Conducting a survey of the sites of tollgates that once occupied London’s roads, with ideas of journeys and land access in mind and trying to better understand where the traveller had paid for access to the roads, he left to find tollgate sites. Visiting the edges of the city, he would document the gate, or its remains, or what is now in place of (or perhaps more interesting than) the gate.
Slipped into an A4 plastic document wallet was a reproduction of an 1801 map identifying the different areas of Turnpike Trusts, responsible for collecting the tolls and maintaining the roads. This was done using the funds collected from those passing through in exchange for the rest of their journey. This, along with his A-Z – newly bought and without dog-ears – would show him where to go. Also in the plastic document wallet were reproductions of nineteenth-century photographs showing the various functioning tollgates. These would be his reference points, held up and looked through, in an effort to match the view to the photograph.
Archway Road
Beginning in the North, he stood on the Archway Road, and, as planned, held the photograph at arms length and tried to line it up with his location, to slip effortlessly out of the real view and into that of the printed image. He found it difficult to understand the photographer’s location when the image was taken. The tollhouse – posed in front of for the photograph – having been absorbed into more recent developments, while the construction of the A1 (the Archway Road, which is much larger and faster than the original tolled road) would have meant the elimination of any physical remnants.
Changing the direction he faced, but still referring to the photograph, he noticed a circular green plaque just visible against the brick wall of the block of flats it had been screwed into. This Historic Site plaque claimed in neat white lettering that:
ARCHWAY TOLLGATE
STOOD
NEAR HERE
1813-1864
The vagueness of the direction “near here” was of little use. He looked around, but was unable to determine what ‘near here’ meant. In these developed urban surroundings, one could easily get lost looking for ‘near here’, and the open landscape of the photograph was proving difficult to place.
Almost out of sight at the back of the photograph he could see a bridge, or rather two bridges, one mounted on top of the other. The second bridge – the one doing the mounting – was made of multiple arches and more in line with a rail bridge or viaduct and no longer visible. But the other, a single arched bridge, was still in place. Having now turned from the plaque, he faced the same direction as the photographer and could better understand the image, able to begin placing the tollgate.
The remaining bridge was cast mostly in red, its decorative panels trimmed in gold, and the whole thing topped off with a piece of ornate ironmongery, giving it the feel of a stately home balcony. Fixed below a tall lamp, a plaque could be seen (this was quickly becoming a survey of plaques rather than landmarks) dated 1897. While examining the skeletal framework of the underside, and the small cornicing details below the iron-mongered balcony design, he realised (with the help of the A-Z) this it was the Hornsey Lane Bridge, better known as ‘the suicide bridge’.
Reminded of the responses in 2010 to three men in three weeks jumping from its top, he wondered what anti-suicide measures had since been put in place. On Southampton’s Itchen Bridge, and at Beachy Head, the Samaritans installed call boxes accompanied by signs reassuring their readers that YOU ARE NOT ALONE but, with nothing like this visible here, he imagined a small plaque with the vaguest information continuing the approach of the Historic Site plaque. Perhaps just IT’LL BE ALRIGHT.
Stratford Gate
On the most easterly point of the map that he had been keeping in a plastic document wallet and using to inform his journey, was the Stratford Gate. This gate had been the last, and the first, moment of contact that travellers had with London. Images of the Stratford Gate, in its latest state, had occupied the media as the main entrance and exit for the 2012 Olympic Games. He had had no real objection to the games; not even a real objection to them being held in the UK. His objections were towards the huge figures being spent; the billions of pounds spent on building the games, under the guise of legacy, of being useful after the event. He was cynical and unconvinced and not surprised, when, approaching the Olympic Park, he was met by a fenced off, tired-looking area that was clearly not being used for sports. The only access to the site was a small door, of the same material as the fence. It was unmanned and unlocked and left ajar but was by no means welcoming, and it was with some trepidation that he entered. His walk towards where the gate had been was far from the anthemic approaches he had seen on the television or in the newspapers.
