This is a story for more than just train spotters

YOU might think a museum filled with buses, trains and trams would be a haven for middle aged men with woolly hats, notepads and flasks of tea. But the London Transport Museum tells a story which appeals to a much wider audience. It is not just about one model of bus or train being replaced by a more a superior one. Rather, the story of public transport is in fact about London and explains its exponential growth in the 1800s and 1900s.
It is a success story that continues to this day. Today, the London Underground alone carries more than three million people everyday and further growth is expected. Others travel on buses and modern trains that glide through the skyline to the docklands on the east of the city.
Yet the intriguing thing is that the complex network of services now overseen by Transport for London began with a single horse-drawn omnibus in 1829. It made the journey from Paddington to Islington several times each day. Within three years there were more than 4,000 such vehicles on the streets of London.
Travelling on the omnibus was not cheap but was more affordable than booking private carriages. Lower priced tickets would come with horse drawn trams in the late 1800s (they could pull a heavier weight because the vehicle was on wheels), buses and then the Underground.
In time, the innovations would make travelling on public transport something that all Londoners could participate in. Transport allowed the working classes to reach workplaces on the other side of the capital.
In the early 1800s things were very different; you could walk around London quite easily and countryside wasn’t that far away. But then, very quickly, the city boundaries were pushed out aggressively as London boasted the busiest port in the world.
Of course, the mainline railways helped to bring people to London from all corners of the country. But they only came to the edge of the capital, to places like Paddington, Euston and King’s Cross so the streets became jam packed. By now London had been too large to walk around easily. Something needed to be built underground to solve the congestion. The process of transforming the capital began by building the Metropolitan railway in 1850. It was the start of the London Underground. The Circle Line came from 1863-8 and the building of new lines really intensified in the early 1900s.
The key point about the Underground was, and is, that it’s classless – unlike the mainline services everyone sat in the same compartments. But special cheap early morning services were run for workmen.
Mainline services were initially designed for intercity travel, but from the 1860s they also played an important role in helping to move people between London and its suburbs. Today, many commute to work by train.
But there was a cost to the railway building in and around London; 100,000 poor Londoners lost their homes to make way for new tracks. They were fobbed off with cheap services early in the morning.

THE fascinating story of the growth of the suburbs is told through a new exhibition called Suburbia at the London Transport Museum (see http://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/). In the 1800s most lived within walking distance, by the 1900s most lived outside it. Early railway suburbs started in the 1860s and further expansion followed in the 1900s. The peak of suburban growth came in the 1920s.
Eye-catching posters customers survive from that era. They encourage people to live in the clean air of the suburbs, surrounded by countryside. You get messages like: “Live in Kent and be content.”
It was important time for property, with people owning their own homes for the first time (the Victorian norm was to rent property) and many building societies were setup.
The train company also strove to drive business by encouraging those living in the centre of London to enjoy day trips to the countryside. Colourful advertisements suggested activities like rambling and fishing.
Now it’s trendy to live in the city, many also live down at the rejuvenated Docklands. But the suburbs aren’t waning; they have their own identities and thrive with busy high streets. Some former villages, like Paddington, feel fully part of the capital. Others, like Hampstead, feel a million miles from the busy shops of Oxford Street.
There have been some notable changes with transport in London over the years; in 1900 the majority of vehicles were pulled by horse, by 1915 this had switched. In the 1920s trams were overtaken by buses (trams were indeed phased out from the 1930s because they were unprofitable).
Expansion looks set to continue in the years to come; by 2025 there are forecast to be an extra four million journeys into the city everyday. With so much expansion it’s hard to think that public transport began less than 200 years ago with just one omnibus on one route.

The fight to save the East End

THE EAST END of London was once a smelly, dirty and noisy place. Large families were squashed into cramped houses, sanitation was poor and cholera was rife. Living conditions were exacerbated by housing built next to polluting industry. Many lived in poverty.
This was Jack the Ripper territory; an area with rowdy pubs, crime and loads of prostitutes. It was quite simply an unpleasant place to live.

Now parts of the East End are rejuvenated; slums that weren’t destroyed in World War Two have been pulled down and some neighbourhoods have become quite trendy. One end is a stone’s throw from the city of London so house prices have shot up.
It’s still a noisy place. But rather than the sound of industry you hear the middle classes enjoying themselves in fashionable bars, restaurants and cafes.
The wonderful Victorian architecture of the old Spitalfields market remains but the wholesalers have moved out; they’ve moved to a new facility further out to the east of London. Today the high canopies keep diners at chains like La Tasca, Giraffe and Las Iguanas dry.

Nearby Brick Lane was once the centre of the rag trade. Now its home to more than 60 curry houses, most fully geared to Westerners. The street, with the highest concentration of such establishments in the country, has become some what of a tourist attraction.
For some the transformations, and the influx of the middle classes, call for celebrations. After all, here many neighbourhoods were rundown in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, in the streets nearest the city of London, live wealthy sorts in their stylish loft apartments.
But at the same time the modernisation is a threat to our cultural heritage in Britain. Some feel that the East End is losing (or has lost) its identity as London’s early working class suburb.
It was in the streets to the east of the square mile that dirty industry like tanneries was located, away from the commerce. Nearby new docks developed as the central wharfs became jammed. And as trade grew working class communities expanded. Over time the area became very densely populated and living conditions worsened.

Communties to the east of the Tower of London grew very quickly in the 1600 and 1700s (until the 1550s urban London extended little beyond the Tower).

