Digging deep into history

The year is 1963. A girl is walking around Stepney with a pack of index cards, visiting old residents in their dilapidated houses, drinking strong tea with tinned milk, listening to their stories of happy days past and looking at cracked walls and leaking roofs. As she promises them help on behalf of her employer, the Old People’s Welfare Association, redevelopment plans for the area are being drawn up with little regard for its inhabitants, many of whom don’t want to move. ‘There may be heartbreak in store for some,’ breezily remarks a magazine article.

That girl was Gillian Tindall, and her interest in ‘the landscape of people’s lives’ has never waned, recently leading her to Crossrail, a project designed to transform London on a colossal scale. The Tunnel through Time, meticulously researched and full of lively vignettes, follows the Elizabeth line, due to open next May, from Paddington to the City and further east, retracing the steps of those who have travelled the same route over the centuries. Tindall’s choice of subject stems from her observation that for many commuters today, ‘the artificial sealed-off underground world has become the reality of travel, and the complex texture and extent of the urban world above ground is largely unknown’.

The pace of life in the metropolis makes it easy to forget how fortunate Londoners are now compared with their predecessors. Aware of our tendency to romanticise the past, Tindall shows it in a light that enables us to put things into historical perspective. A good place to start is St Giles, the site of Tottenham Court Road station, recently rebuilt to become the nexus of the extended transport network. When suffering road congestion during the works, many felt grumpy — in marked contrast to Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard rebel, who in 1417 was brought there in chains and went to the gallows with a ‘verye cheereful countenance’.