“You enter Kelvedon Hatch at the lowest level, burrowing into a natural hill,” she said. Our UK expert, Sophie Campbell, visited a few years ago. An amusing sign labelled “Secret Nuclear Bunker” now makes its location known. Fronted by an innocuous bungalow, it would have provided shelter for the great and the good when the ICBMs started flying and was built without the knowledge of locals. So head a couple of miles north to Kelvedon Hatch, the deepest (23m) Cold War bunker in Britain that’s open to the public.
The rest of the town is rather less unusual, being a melange of trendy bars and restaurants, beauty salons and mock Tudor residences. The ragstone and flint ruins can still be seen on the High Street. Brentwood’s history stretches back a long way, however, to a time before fake tan and vajazzles.Įstablished at a clearing made in the forest by burning wood (the name Brentwood comes from “burnt wood”), it was a key stopping point for pilgrims en route from East Anglia to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury, and in the 13th century a chapel – dedicated to the saint – was built to service them.
Once a sleepy village on the old Roman road from London to Colchester (now the A1023), modern Shenfield is an affluent annexe of Brentwood, the town probably best known for the cosmetically-enhanced reality TV series The Only Way Is Essex. Shenfield (Elizabeth line) – home to Towie stars and a nuclear bunker Reading is also the largest urban area in Britain without city status (population: 347,510), was the location of the first Little Chef restaurant (an 11-seat diner caravan which opened in 1958), and has a lovely Edwardian lido, which reopened in 2017 after 43 years. You can learn more about Huntley & Palmers and Reading Abbey at the town’s museum, which also contains a replica of the Bayeux Tapestry. Its tins were sent to every corner of the British Empire and accompanied Captain Scott on his 1910 expedition to the South Pole (Reading was known as the “biscuit town” and its football club nicknamed the “biscuitmen”). The latter structure housed Reading Abbey Girls’ School, whose former pupils include Jane Austen.įive years after the great author’s death, Huntley & Palmers opened the world’s biggest biscuit factory in the town. Today it is a photogenic ruin with just two surviving buildings: the old dormitory and a gatehouse. Reading’s 12th-century abbey was once a place of pilgrimage, holding more than 230 relics, including the alleged hand of St James. Cardinal Wolsey closed the abbey in 1525 and it now exists as an atmospheric ruin, open to the public, that stands in stark contrast to the high-rise buildings to the north.Īnd that’s not all there is to entice you to Berkshire’s county town. As one of the key figures behind the murder of Thomas Becket, it may have been his way of making amends (not that it did him much good, for he died a year later and was buried in the chapter house). Lesnes Abbey was founded by Richard de Luci, former High Sheriff of Essex and Chief Justiciar of England, in 1178, when Henry II was on the throne. This corner of south-east London, not far from the dual delights of the Brutalist Thamesmead housing estate (which stars in Kubrick’s adaptation of A Clockwork Orange) and HMP Belmarsh, possesses both an abbey and a wood. Abbey Wood (Elizabeth line) – home to a ‘Cathedral of Sewage’ Here are the weird and wonderful things to see and do at the ends of the Elizabeth line, as well as other underground arteries. To aid curious commuters, we’ve compiled the answers. Shenfield? Abbey Wood? What lies there, they might wonder… Nevertheless, it represents the biggest change to the hallowed Tube map in many moons, and will familiarise travellers with a few new locations.
A full service isn’t expected until 2023.
Furthermore, there will be no Sunday trains for the time being, while Bond Street station isn’t ready to be added. Despite construction beginning way back in 2009, and 41 months having passed since the original planned opening date, it will operate as three separate railways lines (Shenfield–Liverpool St, Abbey Wood–Paddington and Paddington–Reading/Heathrow) before it operates as one. What began life as Crossrail is now the purple Elizabeth line – a four-pronged addition, opening on Tuesday, with its eastern extremities in Shenfield (in the borough of Brentwood) and Abbey Wood (which straddles the boroughs of Greenwich and Bexley), and its western frontiers in the Berkshire town of Reading and at Heathrow Airport.