Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
CROSSRAIL
Near where Tottenham Court Road tube station used to be, there's now a very large hole
in the ground - just one of several prominent sites across London due to the £15 billion
Crossrail
project. Aimed at relieving congestion on the tube, Crossrail will provide a
super-fast method of crossing the city from east to west (and vice versa) by digging a
thirteen-mile long, deep-bore tunnel, reducing travel time between Paddington and
Liverpool Street stations to just ten minutes. The development around the new station at
Tottenham Court Road alone is going to cost around £1 billion, and the first trains are due
to run in 2018. If you want to learn more about the project, visit
W
crossrail.co.uk or head
for the
Visitor Centre
(Tues & Thurs noon-8pm) at 16-18 St Giles High St.
designed in the early 1960s by a team of bureaucrats in the Ministry of Works. The
city's tallest building until the NatWest Tower (now Tower 42) topped it in 1981, it's
still a prominent landmark north of the river. Sadly, after a bomb attack in 1971, the
tower closed to the public, and the revolving restaurant followed in 1980.
Fitzroy Square
Near the top of Fitzroy Street is
Fitzroy Square
, a Bloomsbury-style square begun by
the Adam brothers in the 1790s and faced, initially, with light Portland stone, rather
than the ubiquitous dark Georgian brickwork, but completed in stucco, some forty
years later. Tra
c is excluded, but few pedestrians come here either - except those
hobbling to the London Foot Hospital - yet it's a square rich in artistic and
revolutionary associations.
The painter
Ford Madox Brown
had fortnightly singsongs at no. 37 with his
Pre-Raphaelite chums, and guests such as Turgenev and Liszt.
Virginia Woolf
's blue
plaque is at no. 29 (a house previously lived in by George Bernard Shaw): her
Bloomsbury mates considered it a disreputable neighbourhood when she moved with
her brother in 1907 (after first checking with the police). In 1913, artist Roger Fry
set up his
Omega Workshops
at no. 33, padding the walls with seaweed to keep out
the noise. In the 1890s the square was home to the
International Anarchist School for
Children
, run by 60-year-old French anarchist Louise Michel. The police eventually
raided the building and closed down the school after finding bombs hidden in the
basement.
A revolutionary of more international fame - the Venezuelan adventurer
General
Francisco de Miranda
(1750-1816) - is commemorated with a statue at the eastern
corner of the London Foot Hospital, situated on the southern side of the square.
De Miranda lived nearby for a few years at 58 Grafton Way, and in 1810 he met
up in Fitzrovia with fellow revolutionary Simón Bolívar; de Miranda ended his days
in a Spanish prison, while Bolívar went on to liberate much of South America.
Tottenham Court Road
It's been centuries since there was a stately mansion - the original Tottenham Court -
at the northern end of
Tottenham Court Road
, which consistently makes a strong
challenge for London's least prepossessing, central shopping street. A rash of stores
flogging discount-priced electrical equipment pack out the southern end, while
furniture-makers - the street's original vendors - from Habitat and Heal's to cheap
sofa outlets, pepper its northern stretch.
