please empty your brain below

It may not have the ambience of the other pedways, but Peters Hill is very much elevated where it crosses Upper Thames Street. The street below only briefly emerges from under the buildings that span it, so it is rarely noticed.
Before the site was redeveloped, there was an entrance to Mondial house from the Suffolk Lane pedway, although it was disused long before the building closed
One Angel Lane (initially named Watermark Place) replaced BT's Mondial House but, as I understand it, it was designed and under construction before Nomura took a lease. For example. That said, I am sure they were attracted by the wooden details around the building.
I've always thought that Pedways work best when the ground floor pavements are closed, creating a true segregation of activity where traffic exists on the ground floor and human life on the first floor. This works well in places such as Central in Hong Kong, and very much was envisaged by Bucannan's 'Traffic in Towns' in 1963 [jpg]

I do wonder what parts of the City would have looked like had pedways been fully completed; would the whole square mile look like Upper Thames Street, for example?

dg writes: This map may help.
Looks like the Prudential building at Governors House on Laurence Pountney Hill was completed in 1998. Their 20 year lease runs out next year and they have taken space elsewhere so may be moving out. I wonder what will happen to the carved logo on the corner by the stairs. Interesting that infrastructure for the pedway to curve around the building was included then, but not with the building next but one currently being completed on Arthur Street. I doubt there are any plans to put it back...
I work near Upper Thames Street and it is absolutely bloody awful. A canyon filled with trucks and traffic fumes. Thankfully you can almost avoid it by walking alongside the river.
Not quite a pedway I suspect and not quite the city either, but there used to be an underground walkway under the buildings on the south side of the Thames, between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. it started at No 1 London Bridge, the sort of purple building on the corner. Although not obvious it was open to the public it was you just went in the Riverside entrance, down the escalator and there it was. It was unusual in that it even had a travolator for part of it. It ended at Hays Galleria and seemed little used and little known. I believe it has been closed now though.
Although I can still run up stairs, do any of these pedways have ramps for disabled access?

dg writes: Baynard House does. In general though, no.
I've walked across several of these, never realising they were part of a wider scheme; I just thought they were convenient bridges! Hard to imagine, even with the map, how different the City would look had the full proposals been implemented.
I don't know the Swan Lane pedway, but does the triangular, unintended balcony have a twin on the floor below? You photo from street level suggests that it might.
I start a new job with the City of London Corporation soon and never knew about any of this, so the pedways will provide plenty of opportunity for exploration. Cheers DG.
@Mike, when the pedways were built the needs of the disabled were rarely considered. The Barbican Centre itself has had to be modified to conform with current legislation, but there are still unnecessary stairs in some places.
Fantastic post today, thanks. I was walking through the Barbican only yesterday afternoon at street level wondering if there was a "pedway" route I could use instead of walking through a dingy tunnel, and was admiring the slightly intimidating network of walkways above. I never knew that was what they were called - I'd also assumed they'd all disappeared or been cut off in some way, and I;ve generally avoided them for the lack of a map. The one supplied above is great!
Fifteen years ago, some friends and I spent a Sunday afternoon exploring the City highwalks. There are some (rather dark in places) photos of the walk on Flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/davorg/albums/995355

Most interestingly, perhaps, it includes a few photos of Draper's Gardens which was demolished in 2007.
"ramps for disabled access? dg writes: Baynard House does"

There is level access to the pedway from Blackfriars station, but if there is a ramp at the other, "totem pole", end I've never found it.

dg writes: The ramp's in the central section.

The connection to Blackfriars station, together with the new south entrance to that station, provides a route from Queen Vic Street to the South Bank without being exposed to the elements!
Hi DG,

Just a thought and you may be including it within the Barbican development, there is a pedway / walkway crossing London Wall which accesses the entrance to the Museum of London. I used to work on Fore Street and enjoyed exploring the Barbican walkways over the years. In fact there are a lot of hidden nooks and crannies of that development worth taking a look at. I'm sure you have at some point.
Thanks for this DG, fascinating and thorough. A couple of years back I led a pedway walk for the Ramblers visiting quite a few of these sites and tracing the network elsewhere at ground level. It was very popular and well-received -- these things do seem to fascinate people -- and I will probably repeat it at some point. See map here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=14qh3-4ZJVQOjErjrgKd07d39DcY&usp=sharing

Jon Combe: the infrastructure you mention around London Bridge has been affected by the redevelopment of the station, don't know if it's going to be restored. I wouldn't be surprised that, even though it's on the South bank, it was installed by the City, which owns the bridge and the properties immediately to the south of it.

There were other pedways elsewhere in London, mainly in social housing estates. The Pepys estate in Deptford as originally built had a network of paths at 1st floor level, partly under the influence of the same misguided architectural ideas behind the City pedway, partly because before the Thames Barrier was completed, there were fears this riverside site was vulnerable to flooding. Nearly all of these have been removed but I remember them from when I lived on the estate in the mid-1980s.

There's still a length of pedway at the Lucey Way estate in Bermondsey which will take you from Blue Anchor Lane across St James Road to Spa Terminus in Dockley Road, roughly parallel to the railway.
excellent. I enjoyed this one. thxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I was introduced to the mysteries of the Baynard House walkway last year. One of it's advantages is that when using it you don't have to look at Baynard House; one of the concrete slabs I'd like to see replaced. In fact I used the walkway on Wednesday and noticed the potplant ... a tiny beacon of green amidst the grey.
I've always been interested in these. The Middlesex Street Estate used to have a whole series of inward-facing shops facing the square on the upper level (as did, to a lesser extent, the old St Alphage highwalk), and unsurprisingly none of them was particularly successful. I believe they were converted to flats when it was made private.

