London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
This is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time.
History time.
Daily word time.
And today’s word is…
preserve.
Preserve.
To keep something safe.
To protect it.
To stop it being destroyed.
It comes ultimately from Latin.
Prae.
Before.
And servare.
To keep safe.
To guard.
To save.
To preserve something is to look ahead.
To save it now…
so somebody else can have it later.
And there could hardly be a better word for today.
Because 120 years ago today, August 28th, 1906, a little boy was born in London who would grow up to help preserve one of the greatest buildings in London.
Indeed, one of the greatest railway stations in the world.
John Betjeman.
And this is rather neat.
Yesterday we were at King’s Cross.
The German Gymnasium.
Christian Wolmar.
Naked Greeks.
Victorian Olympians.
Wild surmise.
Today…
don’t move very far.
Just turn round.
Because across the way is St Pancras.
And today’s story is about the man who helped make sure it’s still there.
John Betjeman was born on August 28th, 1906, at 52 Parliament Hill Mansions in Lissenden Gardens.
That’s Gospel Oak.
North London.
Just underneath Parliament Hill.
And that’s important.
Because Betjeman wasn’t somebody who came to London later and learned to love it.
London was there at the beginning.
In his bloodstream.
His family moved up the hill to Highgate when he was small.
He went to school in Highgate.
And here’s one of those little collisions of famous lives.
One of his teachers at Highgate School was…
T. S. Eliot.
Imagine that English lesson.
“Good morning, Betjeman.”
“Good morning, sir.”
And there’s London everywhere in the young Betjeman’s world.
Highgate.
Kentish Town.
Parliament Hill.
Pentonville Road, where the family firm made furniture and decorative things.
Churches.
Trams.
Suburbs.
Railway lines.
Villas.
Red brick.
Stone.
Iron.
Lettering.
The stuff other people walk past.
And that’s the thing about Betjeman.
He looked.
Really looked.
And perhaps look should be our second word today.
Because Betjeman taught Britain to look.
Look at that church.
Look at that station.
Look at that suburban villa.
Look at those railings.
Look at that bit of stained glass.
Look at the lettering over that shop.
Look at the building everybody says is hideous.
Are you sure it’s hideous?
Look again.
Betjeman loved Victorian architecture at a time when loving Victorian architecture was deeply unfashionable.
The great Victorian buildings were old enough to be despised…
but not yet old enough to be treasured.
Dangerous age for a building.
And London was particularly brutal.
Out with the old.
In with the new.
Clear it.
Smash it.
Redevelop it.
And Betjeman watched beautiful buildings disappear.
He was there for one of the great acts of architectural vandalism in post-war London.
The Euston Arch.
That monumental Doric gateway into Euston Station.
Demolished in the early 1960s.
Gone.
And then the wreckers turned their eyes towards another railway station.
St Pancras.
Now, look at St Pancras today.
Really look at it.
George Gilbert Scott’s great Gothic hotel.
Red brick.
Turrets.
Arches.
Chimneys.
That great fairytale frontage marching along Euston Road.
And behind it…
Barlow’s train shed.
That stupendous iron roof.
When it opened in 1868, its single span was the largest in the world.
A cathedral of steam.
And by the middle of the twentieth century…
they wanted to pull it down.
British Railways regarded St Pancras as redundant.
Old-fashioned.
Inconvenient.
King’s Cross was next door.
Why have two stations when you could have one?
Knock St Pancras down.
Rationalise.
Modernise.
Efficient.
Clean.
Gone.
Betjeman saw it coming.
And in 1952 he said something terribly prescient about St Pancras.
He feared British Railways would do away with it altogether.
Why?
Because, he said, it was…
“too beautiful and too romantic to survive.”
Too beautiful.
Too romantic.
What an indictment of the age.
Beauty itself had become a liability.
Romance was practically a demolition order.
And Betjeman fought.
Now, pedant’s corner.
Because we like pedant’s corner.
John Betjeman did not single-handedly save St Pancras.
The Victorian Society was enormously important.
There were other campaigners.
There were officials and politicians who eventually made the decisive moves.
History is almost always more complicated than the statue on the concourse.
But Betjeman had something extraordinarily useful.
A voice.
A famous voice.
A public voice.
He was a poet.
A journalist.
A broadcaster.
A campaigner.
And he could make people see.
That matters.
Because preservation isn’t just about stopping a bulldozer.
