London Lit: Neverwhere

I can’t believe how long it’s taken me to finally get around to writing this entry. If I’m going to be meta about it, this is actually one of the first entries I planned to write, and that must have been, what, two and a half years ago? Daaaamn.

So yeah, Neverwhere. One of the best-known works of urban fantasy and one of the best-known London novels, I think I’m being fair when I say these things. Neil Gaiman’s first novel and my personal favourite.

The story is fairly simple – our protagonist is the slightly Arthur Dent-esque Richard Mayhew, a relative newcomer to London. One day he comes across what he thinks is a wounded homeless girl and offers to help her, only to swiftly and unwittingly find himself drawn into a bizarre and fantastical version of the city existing below and around our own – London Below. Worse, the girl – Door – is being pursued by a couple of bizarre and apparently time-travelling assassins. And so we find outselves journeying through London-as-filtered-through-Neil-Gaiman’s-brain.

If any of you saw the superb Gaiman-penned Doctor Who episode, ‘The Doctor’s Wife,’ you’ll recognise the hallmarks. Strange people living in a thrown-together world and plenty of whiplash between scary and funny. If it was a movie, it would probably be directed by Tim Burton. Hence we get bizarre scenes like the visit to Earl’s Court. That is to say, an actual Court held by an Earl. A medieval court on an Underground train. There’s also an Angel called Islington and an order of Black Friars. Oh, and you get to learn the real reason why you should Mind the Gap.

For those of you familiar with the history and mythology surrounding the city, there’s even more. From abandoned Tube stations to a throwaway reference to Gog and Magog (blink and you’ll miss it), it’s very clear that Gaiman’s done his homework in researching his fantasy world.

My first exposure to the phenomenon, oddly enough, was not via the book. It was over a decade ago, on TV. You see, Neverwhere was originally developed as a fantasy TV series at the behest of none other than Lenny Henry. This was long before the revival of Doctor Who, and so the general attitude towards fantasy on TV was that it was all a little bit silly. As a result, the whole thing looks a bit cheap and naff. Which is a pity, because it’s really not. There is some superb location filming, including the use of Battersea Power Station, HMS Belfast, Down Street Station and the old Post Office Underground. The cast features some interesting before-they-were-famous faces, including Paterson Joseph, Tamsin Greig and Peter Capaldi (as the aforementioned Angel Islington). It was a bit weird, to be sure, but it piqued my curiosity and I went out and bought the book. And I was hooked. I’m told that the version in print today differs somewhat from that 1997 publication, so I should probably buy the new one as well. Not that I’m a fanboy or anything.

It’s not the only urban fantasy set in London, nor is it even the first. But it is perhaps the best-known and tends to be very highly rated – China Miéville, for instance, lists it as an influence on his own London fantasies.  I think the reason for its success is that it never takes itself too seriously.  The characters are strange, often scary, but strangely likeable – I want to see more of the sinister Croup and Vandemar, for a start.

As I say, Gaiman is clearly familiar with the folklore and history of London, but you don’t need to be in order to enjoy the book. It’s my experience that a lot of the more well-read authors want you to know just how clever they are and their work suffers as a result. In the case of Neverwhere, a passing familiarity with the city will see you just fine. And having read it, you may want to increase that familiarity.

That’s a thought – has anyone ever done a Neverwhere tour?

This bacon smells funny

Well, I finished reading that book, Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead. I was disappointed to discover that actually, it had almost no mention of said black swine. This cannot be allowed to stand, since it actually sounds like a hell of a good story.

The book does briefly mention said hogs in the form of an editorial from the Daily Telegraph. from 10 October 1859. I shall quote the relevant part of said editorial, because I rather like it.

This London is an amalgam of worlds within worlds, and the occurrences of every day convince us that there is not one of these worlds but has its special mysteries and its generic crimes. Exaggeration and ridicule often attach to the vastness of London, and the ignorance of its penetralia common to us who dwell therein. It has been said that beasts of chase still roam in the verdant fastnesses of Grosvenor Square, that there are undiscovered patches of primaeval forest in Hyde Park and that Hampstead sewers shelter a monstrous breed of black swine, which have propagated and run wild among the slimy feculence, and whose ferocious snouts will one day up-root Highgate archway, while they make Holloway intolerable with their grunting.

The pigs in question started out as an urban legend – Henry Mayhew discusses the story in London Labour and the London Poor.

The story runs that a sow in young by some accident got down the sewer through an opening and, wandering away from the spot, littered and reared her offspring in the drain, feeding on the offal and garbage washed into it continuously. Here, it is alleged, the breed multiplied exceedingly, and have become almost as ferocious as they are numerous.

This pig is not in a sewer, but you get the idea.

Spooky pigs are not unknown in British folklore – Yr. Humble Chronicler’s father, Shropshire-born, notes that there was a local legend in his village of a ghostly black pig haunting the churchyard, and a white one has supposedly been seen near Newbury in Berkshire. Perhaps the pigs of Hampstead are simply another version of this? Or perhaps, if we’re to be cynical, it has something to do with the fact that Mayhew’s flushermen would “generally take a drop of rum” before venturing into the sewers. Certainly there’s no evidence to back these pigs up other than hearsay. Sewer workers have reported frogs, ducks, terrapins and even snakes down there, but no pigs. The flushermen interviewed by Mayhew mention rats as big as “good-sized kittens.”

A sewer, London, yesterday.

