CHAPTER 3: DURHAM, WESTMINSTER ABBEY & SOUTHWARK GOING DOWN THE TUBE 

From a county ruled by a bishop instead of the king or queen, our next cathedral was under the direct jurisdiction of the monarch as opposed to a bishop. Westminster Abbey is not really a cathedral or even an abbey for that matter: it is what is known as a royal peculiar, one of a number that still function in current or ex royal residences such as Windsor, St James' Palace and Windsor Castle, the difference being that Westminster is considered of equal rank with other English cathedrals. When A suggested a visit to London, he knew he was onto a winner. I simply adore the city: its history, its atmosphere, its culture, and particularly its underground railways. I fell in love with London as a child, making visits with my parents, waiting to hear tales from my mother and grandmother, a Londoner by birth, on their return from day trips on the train, discovering its importance in the story of our nation. I began reading books about its history, pouring over ancient maps, examining drawings and old photographs. Our day began with a drive down to Brent Cross where one used to be able to park a car in reasonable proximity to the Northern Line station and then we caught the tube to Westminster. Both of us had been around the abbey a few times but never together. As I had done many times before, I paused for some time as we passed through the western doorway, reflecting on the many monarchs who had stood on the very spot I now occupied, on the way to their coronations, to celebrate victories and achievements, and to mourn the passing of great men and women. Their names were the stuff of my history lessons: William the Conqueror, Richard the Lionheart and his brother King John, Richard III, Henry VIII and Charles II. It was only some years later that I discovered the royal entrance they would have used was actually the north door. 

If Newcastle's haul of memorials had put them temporarily on top of the leader board, then Westminster easily replaced them. The names of those remembered, and in many cases buried, here are a veritable Who's Who of British history. For a start there are the kings and queens. The Abbey began life as a Benedictine monastery in the 10th century on the small island of Thorney where the river Tyburn, long since banished underground, split as it entered the Thames. It was here that King Edward the Confessor, the penultimate Saxon king, decided to create an Abbey for royal burials and, with his wife Edith, became the first to be laid to rest there. The Norman invaders chose the building as their place of coronation and apart from Matilda, Jane and Edwards five and eight, every other monarch has been anointed and crowned there. When Henry III ascended the throne in 1216, he ordered the rebuilding of Westminster so that it was a fitting location for the shrine of Edward the Confessor, becoming its second royal burial when he departed this life. I lingered longer that A past the ancient tombs, recalling the significant acts of each monarch. In one side chapel are Henry VIII's daughters, Mary I and Elizabeth I, divided by religion in life, lying side by side in death. There is the magnificent Henry VII chapel, a later addition to house the first Tudor monarch's mortal remains, Innocents' corner with the urn I then believed held the bones of the Princes in the Tower and the tomb of Mary, Queen of Scots, moved by her son James I from Peterborough Cathedral where she was buried after her execution at Fotheringhay. 

In 1400, the Clerk of the King's Works was buried in the Abbey. His name was Geoffrey Chaucer and he also happened to be quite a famous writer. Two hundred years later, the poet Edmund Spencer requested that he be buried next to Chaucer and so began Poets' Corner, the area of the Abbey stuffed full of the giants of English literature. Here, lying next to each are Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens. Dickens actually wanted to be buried in Rochester Cathedral and a grave was dug for him there but never used. His service of commitment at Westminster was attended by family and a few friends but the following day and for many days to come, the Abbey was besieged by members of the public wishing to pay their respects to this literary genius. On the opposite side of the Abbey lie a host of musicians including Purcell and Handel. It was Oliver Cromwell who decided the Abbey would be a good place to bury people of national significance and the process began with Sir Isaac Newton. Charles Darwin and more recently Stephen Hawking joined Darwin along with eight prime minister. Cromwell didn't fare quite as well. When he died, his body was embalmed, covered in a shroud and encased in a lead coffin. He then lay in state at Somerset House for several days. Two months later, his highly decorated funeral pall was carried through the streets of London for burial. However, having been dead for such a long time, his body had begun to smell and whilst the people paid their respects as his cortège passed them, his body had already been interred in the Abbey two days previously. If that wasn't strange enough, what happened after the monarchy was restored with Charles II was the stuff of myths and legends. The new King, understandably bitter about the execution of his father, ordered those who'd signed his death warrant to be hung, drawn and quartered. Being dead didn't excuse you and Cromwell's body was extracted from its alcove in the Henry VII chapel and taken to the Red Lion in Holborn. Joined by two other dead regicides, his body was taken to Tyburn, near to where Marble Arch stands today, and hanged. Then his head was struck off and put on a twenty foot high pole at Westminster Hall as a warning to all traitors. During a particularly intense storm, the pole broke and Cromwell's skull tumbled to the ground where it was discovered by some enterprising individual and hidden away. It allegedly reappeared some twenty years later in a London museum, was later sold and then exhibited again. At one stage there were two skulls circulating, both claiming to have previously reste on the shoulders of the former Lord Protector. Finally, one of them was secretly reinterred at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge, an event that wasn't publicised until two years after it happened. 

