C O N T E X T 1 1 6 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 0 31 Architecturally speaking The Destruction of London (almost) refused planning permission to build a swimming baths on a patch of, seemingly, uninteresting, disused land. Eventually it became clear that the LCC had developed, on paper at least, a network of vast motorway rings around London, a section of which was planned to drive right through the site for Battersea’s swimming pool. Battersea Council’s timely discovery forced the LCC to go public. The plans for the Motorway Box, or Ringway 1, were released to the press in 1966, to the horror of Londoners. Ringway 1’s planned route was divided into the North, South, East and West Cross Routes. If completed, it would have had devastating effects on London, both in terms of planning, with serious environmental and social impacts, and architecturally, on the very fabric of the capital. The North Cross Route would have traversed Kilburn, Harlesden,West Hampstead, Camden Town, Islington and Belsize Park, carving out vast cut-andThe title may bring to mind a cataclysmic or apocalyptic event such as the Great Fire of London or the German bombing during the second world war.Yet it refers, not to a dreadful accident beyond our control, nor to a violent war, but to a long and, for years, highly secretive, campaign planned by our own government and its representatives. Having emerged from the devastation of the second world war blitz only a few years earlier, we made an attempt to finish the job all by ourselves. The levelling of vast areas of historic London, planned in the name of progress, constituted a highly ambitious, stop-for-nothing campaign of extensive motorway building throughout the capital. In a design of concentric rings, a series of motorways was planned to spread out like ripples in a pond from the centre of London out as far as Croydon. As far back as the 1930s there had been discussions concerning London’s roads and congestion problems. It was in the 1950s when London County Council (LCC), the forerunner to the Greater London Council (GLC), first seriously considered the idea of building miles of motorways. By 1960 the LCC had commissioned a report which recommended the construction of a series of ringways to deal with congestion. Ringway 1, perhaps the most controversial, was to form what was termed the London Motorway Box. This would have been the largest inner city ring road in the world, encircling 60 square miles of central London, including the whole of the City,Westminster, all of the present day congestion-charge zone, almost all of Docklands and some of the east end of London. Ringways 2, 3 and 4 formed similar, wider circles of motorway, spreading out from the Ringway 1. All were joined to each other by spur roads. In plan form it resembled a huge, interlinking spider’s web superimposed on the city. These megalomaniacal plans came to light purely by chance in 1964 when Battersea Council was Diagram of the proposed London Motorway Box (in red), and the three other proposed Ringways and radial motorways. A traffic jam on the present-day M25
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