I sometimes use St James’s Park station as a cross country route to my club. Incidentally there is grim news in Clubland. The new business rates will see clubs facing rates rising by as much as 400% and my club is reluctantly phasing in higher subscriptions.
Inevitably some members will resign although fortunately there is a healthy waiting list. When I joined fourteen years ago the subscription was about £1,000, by the time I have been a member for twenty years I expect it to have reached £2,000. Anyway, I mustn’t complain – I’m privileged to have the use of such an elegant clubhouse with attentive and friendly club servants and so on.
St James’s Park station is part of an iconic, art deco, Grade I listed, late 1920s office block built as the headquarters of the UERL – that’s the Underground Electric Railways Company of London. Would I have called it iconic even twenty years ago? I think I would have been calling for the wreckers’ ball. Now, seeing the horrible new blocks in the canyon that Victoria Street has become, I admire it as a period piece – although it needs a good clean.
There are a pair of sculptures by Jacob Epstein that are easily visible from ground level.
They are called Day and Night though which is which? I think Night is the top picture, cradling a sleeping form. Higher up are representations of the four winds by various sculptors including Henry Moore (west wind) and Eric Gill (north wind).
Now to get back to a favourite theme alluded to in Blythe Spirit recently. Planning permission was granted in 2015 to convert 55 Broadway into high-end flats. Transport for London (TfL) whose Head Office it now is would move out to new offices in the Olympic Park. Well, that planning permission expires in June this year and TfL are still in situ. There is a glut of new flats in London and plugs sensibly are being pulled on new projects so Number 55 won’t get the scrub-up it needs for a while.
