Hello again District Line

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Recently, a widely-circulated article on Buzzfeed – the vast, traffic-hoovering website made up of funny, well-observed lists and flickering hoards of appropriate gifs – rated and ranked all of London’s tube lines. The District Line – the stripe of British racing green which links up Richmond in the south east with Upminster in the east – fared poorly. Ranked a dull, middling eighth out of fifteen, it was damned as:

‘A slowly trundling caravan of disappointment and crushed ambition. You have such dreams, such hopes, so many amazing places you want to go. Then you end up in Earl’s Court. Also it smells weird because there’s something funny with the brakes. On the plus side, you get phone signal on most of it! Think of it less like a Tube line, more like a really long bus, and suddenly it all seems a bit better.’

Three years ago, I might have agreed with this withering assessment. Growing up in Twickenham, Richmond was my nearest tube station and I feel like I lost countless, cumulative days of my life grinding across London on the District Line’s trains. After moving to Aldgate, in east London, my view of the line scarcely improved, that 47-minute plod back to my family’s home feeling more like the kind of day-long trek that Ranulph Fiennes would have balked at.

However, now that I’m living back in South West London, my view of the District has changed. While it’s still not going to rival the Waterloo and City Line for ruthless efficiency, or the Jubilee Line for speed, I’ve come to appreciate its charms. Since I bypassed it back in the early 1990s, the area of London between Richmond and South Kensington has improved notably. The smart drag of Chiswick High Road with it’s wide pavements and almost endless restaurants and pubs (the bistro at High Road House and pubs like The Roebuck are worth checking) has had a halo effect on the surrounding districts, pulling in nearby stations Turnham Green and Ravenscourt Park, parts of Hammersmith to the east and the waterfront developments of Brentford Dock to the south-west. Meanwhile, the District Line’s southern branch takes an impressive route through West Brompton, Fulham Broadway and down to Putney Bridge, a pocket of London which still has a distinct ‘village’ character, and has been sympathetically developed around the original architecture rather than just being given over to glass boxes and chain stores.

Even the train line seems more enjoyable than it used to. Partly, it’s that it has genuinely improved – faster than it was, the phasing out of the old D-Stock trains in favour of the more energy efficient S-Stock trains will improve things further (by 2015 if all runs to schedule). Partly, it’s that it suits my life in a way that it didn’t as a teenager: it conveniently transports me to one of my offices in Royal Oak, Kew Gardens is now somewhere I’d voluntarily visit, and now that everyone is constantly online, a tube line largely running overground is a major bonus.

And finally, the view from both of the District Line’s river crossings – the only part of the tube line which traverses the Thames above ground – is genuinely beautiful. The sudden opening up of London’s skyline over Kew Bridge and the nearby island of allotments, or Putney Bridge and the lines of rowers is one of those London sights which never fails to lift the spirits. And there aren’t many parts of the London Underground that make you feel like that.

Words:
Justin Quirk
Editor House Mag