First you have to persuade people that what’s standing in front of the bulldozer is worth saving.
Betjeman did that.
And in November 1967…
with demolition perilously close…
St Pancras Station and its great Gothic hotel were given Grade I listed status.
Grade I.
The top drawer.
Buildings of exceptional interest.
Saved.
Preserved.
And thank heavens.
Because look what happened next.
The supposedly obsolete station didn’t merely survive.
It came roaring back.
Today St Pancras is London’s great railway gateway to continental Europe.
Paris.
Brussels.
Amsterdam.
People pour through it.
Coffee.
Champagne.
Suitcases.
Departures.
Arrivals.
Announcements echoing beneath that astonishing roof.
The Victorian railway station that was supposedly finished became a railway station for the twenty-first century.
And there’s somebody standing in the middle of it all.
John Betjeman.
Well…
bronze John Betjeman.
If you’re at St Pancras, go and find him.
He’s wonderful.
The statue is by Martin Jennings.
It was unveiled in 2007 when St Pancras International opened as the Eurostar terminus.
And Jennings did something inspired.
He didn’t make Betjeman grand.
He didn’t put him on a horse.
He didn’t make him heroic.
He didn’t stand him bolt upright looking terribly important.
He made him…
Betjeman.
Slightly rumpled.
Suit.
Mackintosh.
Trilby.
One shoelace apparently replaced with a bit of string.
Books stuffed into an old hemp bag from Billingsgate fish market.
His coat tails are blowing as though an express train has just gone rushing past him.
One hand is holding his hat.
And his head is tipped back.
He’s…
looking up.
That’s it.
That’s the whole man.
That’s the whole story.
Betjeman is looking up.
Looking at Barlow’s roof.
Looking at that extraordinary sweep of iron and glass.
Looking at the station they nearly destroyed.
And Martin Jennings said that was precisely the idea.
He wanted Betjeman to be doing what we all do when we first properly see that roof.
You look up.
And there’s a little intake of breath.
Oh.
Look at that.
Betjeman’s daughter Candida said her father always looked up at roofs.
Especially at St Pancras.
And isn’t that wonderful?
Because the statue doesn’t just commemorate Betjeman.
It gives you an instruction.
Look up.
That’s the instruction.
Look up.
And London rewards you for it.
Look up in Fleet Street.
Look up in Soho.
Look up in Mayfair.
Look up in the City.
Look up in Bloomsbury.
Look up in Hampstead.
Look up in King’s Cross.
The ground floor has been altered.
Shop fronts changed.
Signs replaced.
Windows filled in.
But look up…
and there’s 1720.
There’s 1840.
There’s 1890.
There’s the old London.
Still looking back at you.
And here’s another lovely thing.
Yesterday, in our German Gymnasium story, we talked about metamorphosis.
About the way one little piece of knowledge can change a building before your very eyes.
Today we’ve got the other half of that thought.
First somebody has to make sure the building survives long enough for you to discover it.
Knowledge changes the way you see London.
Preservation makes sure there’s still a London there to see.
And Betjeman understood both.
He preserved buildings.
And he preserved ways of seeing.
Victorian architecture.
Railway architecture.
Suburbia.
Metroland.
Churches.
Stations.
Places respectable opinion had decided weren’t worth looking at.
Betjeman looked.
And because he looked…
other people began looking too.
He eventually became Poet Laureate.
Sir John Betjeman.
National treasure.
But I like the London boy.
The boy born below Parliament Hill.
The boy from Highgate.
The boy who noticed things.
Because today, August 28th, is his birthday.
And there’s something else rather lovely about August 28th this year.
It’s a wedding day.
A very special wedding day.
And it turns out that Betjeman’s statue at St Pancras has itself become a place where people gather for…
weddings.
I like that.
A statue to a man who loved beautiful things.
Standing inside a beautiful thing he helped save.
People getting married beside him.
And all around them…
departures and arrivals.
Which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad metaphor for life.
So today…
August 28th…
John Betjeman’s birthday…
here’s the instruction.
Next time you’re at St Pancras, find him.
Don’t just look at the statue.
Do what the statue tells you to do.
Follow his eyes.
Tip your head back.
And…
look up.
Look at the roof.
Look at the station.
Look at the London that nearly wasn’t there.
And perhaps say a quiet thank you.
Happy birthday, John Betjeman.
And thank you for preserving it.
London Calling.
London Walks connecting.
See you tomorrow.