SUBTERRANEAN CRACKING THE CAPITAL

SUBTERRANEAN LONDON CRACKING THE CAPITAL

COMPILED BY BRADLEY L. GARRETT FOREWORD BY WILL SELF ILLUSTRATIONS BY STEPHEN WALTER

PRESTEL MUNICH • LONDON • NEW YORK

Dedicated to Matthew Power (1974–2014), a fellow explorer who had a way with words.

FOREWORD 8 INTRODUCTION 10 WATER 14 THREADS 38 TRANSPORT 64 SHELTER 108 FRESH BORE 13 8 FOREWORD

8 I like to go up and I like to go down long enough to be gripped by the else seems rather acceptable’: the as . I don’t have either the strange architecture of the sewer punitive class-cleansing currently physical courage or the devil-may- system: its ironwork festooned with being enacted in London’s so-called care brio of these place hackers, but a dense mucilage of old toilet paper, housing policy; the cannibalisation I’ve been wandering around London, its junctures echoic halls of coursing of the built environment by the off-piste, for many years now. As a bath- and dish-water. ingurgitation of speculative trans- child in the north London suburbs I national capital flows; the elevation used to follow the long conduit the The locations that these explorers of grand and useless projects such Mutton Brook took under the North sought out in the course of as the Olympics to the status of Circular Road. Leaping from one producing these entrancing images ‘sustainable’ shibboleths – all this chunk of masonry to the next islet of are often dangerous to reach. The rests on a bedrock of carefully willed rubbish, listening to the continuous obstacles are physical, psychic ignorance about what lies beneath. susurration of the traffic overhead, and most importantly political. The it was I who was transported. To contemporary city demands of In this book we are shown what be both in the city and yet outside us that we make obeisance to its we’re not meant to see, and for that of its established parameters is superficial character – that we don’t reason this text and its accompanying to experience a liberation from dig too deep. And the penalties for images have had to be wrested from workaday concerns that are, almost those who dare to enter the labyrinth the jaws of the state and its corporate always, shaped by wider economic can be severe. To use Debord’s allies by men and women who are, imperatives. Our movements around formulation: the Spectacle, while perforce, branded as irresponsible the city are prescribed for us: we fit not confined solely to the visual, abetters of precisely that shadowy in, either willingly or unconsciously, nonetheless requires a certain terrorism the Spectacle requires for with the great population flows as very restricted form of regard. To its own perpetuation. they flush through the tube system look under London is to catch the and the roadways. In our dreams Old Lady of Threadneedle Street Do not be deceived: read the book – we may all be anarchists, but in stepping out of her soiled underwear. open the . our actions, for the vast majority of the time, we’re the most rigid In his Comments on the Society WILL SELF of conformists. of the Spectacle (1984) Debord LONDON, 2014 wrote this: ‘This perfect democracy Will Self is a London-based journalist and the A few years ago a young fabricates its own inconceivable author of nine novels. His most recent book, anthropologist friend who had the enemy, terrorism. It wants, actually, Umbrella, was published in April 2013. right key took me down a manhole in to be judged by its enemies rather Brixton Water Lane and we walked than by its results. The history of for a mile or so through Bazalgette’s terrorism is written by the State and sewer system to Clapham North. it is thus instructive. The spectating This was, I thought, the true chthonic populations must certainly never underworld of London – its intense know everything about terrorism, odour of comingled detergent and but they must always know enough excrement a bizarrely appropriate to convince them that, compared crudescence of the city’s superficial with terrorism, everything else preoccupations: the denial of the seems rather acceptable, in any bodily, and the reduction of its case more rational and democratic.’ inhabitants to the status of soulless The inaccessibility of London’s economic units. I spent at most netherworld is a crucial component in an hour underground, but it was our being convinced that ‘everything