After spending a considerable amount of time gazing at memorials, A and I made our way into the Edward the Confessor Chapel where we discovered a rather battered chair covered in graffiti. This was none other than the Coronation Chair, ordered by Edward I, the Hammer if the Scots, to house the Scottish coronation seat, the Stone of Scone, which he had appropriated and which we could clearly see under the seat of the chair. Its first recorded use in an English coronation was that of Henry IV in 1399 and it has been used in a further 37 coronations along with fourteen ceremonies to crown queen consorts. It was time for another period of reflection as I thought about all the royal backsides that had positioned themselves, no doubt on an elaborate cushion or two, on the seat. Even Cromwell used it in a quasi-coronation at Westminster Hall. The graffiti are the work of mischievous Westminster choirboys and visitors to the Abbey in the 18th and 19th centuries. One visitor had inscribed on the seat, "P. Abbott slept in this chair 5 - 6 July 1800." A corner of the chair was damaged in an explosion in 1914, thought to be the work of the suffragettes and the woodwork that once completely enclosed the Stone of Scone had come away over the years, exposing the treasured Scottish artifact to the viewing public at the time of our visit. The stone of Scone did make a short visit to Scotland when it was stolen by Scottish Nationalist on Christmas Day 1950 and recovered four months later. Today it is back in the 'auld country' for good.

We'd probably spent more time in Westminster Abbey than in any of our previous cathedrals but the day was still young and we had another cathedral to pull in before returning home. We crossed Parliament Square with its statues to British and World leaders and paused to look at Westminster Hall, part of the original Palace of Westminster and now incorporated into the Houses of Parliament. I'd taken a number of school parties around Parliament and on one occasion we climbed up what is now called the Elizabeth Tower but to many it is known simply as Big Ben. Big Ben is actually the name of the bell which, due to the acoustics at the top of the tower, can be heard throughout London. We arrived shortly before twelve noon and we were allowed to stand next to it when it struck with the proviso that we must remain absolutely silent. Our guide explained that at noon each day, the chimes are broadcast live around the globe on the BBC World Service. Apparently they used to do it every hour until one day a workman, carrying out repairs, hit his thumb with a hammer. His stream of verbal abuse unfortunately coincided with the period of silence that occurs between the ding dong ding dongs and the first bong. It caused a scandal and an immediate end to hourly broadcasts. Our tour also took us behind one of the famous clock faces. Now, every time News at Ten comes on, I inform Sue, "I've stood behind that clock face." I think she found it interesting, at least for the first thirty times. 
Crossing the road to go into Westminster underground station was like entering another world, one that had fascinated me since my very first ride on the London Underground as a child. I have tried to analyse what it is that makes underground railways such a personal fascination and I've come up with a number of contributing theories. First of all, I love railways - not the trains or rolling stock, it's the rails and where they go. Unlike road, water or air transport where there is a fair amount of latitude in the course vehicles can take within defined corridors, railways are confined to a strict network. That appeals to me. A train on the Jubilee Line can only be going to Stanmore or Stratford or stations in between. It can't suddenly take a left turn onto the Victoria Line or continue on a bit further up to Watford. Then there is the idea of a network that appeals on a mathematical and aesthetic level. A copy of James Beck's iconic London Underground map hangs in my dining room, ever evolving (not the one in my dining room I hasten to add), the inspiration for metro maps around the world and a whole range of artistic interpretations. Then there is the whole experience of travelling under the ground, enjoying a very different perspective of the capital as the train trundles along under the famous sights of London. There's even the smell on the platforms, the rush of air as a train approaches, the lights as it comes into view, the thunder as it rumbles past and stops. So here is another collection - a collection of underground railway experiences. I can't actually remember when travelling on different undergrounds became a thing. At age eighteen on a family holiday to Canada, I rode the Toronto subway and then three years later Sue and I travelled around for days on the Paris metro. It was then another 25 years before I experienced another system on holiday in Prague. In the interim, I had become somewhat of an expert on the history of London' underground, the very first in the world. 

During the heyday of railway construction, the lines entering London were restricted from building their termini in the city itself. The result was a daily logjam of pedestrians, horses and carts on London's roads as the thousands arriving in the metropolis by train tried to make their way to and from work in the city. Various solutions were proposed. A Mr. Shillibeer invented a horse drawn vehicle 'for all', the Latin for this phrase being 'autobus'. Unfortunately, the steep prices weren't for all, the seating was uncomfortable and the horse drawn vehicles resembled hearses. He went out of business, fled to France, returned and after a spell in debtors' prison revived his business, turning his hearse-like vehicles into, well hearses. Grand designs were proposed for various subterranean railways that would have been surrounded by early shopping malls but these either proved too costly or were in the wrong place. Eventually a scheme was approved whereby a railway was to be installed under the ground, running from a station near modern day Paddington to Farringdon Street in the city and stopping at three mainline termini en route. The railway was constructed using a technique known as cut and cover whereby a section of road would be closed off, a hole would be dug, the railway would be installed in the hole and then covered up with the road being restored on top. On the day it opened, about 30,000 passengers travelled through the smoke filled tunnels. The first train that day contained many dignitaries but not the ageing prime minster, Palmerstone. He declined an invite, pointing out that within a few years he would spending a considerable amount of time underground and had no wish to add to it. 