Structurally, the Stratford Gate seemed to have been designed to be as geometric and garishly coloured as the Olympic logo. Exposed and accentuated, the framework of the supporting columns thrust downwards into the ground. Footage and photographs from 2012 had shown crowds of people weaving through the structure, which, like the tollgate that preceded it, allowed or denied access to the next area of land.
The stains left behind by the supporting legs of the Olympic gate, showed him where it had been. Now deconstructed and taken away, only four squares of tarmac – the patches used to repair the holes – signalled where the gate had stood. The greying-black of ageing tarmac was offset against the sand-coloured, compressed gravel.
He stood in the empty walkway, looking over the four black misshaped, accidentally commemorative squares of tarmac, and thought again of the legacy that was so readily spoken of by politicians and sportspeople. To visit the Olympic Park now, he thought, was to visit a building site – the crane masts seen speering out of the stadium and the majority of bodies clad in hi-visibility vests, not sportswear.
New Cross Gate
He chose to visit the original site of the tollgate in New Cross Gate. There had been two, but to visit the original, he felt, was truer to his project. On the Lewisham side of New Cross Gate station, Clifton Rise breaks off from New Cross Road and towards a collection of estates and aged newsagents. He had no photograph of its site but had located, through local archives, the site of the tollgate: between a newsagent and the New Cross House Inn. Now, absent of the gate, in its place a black monument stood crowning the top of the small hill-like and unmarked tomb. The anonymity of the monument made its existence odd, and was made more so by the chairs installed around its base. Each chair, angular in construction and unforgiving in texture, faced a different direction. Some angled more drastically askew and others subtly, almost in line, but no two chairs were together. If this was an initiative to encourage communal sitting, to create a place for conversations to begin, then it was a poor one. The design of the chairs felt artistic – perhaps a commission – and was somewhere between brutalism and space-age.
The inadequacies of this communal area were clear and he thought of how often communal areas in towns are emphasized by councils; the importance of socialising, of being able to sit and converse outdoors, ensuring that everyone has access to fresh air – a Victorian initiative – and sufficient levels of vitamin D. There was no argument that the collection of chairs gave access to the outdoors and whatever vitamin D was available but it was the emphasis on conversation that he failed to understand. In fact, he found it difficult to think of communal spaces that make a face-to-face conversation comfortable. The emphasis so rarely seems to be put on looking at the person you are speaking to. Trafalgar Square, one of, if not the, most used squares in London, has little seating and what it does have runs around the outskirts of the square, facing inward. This felt like the encouraged position in public seating; the classic park bench does not allow for face-to-face interaction. In Green Park, he had struggled to find any bench on which to sit and eat, leaving him stood semi-perched on a bollard, struggling to eat sushi in mid-air. Only picnic tables provided the face-to-face-lets-eat-a-picnic-in-comfort scenario that he wanted and they felt like the reserve of nature reserves and pub gardens.
He wondered whether, if he removed the emphasis on vitamin D, he would be able to think of a communal space encouraging of face-to-face conversation. Waiting rooms worked; the generally small rooms were filled with chairs and, kept in rows each chair generally faced another. These were places where people did not come for the conversation and seldom entered into one, in fear of asking a sensitive question. While the layout of the chairs may have made conversation easier, the design of them made sitting in them less so – it was the same across the waiting room board.
Airport departure lounges provided the face-to-face seating he desired but with the comfort of the waiting room chair (was there only one supplier of this type of seating?) and on mass scale. This provided a space for international conversations; the countless rows of chairs all facing each other and the mix of nationalities occupying them could lead to socialising on an international scale. All of this was very appealing. This had begun by thinking of communal spaces, spaces within communities where people can meet and it became interesting for him to think of airports in this way. Airports are without location; they sit between places as holding zones for travellers waiting to leave or to continue travelling. They are never the place travelled to; even the shopping benefits can only be enjoyed if moving on. But, despite their design to move people through and to remain location-less they provide almost utopic seating arrangements.
