London’s Fake Houses: The Leinster Gardens Fronts
SHOULD anyone offer you a quick deal on 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens, you’d be wise to ask them for a peek inside. Sure, it’s cheap and you must buy it now, but the house isn’t really a house. It’s just a facade. Still, with the right brass plate, Kazakh Industrial Solutions LLP will have a new London home.
Underground History notes:
The stretch of line shared by the Metropolitan and District Line between Paddington and Bayswater, much like the majority of the cut & cover lines, predates electrification and trains were originally powered by steam. The trains that served these lines were especially built with condensers to minimise the amount of steam emitted, but steam and smoke coudn’t be completely eliminated. The lines therefore had to occasionally come to the surface to allow the locomotives to vent off excess steam and smoke. It is for this reason that when riding the cut and cover lines, you occasionally see flashes of daylight.
When developing this stretch of the line, it became necessary to demolish 23 and 24 Lemister Gardens, which were part of an up market street of terraced housing, forming a break in the long string of houses, so it was decided to build a false facade which matched the houses either side of the break, and use the gap behind the facade as a steam venting point.
From above:
Spotter: Urban 75
Posted: 19th, November 2013 | In: Strange But True Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