The story seems to have been reasonably well-known in the mid-nineteenth century, but these cryptids have been largely forgotten in the present day. Leave it up to Neil Gaiman, then, to revive the legend in what might be the best-known work of London fantasy – Neverwhere. In this book, London possesses its own subterranean Labyrinth, and its own equivalent of the Minotaur. A character describes said beast thus:

“Now, they say that back before the fire and the plague there was a butcher lived down by the Fleet Ditch, had some poor creature he was going to fatten up for Christmas. (Some says it was a piglet, and some says it wusn’t, and there was some that wusn’t ever certain.) One night the beast runned away, ran into the Fleet Ditch, and vanished into the sewers. And it fed on sewage, and it grew, and it grew. And it got meaner, and nastier. They’d send in hunting parties after it, from time to time… Things like that, they’re too vicious to die. Too old and big and nasty.”

Given that the Fleet Ditch in question runs through Hampstead, and given that for much of its length it was bricked over and used as a sewer, I’d say we have a much-embellished version of the story of the black swine. The book, if you haven’t read it, is well worth grabbing – it’s basically a retelling of more-or-less every lost myth of London. The main character, significantly, is Richard Mayhew.

It’s a shame that, whatever else we may have in London’s vast network of sewers, storm drains and underground rivers, the black pigs of Hampstead are no longer believed in. Maybe the story was lowering property values in the area or something. No, if you want sewer monsters, I’m afraid you’ll have to take the alligators of New York and be done with it, Sunny Jim.

Oink.

Underground cinema

The Underground is a great place to use in a film. It’s an icon of the city, much like the Houses of Parliament or Tower Bridge. It’s something that thousands use daily. It has that slightly spooky air about it. And it’s instantly recognisable. All you need is an Underground sign and people know where you are.

Filming on the Tube, though, is not so easy. It runs from early in the morning to late at night, and the rest of the time is needed for maintenance work. Although there are plenty of abandoned Underground stations, most of them are wholly unsuitable for filming – they’ve been allowed to grow derelict and they’re on lines that are still in use (i.e. even if you find one in good condition, filming will be interrupted every couple of minutes by a train).

If you want to film on a regular station, you just need to find a preserved railway. Alas, the only preserved sections of Underground are the Epping-Ongar branch (formerly the outermost extremity of the Central Line) and Quainton Road (one time part of the Metropolitan Railway). Neither of these are exactly what you think of when you think “London Underground.” What you really need is an abandoned station, in good condition, not on a running like. Oh, hey, Aldwych, didn’t see you there.

Aldwych, pictured left, was a perfect filming location even when it was still in use. It was built at the end of a stubby little branch off the Piccadilly Line, served by a shuttle service from Holborn. It was never hugely patronised, and one of the two platforms was disused by the First World War. During the Second, the whole branch was closed and used as a safe house for part of the British Museum’s collection. In 1994, the whole branch was shut down for good. The building, carrying the original “Strand” name, is still visible on the Strand.

However, it’s kept maintained and makes an excellent filming location - the fact that London Underground tend not to modernise stations unless it’s necessary (a policy Yr. Humble Chronicler applauds) means that it can be dressed up to represent more-or-less any time period from 1907 to the present day. As I say, even before it closed, the branch was little used enough that the station could be used by film crews. These days, London Underground can even provide you with a 1972 Northern Line train kept on the line especially.

It’s appeared in The Krays (as Bethnal Green), Death Line (as Russell Square), Superman IV (as the Metropolis Subway), Patriot Games, V for Vendetta, Atonement, Creep and The Bank Job, among others.

If that’s not quite to your tastes, say you need something more modern, you could always take a short stroll down to Charing Cross. While (obviously) the Bakerloo and Northern platforms are still very much in use, the Jubilee Line used to terminate here. When the Jubilee Line extension was completed in 1999, it took a jag south to Waterloo from Westminster. Charing Cross was left as the only abandoned station on the whole Jubilee Line and, of course, it had its own stretch of line. It’s not quite as popular as a filming location (perhaps because the rest of the station is very busy), but it was used in Creep (again) and 28 Weeks Later.

Failing that, of course, supposing you want something bang up to date, you might try the Waterloo and City Line. This line is closed on Sundays, giving you a whole day to play with. The trouble is that the Waterloo and City Line looks rather different from the rest of the Tube, due to the fact that it was built as an extension of the London and South Western Railway and only became part of London Underground in 1994. Nevertheless, this didn’t stop the crew of Sliding Doors from filming there or, in 1940, the crew of On the Beat.

This sort of thing is not for everyone. Some aren’t so fussy about where they film. Some don’t mind dereliction and passing trains. So it was for the crew of Neverwhere, the cult fantasy series set below London. They managed to get the use of the long-closed Down Street station for a banqueting scene. During the Second World War this station, abandoned even then, was used by Winston Churchill before the Cabinet War Rooms were completed. Apparently, due to the lifts being out of use, government officials were dropped off by passing trains from Green Park or Hyde Park Corner. Thus was it for Neverwhere – Neil Gaiman (the writer) talks about flagging down trains when filming was over. Unfortunately, Down Street is no longer allowed to be used for filming, and is strictly for emergency access only.

Kudos to An American Werewolf in London for actually filming at Tottenham Court Road, by the way.

So, what about Die Another Day? That was a pretty prominent appearance by an abandoned Tube station, right? Wrong. But that will have to wait for another time…

Further Reading

http://underground-history.co.uk/creep/ - An analysis of the locations used in Creep. The home page has a lot of interesting info about closed stations and bits of stations, as well as a photo of the train kept on the Aldwych branch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYD44UMtNh8 - Footage of Aldwych shortly before closure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q4uMNTEgDs - Footage of a preserved Tube train on the Jubilee Line, including a shot of the Jubilee Line platforms.