Kensington Palace Gardens
In the absence of any reference to, or any physical remains, trace, or mark of the tollgate, he stood at the point of contact between Palace Gate and Kensington Road, facing east and saw nothing. He lowered the photograph, showing an open, not yet developed Kensington – the only building in both the view and the photograph was 1-8 Hyde Park Gate – and returned it to the plastic document wallet that was now bearing the marks, the thumb prints and the crinkles and creases of travel.
He had hoped that the gatehouse visible in the photograph would still be there; it looked ramshackle and out of place, more like a shed than gatehouse, and with Kensington Palace in the background would have been uninspiring to those passing through. Its familiar construction was countered by the height of its chimney, which, being double the shed’s height, gave it the impression of a scale model of an industrial power station.
Turning to follow his route back, and not knowing the area – Kensington was not a place whose ins and outs were known to him, there were gated gardens for small communities to share but he knew little else – he noticed a gated road parallel to Kensington Palace. A central booth divided the cobbled road, while spiked-iron fencing, stood, supporting the red and white striped gate arm. A pedestrian entrance had been made to the side of the main gate and there was no sign of needing to pay to enter. In fact there was no signage at all, nothing to state the identity of the gate, or to what lay beyond; the only two signs visible told travellers that NO PHOTOGRAPHY was permitted.
Walking through the gate, unstopped, he felt a sense of relief. As he had passed the small gatehouse, he had begun to feel his heartbeat increase and palms perspire. Realising he wasn’t going to be prevented from passing, he calmed down, and began to walk casually. He did, however, feel watched.
This was unlike any street he had walked before, and felt less like a street and more a showroom for property. Each house varied in style and grandeur: some were large, some larger, and others larger still. Some were white with hints of cream, while others were built in old stone or redbrick. But each stood independent from its neighbours, and, although part of this private community, was very much of its own. Suspended from the occasional facade were national flags: Russian, Israeli, Slovakian, and Romanian each laying claim over the buildings. Despite the very English pomposity of the houses, they brought a sense of multiculturalism. Looking up, he noticed the varying turrets atop the buildings, ranging from European to Asian to Middle Eastern in design and patterning.
There was still the feeling of being watched and he began to wander why it had been so simple to pass through the gate. At what cost was he given entrance and access to this landscape? Looking upwards, at the turrets, he noticed that almost every other lamp post head had been replaced with a reflective domed camera. Even the gas lamp style streetlights looked rigged for something more than illumination.
His head lowered, he walked along, the entrance gate was no longer in sight and he was definitely in the area.
Now, his paranoia was worsening and he found it increasingly difficult to casually observe the landscape he was walking through. On a momentary glance upwards, he caught the eyes of two armed police officers stationed outside of the Israeli Embassy. With their eyes they followed him, even though they were busy dunking biscuits in tea and dribbling the milky-crumby mixture down their chins, machine guns hanging from their necks.
After that, everyone who passed seemed to be watching him, adults and children dressed alike in Barbour jackets and corduroy trousers of varying colours, weren’t just glancing at him, they were assessing him. His already long strides became longer until he was taking three paving slabs at a time, determined to reach the end in one stride if possible and give the land back to whoever wanted it.
Finally in sight, the end gate grew larger with every stride, now four and sometimes five paving slabs in length. Dripping in sweat and with neck ache from looking down, he almost missed the building to his left: the Slovakian Embassy, a large, square, dark grey concrete piece of Brutal architecture that had no place amongst the palatial designs of the houses before it. It’s fuck-off attitude hovered over the garden beneath, empty and suitably stark except for one item. Small and polite, a black and gold sign had been stood into the ground and very calmly read PLEASE KEEP OFF THE GRASS. He laughed at the ridiculousness of the scene and passed through the gate. It was theatre, the whole street.
This text appears in the forthcoming title Ends Meet published by Critical Writing in Art & Design at the Royal College of Art.