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Authors: Christian Wolmar
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little custom. While, in the first six months, 100,000 visited the park where the tower was the centrepiece, fewer than a fifth, barely 100 people per day, paid to climb up it. Most visitors to the site were more interested by the cycle track and the sports ground laid out around the tower or were content simply to view from the ground what soon became known as Watkin’s folly. By the time the park opened, Watkin, weakened by his stroke, was too ill to push the project forward and the tower was never completed, but its first stage survived for a decade before being demolished. The site was used after the First World War for the British Empire Exhibition and the internationally famous football stadium, which would have pleased Watkin as they both attracted considerable railway traffic.
Another boost to Underground use was the growing entertainment market. Theatres were booming and, more significantly in terms of numbers, music halls were springing up everywhere in London: by the early 1890s there were thirty-five, with total audiences of 45,000 nightly. Many of these, including the biggest, the Oxford Music Hall at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, were in central London, within easy reach of a railway or Underground station.
While leisure travellers were an important market, especially in certain key locations and particularly for the District, the financial health of the underground companies was dependent on development around the stations which they served. Although some historians refuse to give credit to the railways or the Underground for creating much of London, arguing that railways tended to follow, rather than stimulate, development, much evidence points the other way. The confusion results from the length of time it took for the whole process of development to unfold. Even once, after a few years, substantial numbers of houses had been built, they would not all be occupied by commuters. The suburbs would soon have a few shops and artisans to service the needs of those with jobs in central London and these roles would not require commuting. Moreover, for every commuter there would also be possibly half a dozen servants and family members whose lives centred around home. These basic facts, of course, were of no use to the chairmen of the railway companies, who would urge patience on their desperate shareholders by explaining that passenger numbers would eventually increase.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the change brought about by the railways was significant and, most important, long-term. These former villages would never be the same again and over the space of half a century, as they began to merge with one another, their independent origins would be quickly forgotten. Take, for example, West Kensington, a rural area where the arrival of the District line prompted building that was ‘rapidly carried on where speculative builders had money or credit; the tall houses, detached or semi-detached, or inclosed lines improperly called “terraces” which ultimately became the sides of streets, rose up in a few months, roofed and windowed, calling for tenants’. 3 It was, to a great extent, happenstance that dictated which markets such developers decided to go for. In West Kensington, the large houses were, according to the local builders Gibbs & Flew, provided with ‘hot and cold water … while the encaustic tiles, stained glass and marble fenders give them an attractive appearance’. Other areas, such as the squares near Ladbroke Grove station, never managed to attract the kind of people for which they were designed and sank rapidly into multiple occupation, becoming almost as bad as the nearby rookeries in north-west Kensington. It was only with the gentrification process which started nearly a hundred years later, in the 1970s, that these squares started to attract the class for which they had been built. Yet, a few hundred of yards away, at the Holland Park end of Ladbroke Grove,
Another boost to Underground use was the growing entertainment market. Theatres were booming and, more significantly in terms of numbers, music halls were springing up everywhere in London: by the early 1890s there were thirty-five, with total audiences of 45,000 nightly. Many of these, including the biggest, the Oxford Music Hall at the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, were in central London, within easy reach of a railway or Underground station.
While leisure travellers were an important market, especially in certain key locations and particularly for the District, the financial health of the underground companies was dependent on development around the stations which they served. Although some historians refuse to give credit to the railways or the Underground for creating much of London, arguing that railways tended to follow, rather than stimulate, development, much evidence points the other way. The confusion results from the length of time it took for the whole process of development to unfold. Even once, after a few years, substantial numbers of houses had been built, they would not all be occupied by commuters. The suburbs would soon have a few shops and artisans to service the needs of those with jobs in central London and these roles would not require commuting. Moreover, for every commuter there would also be possibly half a dozen servants and family members whose lives centred around home. These basic facts, of course, were of no use to the chairmen of the railway companies, who would urge patience on their desperate shareholders by explaining that passenger numbers would eventually increase.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the change brought about by the railways was significant and, most important, long-term. These former villages would never be the same again and over the space of half a century, as they began to merge with one another, their independent origins would be quickly forgotten. Take, for example, West Kensington, a rural area where the arrival of the District line prompted building that was ‘rapidly carried on where speculative builders had money or credit; the tall houses, detached or semi-detached, or inclosed lines improperly called “terraces” which ultimately became the sides of streets, rose up in a few months, roofed and windowed, calling for tenants’. 3 It was, to a great extent, happenstance that dictated which markets such developers decided to go for. In West Kensington, the large houses were, according to the local builders Gibbs & Flew, provided with ‘hot and cold water … while the encaustic tiles, stained glass and marble fenders give them an attractive appearance’. Other areas, such as the squares near Ladbroke Grove station, never managed to attract the kind of people for which they were designed and sank rapidly into multiple occupation, becoming almost as bad as the nearby rookeries in north-west Kensington. It was only with the gentrification process which started nearly a hundred years later, in the 1970s, that these squares started to attract the class for which they had been built. Yet, a few hundred of yards away, at the Holland Park end of Ladbroke Grove,
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