My eye was caught by a recent Motorway Services Online tweet referring to Kelly’s Kitchen, as I’d idly wondered how Kelly’s Kitchen roundabout, on the southern edge of MK had come by its name.
Kelly’s Kitchen was evidently a short-lived chain of roadside eateries, I assume along the lines of the Happy Eater and the Little Chef. The logo was evidently this cheery-looking lady. I’ve no memory of them, though that’s probably not surprising as it doesn’t sound as though they existed for very long. It sounds from the Motorway Services online article as though they were created as a rival to Little Chef, albeit not a very successful one as they were rapidly taken over and became LCs.
I had a look at Google Maps to see where this restaurant would have been. It was on the 'island' formed by the old alignment of the A5 (Watling Street), which goes through Fenny Stratford, and the newer dual carriageway, which bypasses it.
Kelly's Kitchen roundabout; black line shows alignment of old A5
As of today, Street View is still showing the boarded-up former Little Chef (and even more former Kelly's Kitchen) building, which was apparently closed and demolished in 2012 (according to this, it stopped being a Kelly's Kitchen in 1991). In reality, the building has now gone and there's a double-decker McDonalds on the site.
Disused tube stations, eh? Who doesn’t love those. And disused railways, roads etc. Luckily Ray does too, so in early June we had a day in London checking out former tube station buildings. There are evidently all manner of below ground disused bits, but you have to go on special tours to see those, organized by the London Transport Museum’s ‘Hidden London’ programme.
We’d both watched a number of YouTube videos on the topic of old tube stations, in particular two engaging short films by Geoff Marshall (Part 1 below).
We got round five former stations over the course of the day, with stops/travelling in between.
1. Marlborough Road
In St John's Wood, on the junction of Finchley Road and Queen's Grove. We started the day with a second breakfast at Bill’s on Baker Street, and then walked north-west past Regents' Park and Lord's to locate this building. This station was closed in 1939 following the construction of some new deep-level then-Bakerloo (now Jubilee) Line tunnels and subsequent re-routing of trains through them. This page has a photo of the station when it was in use as a passenger station, and in its later incarnation as a Chinese restaurant. According to the Wikipedia entry, it now houses some sort of substation; Geoff Marshall's video also notes that it's used as an emergency escape route from the Underground (as many of these old buildings seem to be).
2. Hyde Park Corner
HPC tube station does obviously still exist, but it no longer has any above-ground buildings. The building went out of use in the early 1930s when a sub-surface ticket hall was built. It's now part of the Wellesley Hotel. Apparently, there's an emergency stairway inside that connects to the platforms. Difficult to find a photo of the old station building in use, but someone has posted on Flickr a still from a 1930 film showing it.
The building, like a number of tube stations, was designed by architect Leslie Green. The 'ox-blood' red tiles are characteristic of Green's stations.
4. Down Street
Down another side street, this one off Piccadilly. Closed in 1932. Apparently used as a bunker by Churchill and his War Cabinet during WWII.
5. York Road
This one's behind King's Cross, so a bit of a journey from the previous three. Before visiting it, we had a delicious lunch in Kimchee, part of the posh new development there.
Amazing what you don't notice. I must have walked past this building before, but clearly never clocked that it was a former station. This one closed in 1932. Its re-opening seems to have been discussed as part of the King's Cross Central project, but it's hard to imagine that this is likely in reality.
All five of the stations we visited - or station building, in the case of Hyde Park Corner - were closed in the 1930s, so there was evidently some sort of programme of changes that went on then.
The day we went was a particularly fine day – in fact so warm that I tried out my first ever iced latte.