9 INTRODUCTION

10 This book is an assemblage of Board of Works, broke ground on underground. The goal of this book, of empty space on the map that led material from 12 photographers the current London sewer system, in that context, is not to ‘reconquer’ him, inexorably, to us. We could not infatuated with subterranean spaces. just a few years before the world’s these places or take them back from imagine a better partner to have on Over the course of five years, first underground railway began to those forces that seek to keep them this journey into the depths of the we infiltrated, by cover of night, be dug out between Paddington and hidden, but to make transparent dug world. Like us, Stephen is a underground layers of London, to King’s Cross. It was even further back the emotional qualities of the rogue archaeologist, excavating the capture the city’s hidden depths. underground that have caused such past, present and future of the most The tales of adventure and discovery a contested, riven and complicated vertical city on the planet on his own behind those explorations are the relationship to transpire. In short, we terms. Each of the five sections of this thing of London legend, stories so WHAT YOU NOW simply seek to add new elements book will open with a cross-section lavish, so multiple, that we felt only HOLD IS THE MOST to the mythological amalgam, yet drawing from Stephen, dredged imagery could render and relay the COMPREHENSIVE another blip in a long history of from our mutual admiration for the affective force of the experiences PHOTOGRAPHIC subterranean happenings. underground. appropriately. What you now hold is the outcome of those efforts: the ACCOUNT OF Today, if one were to take a large, most comprehensive photographic SUBTERRANEAN hot knife and slide it through London, TODAY, IF ONE account of subterranean London ever LONDON EVER insert thumbs, and slowly peel it apart produced – every single photo taken into two halves, it would become WERE TO TAKE PRODUCED – EVERY A LARGE, HOT without permission from anyone. SINGLE PHOTO clear that the city exceeds its horizontal expanse in profile. Below KNIFE AND SLIDE Fascination with the underground TAKEN WITHOUT us, hidden rivers and sewers, cable IT THROUGH has always been fraught with fear. PERMISSION FROM conduits, road and utility , train LONDON, INSERT Recalling iconography connected to ANYONE. tubes, deep shelters and government the River Styx, the Mayan Xibalba or citadels are hemmed in by disused, THUMBS, AND the underworld in Dante’s Inferno, dysfunctional and forgotten features. SLOWLY PEEL the subterranean imaginary has long Underneath this snarl, thousand- IT APART INTO been associated with malice, disease, in time when Marc Isambard Brunel, tonne -boring machines with TWO HALVES, IT poverty, sin and death. People a French-born engineer, developed names like ‘Phyllis’ and ‘Sophia’, WOULD BECOME worked through these subterranean the tunnelling shield to Brunel’s mutant offspring, are ripping anxieties in two characteristic ways – under the Thames, a technology that through forty-metre-deep bedrock, CLEAR THAT THE by either fleeing from them or facing would transform future excavations inches at a time. While we sought to CITY EXCEEDS them. Londoners, in classic colonial ineradicably. Victorians, in clear explore each of these layers in turn, ITS HORIZONTAL style, chose to stand their ground, admiration, toured newly constructed we found difficulty in trying to piece EXPANSE IN leading a 19th century secular sewers, viaducts, tunnels and together the scale of our spatial PROFILE. assault on the seemingly malevolent pumping stations, celebrating discoveries, to connect the shutter forces of through stanch industrial urban development with clicks outside the frame. Until we met confidence in the vanquishing power utopian goggles on. Since then, Stephen Walter. of industrial technology. Citizens countless subterranean spaces all of this city, as a result, have always over the world have been excavated Stephen is an obsessive The acts involved in collecting, had a particularly poignant – and using similar techniques. The cartographer who, in 2012, was thinking through and even publishing at times peculiar – fascination with sub-urban material infrastructures compelled to expel every memory he this collection have been equally underground spaces. upon which our lives above now had of London subterranea onto a liberating and harrowing. Painfully, rely – electricity, water, gas, waste two-metre-wide piece of parchment. there are also at least another six Fifteen decades have now passed and data – passed inevitably He then began an intensive period of people whose work is notably since Sir , chief from ubiquity to inaccessibility, a research about other underground absent. They chose not to contribute engineer of London’s Metropolitan process of remythologisation of the phenomena to pack into every inch for fear of the response of authorities,

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