When Sue and I made a visit to Prague for a significant anniversary , we were unsure until the day before we left as to whether our trip would go ahead. There had been days of rainfall in Germany and the Czech Republic and the river Vltava flowing through Prague had burst its banks and caused widespread flooding. Fortunately, only a small area of the city was closed off and we found the shops near to the river, still without electrify and lit by candles, quite enchanting. One benefit of the floods for us was that all public transport was free so we spent our holiday jumping on and off trams and buses as we pleased. I remember at one point suggesting we travelled a couple of stops on their underground railway, not because we needed to but because I wanted to enjoy the experience. Maybe that's when the collection started.

After riding the Barcelona metro the following year, we holidayed in Moscow and St Petersburg. Their metro systems are the cathedrals of the underground world. Walking through the cavernous corridors of the Moscow Metro, past works of art, under shimmering chandeliers, one could image one was attending the opera or a gala ball in a ducal palace. Whilst Soviet workers carried out the construction and artwork, the engineering relied on the expertise of London Underground experts who aided the Soviet authorities for the first year of construction. The secret police were very uneasy about having foreign engineers in the city and kept arresting them for espionage until they put on a show trial and expelled them all. The network has expanded considerably since my visit making it now the busiest in Europe and the fifth longest in the world. I remember the metro map being very distinct with its equivalent of our Circle Line being drawn as a complete circle on a map otherwise made up of straight lines. All the names were written in Cyrillic script, requiring me to first work out what the station name sounded like and then try to locate a station resembling that sound on the map in Latin script that I'd bought back in England. Apart from the vicious entry barriers which could cut you in two if you didn't time it right, the abiding memory were the huge escalators descending into the bowels of the earth and the old Russian women or babushkas who sat in little booths at the bottom of each one, doing very little as far as I could see. Maybe it was a way of employing vast numbers of elderly ladies. The job didn't appear to be either particularly demanding or rewarding: in the course of various journeys, we didn't encounter a single one who had anything approaching a smile on her face. I suspect they were there to ensure good, orderly conduct on the escalator and to raise the alarm should anyone have an accident. They certainly weren't there to give helpful advice. On our last day, trying to navigate our way for a train to St Petersburg, we got very lost. As time ticked away and panic began to set in, I approached one of the escalator ladies, map in hand, uttering the single word, " Moscovsky?" the name of the station we were trying to find, whilst waving the map in front of her. No reaction: no eye contact, no helpful pointing, in fact no movement whatsoever. She just continued to glare at the descending crowds and after a couple more attempts I left her to it. Incidentally, we caught our St Petersburg train with only a few minutes to spare, pilling into our carriage, devouring all the food and drink intended to see us through the night and the following morning before the guard, possibly a close relative of Escalator Woman, informed us we were in the wrong carriage. We were hustled down the corridor into a different one where we embarked on another orgy of eating, leaving the new occupants of our original carriage nothing to sustain them through the journey. 

St Petersburg was a bit scary. The week before we left home, the British Ambassador had been mugged and, because of this, I left all my valuables in our delightful hotel, a converted brothel with ceilings so high that the hundreds of mosquitoes that lived there needed oxygen. We made our way to the nearest metro station and soon a train arrived. It was very full and so when the doors opened, we had to push our way in. I became aware of a young man who was standing in front of me as I boarded the train and who moved back in the same direction I was going, all the time holding one of his arms up near his mouth. I felt decidedly uneasy and brought my own hands up in a subconscious move to protect myself. I was then pushed up against him by a couple of other youths behind me and then, as an alarm signalled the train was about to depart, the man in front and the two youths behind pushed their way off the train through the closing doors. I suspect that my pockets had been rifled through as I stood with my arms in the air but, due to my fear of getting mugged, all they'd have found was an old pen and a handkerchief which they sensibly decided to leave. Underground journeys weren't usually so scary. As my collection increased, I would sometimes make a single journey between two adjacent stations on a new network just so that I could add it to the growing list. This happened in Munich, Nuremberg, Los Angeles, Naples and Istanbul. At this moment in time, I have travelled on 35 underground railways including the world's second oldest system in Budapest. I've watch rats scavenging on the New York metro, travelled to Leicester's European games on the Porto and Seville metros and been warned not to bring the foul smelling durian fruit onto the Singapore metro. This is another collection that will be impossible for me to complete because so many new underground transit systems are being planned and constructed, I couldn't possibly keep up with them, even if I could afford to travel around the world in my quest.