It's Angel tube station, but not as we know it. Before the Northern line stop was rebuilt in the early 1990s, passengers would enter and exit through this Frankenstein's monster on Torrens Street (it's still there, all boarded up). The famous "longest in London" escalator did not yet exist. And trains stopped at a narrow island platform rather than the wide single platforms we know today. It was a different world.
And yet this photo was taken as recently as 1988, well within the memory of many readers. Leafing through Tim Brown's new book of transport photos, I'm reminded time and again just how much London has changed over the past few decades.
London's Transport in the 1980s presents some 160 photos from the author's collection. Brown is not a professional photographer, but he had a job that took him to all corners of the transport network. He was therefore in the right place at the right time to chronicle some of the decade's key transport changes.
And there were many. Anybody familiar with Liverpool Street station will boggle at some of the photographs here, which are almost impossible to reconcile with the current layout. Next door, Broadgate station was under demolition, to make way for the Broadgate office development (itself now largely rebuilt).
This was also the decade that ushered in the Docklands Light Railway. Many of Brown's photographs capture the lands around Canary Wharf and the Royal Docks, all windswept and barren in the calm before the development storm.
But it's the innumerable details that really sell these photographs. Ford Cortinas and Routemaster buses everywhere. People actually using phone kiosks. The last ruins from the Blitz, still lingering after more than 40 years. Train carriages in unfamiliar livery.
As with Brown's other recent book, Lost London, this is an absolute treasure trove of memories (or discoveries), which features scenes and situations not captured by professional photographers. I mean, just how unintentionally "80s" is this photo?
London's Transport in the 1980s by Tim Brown is out 15 September 2024 from Amberley Publishing. All images by Tim Brown. Buy the book direct from the publisher, or via Bookshop.org (which sources from independent bookshops and gives Londonist a small commission).
