Vauxhall Cross Box

[Dalekoracle]

Mike Rymill has sent me this image of a Met Box that appeared briefly during a documentary on Dr Beechings railway reforms that was on the BBC the other day.
There was no mention of where it was, and seems to have been used as a generic London street scene from the time.



Anyone got any ideas as to where this might be in London?

Mark

[Dalekoracle]

Aha! Its L8 - down on the Albert Embankment.

Heres the current Google Map view...

https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=+albert+embankment+,+london&hl=en&ll=51.487035,-0.123317&spn=0.007963,0.022058&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=10.509332,19.753418&t=h&hnear=Albert+Embankment,+London+Borough+of+Lambeth,+London,+United+Kingdom&layer=c&cbll=51.486924,-0.123334&panoid=64-XeUFQRCeQ78Ch1s9AiA&cbp=12,2.92,,0,0.78&z=16

That puts the box roughly behind the MI6 building.



Box was located via Gavin Rymil, through Twitter, and the expert knowledge of a London Cabbie called Shedboy!

Mark

[hb88banzai]

Awesome!

It's probably a bit further away from the buildings than in your street view when taking the ultra wide angle lens they use into account. Probably closer to where the Met List puts it. I'll move and link everything up and look into the OS Map situation to pin it down even closer.

Sharp eyes all around!

[hb88banzai]

Yep, just up from the entrance to Vauxhall Station.



This is from just a bit further back to get the right angle, but the footage was probably taken from the elevated pedestrian bridge on the right. Ignore the position pointer from this angle as Google Maps street view gets way, way off the further away you are from the location. Actual position is a couple of arches past the Suzuki sign (see below).

Here's the 1951 OS Map --



The Box is the hollow square under the "PCB" at centre of map. Note that the sidewalk is much wider now.

This is where Google Maps places the coordinates shown on the map --



URL:  http://maps.google.com/maps?q=51.486750,+-0.123086&hl=en&ll=51.487175,-0.123349&spn=0.000013,0.007714&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.690438,63.193359&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=51.486761,-0.123349&panoid=BPxpmzLcgKZt2k0ktOZ6XQ&cbp=12,93.01,,0,0.34

[hb88banzai]

Aha!

Finally identified another of the "unknown" photos.

Without further ado, here is this Box circa 1950 --



This photo was quite possibly taken very near the end of the Trams in 1952, as another Tram on this route during its last run had the same advertisements on the sides and looked pretty much identical (but was identified as Tram 1813 instead of 1812).

I've taken the liberty of renaming this Box the "Vauxhall Cross Box" - though it was on Albert Embankment, the new title localizes it much more closely.

After a long and fruitless search for this Box and information about Route 24, I had to obtain a 1950 Tram and Trolleybus Map to ferret out exactly where Tram Route 24 went in the time period most likely shown in the photo (the route was different before the war), and found it could only be this Box - L8.

If you look at the capture from the BBC documentary in the first posting you can see the same building in the background as is visible on the left of the Tram in the c1950 photo.

A blowup of the Box --



Part of the problem in identifying this Box was that the routes changed over the years and no source on line covered Route 24 with any clarity, hence the need for the Map. Once I had that, everything came together. No other Box on the post-war Route 24 was even close to being right. Then I found another photo that cinched it (though too early to show the Box itself).

The other difficulty is that this image was originally labeled as being "PenhallRoadPoliceBoxcopy" when it was first posted on the old Board (in the "Now and Then" thread). When we finally got access to the Met List we found there was no Box on Penhall Road, with the nearest being R3 on Woolwich Road off of Charlton Lane in Charlton. Though at first blush R3 looked promising, on closer examination none of the topography as it existed at the time (thank you, Ordnance Survey) lined up at all well with the photo (to say nothing of the fact that it wasn't on Route 24, though it was quite near the bone yards where all the old Trams were laid to rest at Penhall Road). So, lots of red herrings.

This is the way Vauxhall Cross looked in August of 1936, just one year before the Box was installed --



Here's a much higher resolution closeup of the area where the Box was located (towards the right near where the tracks curve per both the photo and the OS Map/Google Maps), together with what lay beyond it, further up the Albert Embankment, to compare with the same areas in both the original screen capture and the new c1950 photo --



Much clearer here that the building with the distinctive chimney visible in both Box photos is the same. It all looks even more like the c1950 photo than the late 1960s screen capture - building, service station, advertisements, etc.

[peterjohn]

Finally managed to sell a couple of my original photographs on eBay...So able to post on here now... 

Enjoy!


L8 Vauxhall Cross, Clapham [30th September 1950]

[dr hue]

L8

1958

[peterjohn]

Seeing this reminded me that I have two packs of 5 original Photographs (Featuring Police Boxes) for sale on eBay..

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266571021478
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/266571019745

While I'm here let me add another photo of L8 from around about 1965......