notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

In Praise Of Highwalks

(This post is about the City of London Highwalks. You might want to check the introductory post for a list of related stories.)

One of the things that prompted me to finally start writing at the highwalks was a post I’ve already commented on here; oobject’s Nine Reasons The High Line Sucks. I ignored the final section:

Like the Highline, the Barbican Center in London created a pedestrianized zone one level above the street. It has become a sad and lonely place and people still use the street level underpass which is hostile to pedestrians.

Thankfully, I never even had to write a defence of my own. Will Wiles posted in praise Of Beech Street:

Like most of Oobject’s baffling complaint about the Highline, this attack on Beech Street is stunningly wrongheaded. The Highwalk gets plenty of use and is anything but a “sad and lonely” place.

He goes on to point out that, while the designers of the Barbican evidently intended pedestrian traffic should be on the highwalk level, Beech Street itself is remarkably nice for a traffic-dominated underpass. (In fact, I’d rather use it than some of London’s 1960s pedestrian subways, which are themselves far less pleasant than most highwalks.)

The argument is further expanded on by Owen Hatherley in his post, Brutalism, friend of the Pedestrian:

Rather than the idealised main street bafflingly turned into a model for all to follow, the Brutalist city of skywalks, under and overpasses and lakeside cafes makes the mundane act of getting from A to B exciting.

Certainly that’s one of the attractions to me of the City’s highwalks, and I’m glad to see I’m not the only person who feels it. (It’s worth reading the whole post, which is a ringing endorsement of Brutalist modernism, not as retro nostalgia, but as an urgently-needed, still-progressive pedestrian-centric mode of thinking, “wholly part of the future we were promised and denied”.)

(Speaking of which, thanks for all the encouragement I’ve received so far. Coming soon on highwalks: some maps.)

The City Of London Highwalks

Nostalgia seems to be a deep part of the British psyche. Everyone seems to like harking back to a previous age, whether they remember it (the Blitz, punk, rave, the Sixties) or not (the Victorian or Regency eras). There’s a rather odd offshoot of this, though; people who are nostalgic for a future that never happened.

I’m one of them. As with many others, the Wilsonian “white heat of technology” sums up the concept nicely; Concorde, the M1 and the Intercity 125 are its symbols, along with the Rail Alphabet and Transport typefaces. Its architectural archetype is the Barbican, the brutalist residential/arts scheme in the heart of the City of London.

Amongst many other things, the Barbican’s highwalks - the above-street level segregated pedestrian walkways - are part of this. Way back in 2003 I led an informally guided walk from the Barbican tube station to London Bridge.

Highwalks, you see, are laced through the City. For example, there are bridges over Upper and Lower Thames Street, and walkways embedded in buildings. The NatWest Tower, as was, is surrounded by highwalks (although in the past five years they’ve been shorn of connections). The Thames Path has (barely used) access to a highwalk system just east of Blackfriars Bridge.

However, none of this is well documented. This is a real shame, especially since (as I’ve implied above) the seemingly incessant renewal of the Square Mile’s office space is leading to the loss of more and more of the highwalks and bridges. Even the edges of the Barbican have lost connections as parts of the complex are redeveloped. It seems the time has come to write about the network.

There are lots of things I’d like to get to, and I’ll have to do some research. Looking back, it’s easy to see highwalks as an obviously bad idea, but I believe the initial conception - segregating people from traffic - has an amount of logic to it. What else was behind their creation? How big did the City envisage the system being? What was the greatest extent of its reach, and what schemes failed to be built to hobble it? How did the public respond then, and what do they think now? Why are modern planners so keen to allow the network to be scaled back? What’s been lost recently?

As you can see, the subject is quite large, which is probably why I’ve never found a place to start. I’ve decided that an introduction/index (to save me repeating myself) would be a good idea, and here are other posts on the subject.

• The Lost Highwalks Of Tower 42
• In Praise Of Highwalks
• Moorgate to Barbican Arts Centre (Slideshow)
• Floating Above The City

The Lost Highwalks Of Tower 42

(This post is about the City of London Highwalks. You might want to check the introductory post for a list of related stories.)

In 2003, it was possible to walk from Old Broad Street to Leadenhall Street above street level. Just south of the Metropolitan Line entrance to Liverpool Street, a set of steps beside the entrance to Bishopsgate Courtyard allowed you to access a first floor walkway running along the west, then south, edges of the buildings, taking you to a bridge across the dual carriageway of Wormwood Street. Heading south, a tunnel ran inside the podium level of the 100 Bishopsgate skyscraper, emerging after a few twists and turns below the Natwest Tower.

To the south, the highwalk ended in steps back down to Broad Street, but you could also head east, crossing Bishopsgate on another bridge, to 22-24 Bishopsgate. Walking above the pavement, it was possible to head towards 8 Bishopsgate, and then through the building towards Undershaft, emerging down steps either there or on Leadenhall Street, underneath the old Midland Bank, facing Lloyds of London.

This latter section was the first to close, in early 2007, to make way for the new 122 Leadenhall Street. Slowly, more and more of this latter section was closed as the two Bishopsgate towers (at 8 and 22-24) were demolished to make way for Bishopsgate Tower, with the bridge finally being demolished late last year. (You can still see it for now on Google’s Street View, captured in July 2008.)

Meanwhile, the northern section was also closed off as the tower at 55 Old Broad Street was being reclad. However, unlike the demolition of the buildings on Bishopsgate which were integral to the highwalk, this merely saw the entrance staircase demolished, seemingly to provide a more attractive entrance archway for the revamped building, which is set back from the main road. (Once again, Street View captures the process of removal.)

So, what’s left? You can climb to the highwalk on the south side of Wormwood Street. Bafflingly, it’s still possible to cross the road, but you can’t descend on the north side, nor walk around the still-extant first floor pathway towards Liverpool Street. (Presumably the bridge is part of the fire escape route for some of the older blocks there.) You can still head south, and leave the highwalk from stairs around Tower 42, but the bridge across Bishopsgate is gone, and the highwalk is boarded up overlooking the road.

All in all, this is now a rather useless fragment of a route, and unless it gets a new access stairway on Wormwood Street, or a bridge to the Bishopsgate Tower (if and when it’s complete), I wouldn’t be surprised to see it further curtailed in the forthcoming years.