist”, right up to “Great Expectations”, arguably his greatest work. His first historical novel “Barnaby Rudge” concerned the Gordon Riots, during which Newgate was attacked and partially destroyed.

Waddingtons (sensibly in my opinion) decided to change as little as possible about the original board, and did very little other than replacing the names on the properties with London locations and the dollar prices with sterling. Free parking used an American jalopy, while the policeman ordering the unlucky player to go to jail looks about as British as the Stars and Stripes or the Statue of Liberty. This is probably why Jail (just visiting) ad Go To Jail are spelled thusly rather than the more traditionally British word Gaol. Some experts believe that Monopoly certainly helped Jail become far more commonly used in the UK.

 

Monopoly Property 6 Pentonville Road

On the London Monopoly Board there are two sets of properties, the Browns – Old Kent Road and Whitechapel and the Blues – Angel, Islington – Euston Road and Pentonville Road. Pentonville Road is the most lucrative property on this first side of the boar. It was laid out in the 1750’s as part of the New Road, when the area it passed through was mainly fields and farms. It became the Pentonville Road in the 1830s after landowner Henry Penton developed the area, which was named Pentonville after him. Pentonville Road links Kings Cross with the Angel.

Monopoly Property Five: Euston Road

 Even today you're not short of significant buildings to draw along Euston Road. It starts at Kings Cross. The name refers to an equestrian statue of George IV erected as a memorial on his death in 1830. So popular was George as a monarch that the statue was removed in 1845, unmourned and unmissed.

As I say, even today there's a lot to choose from - the Grand Midland Hotel above St. Pancras Station, the British Library and Euston Station. I've opted to use something from the back catalogue - as is my prerogative - and so we have my drawing of the Doric Arch outside Euston Station from 1837 - 1961. As I wrote when I first posted this sketch -

The first threat to the arch came in the late 1930s when a radical plan to rebuild the station was drawn up, which would have involved moving the arch at the very least. The second world war put paid to this, however it only turned out to be a stay of execution. Despite the fact that both station and arch were grade II listed, the plan for the current station were put forward in about 1960, and nobody in officialdom showed any appetite whatsoever for moving the arch to a new home. The London County Council balked at the cost, and Transport Minister Ernie Marples said all options for not demolishing the arch had been carefully examined and rejected. This was the same Ernie Marples whose company built motorways – not that he was at all biased, you understand. Pleas from great men such as Sir John Betjeman to be given time to raise the money to meet the cost of removing the arch and storing it until such time as a new home could be found for it were ignored.

Contrary to how it might seem from what I’ve just written, I do appreciate that you cannot keep things just because they have been there a long time. Otherwise we’d all be living in Bronze Age roundhouses.  But I do think that there was a very strong case for keeping the Euston Arch and I point my finger at those who made the decision and rushed to demolition, and am happy to say that you have let down the people you were working for and sold all our birthright for a mess of concrete.

Monopoly Sketch four - Angel, Islington

 London Monopoly Board four - Angel, Islington. The property takes its name from an inn - first documented in 1614, called the Angel. The property originally belonged to Clerkenwell Priory. The inn was rebuilt several times. The picture shows the penultimate incarnation, the Angel Hotel. This was demolished in 1902/3 and the current building was put up in its place. This too was called the Angel Hotel, but only until 1921 when it became a Lyons Corner House restaurant. The area still retained the name The Angel, though, and the nearest Underground Railway Station is still called Angel. Waddingtons' Victor Watson, who had acquired the rights to Monopoly for the UK apparently took a weekend in London with his secretary to scout out the locations for the UK licensed board. He was not very familiar with London, nor supposedly a great lover of the city, which accounts for what can sometimes appear to be a rather eccentric choice of properties. My Ealing contemporary Tim Moore - one of my favourite writers - describes this in detail in his wonderful book "Do Not Pass Go". Victor ad his secretary supposedly included the Angel Islington because they took afternoon tea in the Lyon's Corner House and enjoyed a very decent cup of Rosie there.

Monopoly Property 3- King's Cross Station

 

Okay, so you remember I set myself some rules for the challenge? One of them is that I have allowed myself to use pictures from my back catalogue. 6 years ago I made this sketch of one of the platforms at Kings Cross ad a steam locomotive. I have sketched Kings Cross before -

but somehow I have not yet made a good, detailed sketch of the exterior. That's a project for the future. King's Cross is not the oldest Mainline railway terminus in London - Euston just ow the road is several years older. It's not the most visually striking - the Grand Midland Hotel which is part of the St. Pancras building right next door steals the attention away from its neighbour. But Kings Cross is a remarkable building. In some ways it's hard to believe that it dates back to 1852. The relative simplicity of the facade, the lack of ornamentation seem to belong to the 1920s or 30s. Having said that the Italianate clocktower between the two huge arched windows does humanise the building a little, and reminds me of a similar feature on Queen Victoria's Osborne House.

Of course, Kings Cross has a permanent place in popular culture, being the station from which the Hogwarts Express departs in the Harry Potter novels from platform 9 3/4 - although in the films you see the exterior of Kings Cross, but the interiors were actually filmed in Marylebone!