The London Daily Newsletter Monday 19 June

Oaklands Hall
On the west side of West End Lane, Charles Spain bought 5 acres and between 1829 and 1838 built York Villa.

Oaklands Hall was possibly built due to a sale of land behind York Villa in 1860: To be sold, pursuant to a Decree of the High Court of Chancery, made in causes of Lance v. Aglionby, and Lance v. Elyard, with the approbation of the Master of the Rolls, by Messrs. Farebrother, Clark, and Lye, at Garraway’s Coffee-house, Change-alley, Cornhill, on Tuesday, the 7th day of August, 1860, at twelve o’clock at noon : A. valuable freehold iuclosure of building land, situate in West-end-lane, Hampstead, about midway between the Edgware and Finchley Roads, sloping down from Westend-lane, to which it has a frontage of above 800 feet, and extending back for a depth of about 1056 feet to the rear of Royston Hall, Royston Lodge, and other residences and grounds in the Edgware-road and abutting on the grounds of York Villa and West End House, the whole containing 17A. SB. OF. The Hampstead and City Junction Railway passes close to the property. London Gazette During the 1860s, Oaklands Hall, an elaborate Gothic mansion, was occupying the site. Oaklands Hall was leased from Charles Spain from 1861 to 1872 by Donald Nicoll MP – owner of a gentlemen’s outfitter’s in Regent Street. The three West Hampstead stations were in place by 1888. Nicoll owned portions of the Little Estate to the north and west, which together formed a 23 acre estate which he called West End Park. Nicoll was a director of the Metropolitan and St John’s Wood railway from 1864 to 1872 and, in anticipation of its plans, laid out a road (Sherriff, then called Nicoll, Road) on the line later taken by the railway, for which he received substantial compensation. He then sold West End Park to the London Permanent Building Society, which was connected with Alexander Sherriff, a fellow MP and railway director, who gave his name to the northernmost road on the estate. Oaklands Hall was occupied by Sir Charles Murray until 1878, when it was offered for sale, and in 1883 houses were built in Dynham and Cotleigh Roads on its site. Builders, including A. Rathbone of Mill Lane and Julia Bursill, had erected 123 terraced houses there by 1893, in addition to completing the frontage on West End Lane. A library was built in Cotleigh Road in 1901.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

Camberwell Flats by Night (1983) David Hepher (b.1935) is best known for his paintings of buildings, mainly tower blocks, which he refers to as “urban landscapes”. ‘Camberwell Flats’ is part of a series of paintings, two of which can be found at the Museum of London and another at the Middlesborough Institute of Modern Art. They reflect Hepher’s sustained focus on residential architecture, and details of ordinary, everyday life, sometimes pushing it to the brink of abstraction.

David Hepher

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.