Parts of the old East End tell the story of immigrant London. Many migrants have arrived here and settled, before being replaced by other groups. Buildings that illustrate and symbolise this history must be retained.

In the late 1600s it was the Protestant Huguenot refugees fleeing persecution in Catholic France. Many made their fortunes in the rag trade. They spent their earnings building lovely Georgian terraces. The properties, near Spitalfields market, fetch millions of pounds as they are so close to the city.

But it wasn’t that long ago that these buildings were threatened by the bulldozer. Action groups were set up in the 1970s to stop the developers moving into destroying perfectly good homes in Spitalfields.

Over time the Huguenots became assimilated into the community. Then in the late 1800s an influx of Jews fleeing persecution in Europe arrived in the East End. A thriving Jewish community with synagogues, shops, schools and places of entertainment sprung up.

This was frontline London, an area that the authorities often felt they had little control over. Stalin is said to have visited and you can still trace the spots were radical protests formed.

By the 1970s the Bengalis, that had fled their homeland after India was divided into two, dominated in the East End. The make up of shops changed and bigger mosques were needed. In 1974 the first curry house opened on Brick Lane; today the street is filled with them.

The big influx of Bengalis came after the 1960s, but many had arrived in the 1800s as well; they often crewed boats from India to Britain. Sometimes boats were held up returning and so they were laid off. So many never returned. Whole families and friends also often came over so it was often like transporting neighbourhoods virtually intact across to the other side of the world.

The Jamme Masjid mosque dominates in Brick Lane, it is indeed one of the largest in the country. The building stands as a symbol of the social history of the East End. It started out as Protestant church in 1743, then in 1743 it became a Methodist church, in 1898 it became a synagogue and then in the 1970s it became a mosque. Who knows what it will become next.

For some the invasion by the middle classes is just another phase in the area’s long history. The site where the Jamme Masjid mosque stands can only be used as a place of worship so perhaps one day it will be a church again. Many Bengalis are already moving to other parts of London, the poorer people have been pushed onto the Tower Hamlets estate.

But for others the East End is under threat. Some conservationists resent Tower Hamlets council branding the area ‘Banglatown’ in the 1990s in a bid to emulate the commercial success of Chinatown. They say that culturally important streets like Brick Lane are being ruined by the neon lights and all the tourists.

Of course, not all of East London has developed as much as Brick Lane and Spitalfields. You can still walk down Whitechapel and feel like you’ve entered another world, for example. But the big question is how far will the trendy restaurants and loft apartments spread in years to come? Let’s fight to keep at least some of the East End untrendy.

The political question of opening up Britain's countryside

Britain is famed around the world for its great historic cities. Visitors have everything from awe inspiring cathedrals and great parks to fascinating museums and first class theatre. Take a boat ride down the Thames in London for a close up view of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament; visit Stratford to see Shakespeare’s birthplace; take the waters in Bath and follow in the footsteps of wealthy Romans and Georgians; get onboard Brunel’s infamous boat SS Great Britain in Bristol; find out about Vikings in York. The list is, quite literally, endless.

This great heritage is not just available for visitors; Britain’s cities are for British people to enjoy as well. Addressing the British public, Conservative leader David Cameron told his party’s 2009 conference that Britain is a great place to live: “Look at Britain in 2009. It is, in so many ways, a great place to live. Great culture and arts, great diversity, great sport.”

But there is another Britain that most, visitors and residents alike, barely dip their toe into. This is the Britain away from busy cities where political parties hold their annual conferences. Far from the crowds there is literally mile and mile of rolling national park to enjoy. Some parts are so peaceful and so unspoiled that you can walk for hours and not see a single person.

Yes, some parts of rural Britain can get busy. Ghastly hotspots like Windermere in the Lake District sometimes feel just as busy as Oxford Street in London. Arriving here on a summer's day could put you off the countryside for life.

Do persevere though; get out there and enjoy the wonderful scenery and the natural landscapes. Britain is a small island but the wild areas you find in the Lake District are repeated in national parks across the nation, in Snowdonia, the Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales and the like. By picking the hills you walk carefully, away from the touristy towns, you quickly get away from all the strains and stresses of everyday life. It's the ideal opportunity to re-charge your batteries.

In his conference speech David Cameron said: “to be British is to have an instinctive love of the countryside and the natural world.” That is the way it should be. Unfortunately many Brits don’t even get to see the fake countryside around Windermere in the Lake District. Whole groups of people don’t even get out of the cities. They are imprisoned in their own neighbourhoods.

Britain is a divided nation; there are the middle classes who get to enjoy walking in the hills at the weekend and there are those who don’t have the means to afford a car or the bus fares to reach such places. In many cases the latter groups don’t simply know what there is on offer.The Industrial Revolution brought a massive population shift; in the 1800s the majority of people lived in urban, rather than rural, areas for the first time. Whole generations just lived for their work so had no reason to travel to the countryside. The opportunities were in the cities.

David Cameron has a vision: “I see a country where more children grow up with security and love because family life comes first. I see a country where you choose the most important things in life — the school your child goes to and the healthcare you get. I see a country where communities govern themselves — organising local services, independent of Whitehall, a great handing back of power to people.”

Whatever political party wins the next general election has its work cut out to eradicate poverty. Not least, it is important to make sure the countryside is open to and enjoyed by all. This apartheid can’t continue. Perhaps then we can also then start put more emphasis on educating our visitors that there is more to Britain's countryside than Lake Windermere and the Cotswolds.