There's another newish pedway (of sorts) along the eastern side of Liverpool Street station.
I used to watch the London Marathon from the Pudding Lane one, but it started to get too crowded, so I went elsewhere.

Used to drape the club banner over the 'wrong' side when the leaders went through to see if it got on the tele.
I work in a building right next to the 'entrance' on Wood Street to London Wall's. God only knows what the finished article will look like: it's been going since I started. But its completion might just lead me to actually try and go direct north towards Barbican, for once. Some day, all this construction will blow over... Moorgate Crossrail, too.
Someone said "misguided". Is there evidence for this?

I know above-ground access to flats and maisonettes seems to have proved unsatisfactory - people do not feel safe walking there - but is there anything definitely wrong with other above-ground ways of keeping pedestrians out of traffic?
Really good,takes me back forty years when they were first built. Thank you
Awful idea. Access unfriendly plus people vulnerable to crime. Brutalist at its very worst.
Not the only set of plans that the City Corporation conjured up in the post-war decades. Shortly after I started work just off Carter Lane in 2000, I came across a years-old plan to build an urban motorway east from Blackfriars Bridge towards Cannon Street Station, just south of St Paul's. It would have been roughly parallel with the underpass that runs along the river, but on the surface and right through that warren of streets, which would have gone.
Swan Lane - Google Street view shows the bridge was still there as recently as three years ago, and the pedway seems to have followed parallel to Arthur Street to emerge opposite the Monument. Arthur Street itself is closed at present, I think for work on the Bank station enlargement. We may see the pedway return?

By the way, the thoroughfare crossed by the Pudding lLne bridge is Lower Thames Street - the name changes from Upper to Lower as it passes under London Bridge.
As far as I can see, there is no provision for the pedway to return at Swan Lane, but one corner of the new building has been cut away to include a new set of stairs and a lift down from the west side of London Bridge (not opened yet).
Entirely coincidentally I used the Pudding Lane pedway for the first time (despite regularly being in the area for meetings) today. Before getting my daily DG fix!

Twice in fact - once to cross over Lower Thames St and then later on I used the 'expansive terrace' to enjoy the views while I made a phone call.
Ooh! I was able to share my new-found knowledge of pedways when a group of us stumbled upon one today!!
Thanks for making me feel smart!
Thanks for the link to the film which is well worth watching from beginning to end and explains really well why the idea arose and why it turned out as it has.

I know some architects who worked at the tail end of that idealistic era and remember some of the last remaining bomb sites - it made a lot of sense at the time. It also shows how far we have come since then from the point of view of accessibility, heritage and design quality for public realm.

In addition to Deptford, Brixton was due to get the same treatment, in which the whole market and shops would have been put on the podium level, but was spared, It would have been very similar to this plan for Piccadilly Circus.

The abutments and stubs of overhead bridges are still visible on two sides of the Recreation centre.

A great post, and valuable historic record, given how much the area changes. It will be interesting to see what improvements will be made to the connections when the new concert hall takes over the Museum of London site.
I've always thought that the Barbican highwalks would be the ideal spot for an invasion by Daleks.
On the point about the idea being "misguided" (my words in comment above), I think the proof is in the fact that most of these structures built in the postwar period have now been taken down. People don't like them, there's a perception they're dingy and unsafe, and businesses located on them struggle. Current best practice thinking among architects and town planners is that if walkers and traffic need to mix, then the right approach is to manage the traffic so they can do so safely and comfortably, not banish walkers off the face of the earth -- they were after all here first. But actually this sort of segregation isn't particularly good for traffic either. Most traffic journeys in busy urban centres and housing estates need to access individual properties, they're not just passing through.

Among the other problems are the issues with accessibility which have been mentioned with other posters -- which can only be solved by installing lifts, which are expensive to maintain, or lengthening journeys and increasing the 'footprint' with ramped access. And walkers tend to find their way most easily in straight lines on a two-dimensional plane, which is why many people find grade-separated walkways difficult to navigate. You can see this with the amount of directional signing and wayfinding they've had to install on the Barbican highwalks, and people still get lost.

There is possibly an argument to say that segregated and grade separated walkways can work as places where people like to walk (some of the underground ones seem to work well, like those in Toronto and at Canary Wharf, although they're essentially shopping malls that depend on high footfall) -- so long as they're well maintained. But they are high maintenance and rapidly fall into neglect when they're not looked after. The fact that the Barbican highwalks are still there while the Pepys ones have gone says something about the different demographics of those two estates.

Overall, there's a reason why the traditional mixed-use street has been with us through several millennia of urban design. If you'll pardon the cliché, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Next time you’re in Norfolk take a wander to the UEA campus. The whole campus is built using the pedway concept, you may have noticed before when you visited the Sainsbury centre of course but if not take a walk through the wider campus.
I walk past the Suffolk Lane pedway regularly. Temporary barriers were installed a couple of weeks ago to close it, when we had a little snow from so-called "Beast from the East". Dangerously slippery, apparently.

That snow barely lasted the weekend but the barriers have remained. We have just had the Mini-Beast, and what little snow it added has gone too. And the barriers are still there.

I wonder how long it will be until the Powers That Be deem the pedway safe enough to risk us the little pedestrians using it again. (The alternative is of course to dice with death among the traffic and their fumes on Thames Street.)
Update: the Suffolk Lane pedway is still barriered off. I hope is it not closed permanently.










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