Town Mouse Tom Hodgkinson

Motorways and flyovers are not generally considered to be romantic places, but there is something magical and even beautiful about Westway, the threeand-a-half miles of flyover between Shepherd’s Bush and Marylebone in west London.

I am intimately acquainted with this ribbon of concrete, as my office, in a building called Great Western Studios, is directly beneath the section of the flyover near Paddington, and all day we can hear the muted roar of traffic overhead.

Ah – for twelve bucolic years, my study looked out on to the green fields and hedgerows on Exmoor, and now I look at Crossrail. But both are equally fascinating. It seems strange to feel affection towards an ugly piece of concrete, but I do.

Many other enterprising town mice live or work or mess about underneath this mighty monument to utility and progress. At Paddington, there are the brightly painted canal boats with names such as Lazy Bones and Dream Catcher, whose owners have found some sort of freedom from the hurly-burly.

At the other end of Westway, next to the Westfield shopping centre, there is a gypsy traveller site for around forty families. Some days, they let their ponies graze on the grass-covered traffic island.

At different points under Westway there are skate parks, gardens with honeybees, studios for small businesses, retail outlets, gig venues, playgrounds, sports centres, social clubs, football pitches, tennis courts, schools, Malayan takeaways; all life is here. A road development that looked as it if it would tear a community apart has, in fact, helped bring it together.

The idea for a road connecting Wood Lane with the West End was first mooted in the early Sixties. The idea was to reduce congestion at Shepherd’s Bush. Work on Westway began in 1964 and the road was completed in 1970.

Then, in 1971, following protests from locals who now had four lanes of traffic thundering past their windows, the North Kensington Amenity Trust was created in order to take the newly created 23 acres of wasteland under the road and make good use of them, a project that seems to have worked brilliantly.

Musicians have long been alive to Westway’s charms or lack thereof. The Clash’s Mick Jones grew up in a block overlooking it and, in their song London’s Burning, Joe Strummer complains, ‘What a great traffic system; it’s so bright.’ Blur performed a ballad called Under the Westway, and the cover picture for the Jam’s 1977 album This is the Modern World shows the band standing under Westway’s concrete support, with tower blocks in the background.

In the Seventies, a row of abandoned cottages next to Westway became the site of a radical social experiment led by hippie activist Nicholas Albery, Time Bandits star David Rappaport and poet Heathcote Williams. The Republic of Frestonia was a group of squatted houses on Freston Road, which survived for around five years. They had their own stamps and, by the end, the community numbered 120.

The Frestonians claimed they were not a part of the UK, and even got respect from Sir Geoffrey Howe at the time. ‘As one who had childhood enthusiasm for The Napoleon of Notting Hill, I can hardly fail to be moved by your aspirations,’ he wrote to them.

Frestonia became the site of much fascinating cultural activity, including the Car Breaker Gallery, led by sculptor Joe Rush, whose fantastical creations are still to be seen at Glastonbury Festival every year. The Clash recorded their album Combat Rock in the People’s Hall, a Victorian community centre, which still stands today and houses a trendy art gallery that opened just last year.

Westway continued to host cultural projects into the Nineties. The offices of John Brown Publishing, of Viz fame, opened up in a block overlooking the road. Brown’s business was a great success and he purchased an estate in Cornwall on the proceeds of the sale of it.

He now has an office on Portobello Road, just a few yards from where the Westway crosses it, and runs a number of small enterprises. Brown is also on the advisory board of the company that owns this very magazine. So you could say that The Oldie is connected to the Westway in indirect fashion.

Though built with no eye for aesthetics, Westway has its own sort of beauty in places. It creates an elegant curve as it bends over the canal and there is something pleasing about the massive solidity of its supports.

Last year, the Westway story took a tragic turn when Grenfell Tower burned down in the shadow of the flyover. The shock waves of this disaster are unimaginable, and the trauma will last for generations, since thousands were affected. Every time I cycle to the office, I see the building, now covered in some sort of plastic stuff, and feel a stab of pain.

The North Kensington Amenity Trust has now been renamed the Westway Trust and seems to be engaged, as far as I can tell from its website, in a process of trying to decide what to do with its land. I also see on the internet that the Grenfell Action Group – which predicted the fire – has criticised the trust for spending too much on salaries and not enough on the community.

And so it goes on, life in the concrete jungle, joy and woe forever mixed.