our london adventure: Storming the Castle

You know those things in your neighbourhood that you walk, drive, or ride past on a regular basis, but that you've never actually visited? Well, today we ventured into two such places close to home--they're actually right next to each other. The Stoke Newington West Reservoir Centre is a decommissioned water reservoir which has been turned into a 30-acre water-activities centre, now the home of the North London Sailing Association. The centre itself is housed in a fantastic old building:

This now unused panel in the entranceway is a beautiful reminder of the building's former use.

Although there are several small community-centre style rooms on both sides of the main foyer, the central area itself is the most wonderfully evocative (and also apparently underused):

The centre has a small café with a nice patio

that overlooks the reservoir itself. It's a shame that the café isn't better publicised, since the reservoir is a lovely, tranquil spot.

From the West Reservoir Centre, we walked to the neighbouring castle (regular readers may recall that I showed you a distant silhouette of this remarkable building back in the spring):

Formerly a pumping station, the building was completed in 1856 as part of a plan to bring clean water to a cholera-ridden London. The Victorians liked their service buildings to have some flair, and William Chadwell Mylne is said to have based his design for the pumping station on Stirling Castle, which is perhaps less surprising when you learn that he was the eighth generation in a family of Scottish builders, including Robert Mylne, who was responsible for rebuilding Edinburgh's Holyrood Palace in the 1600s. The resulting structure initially contained six steam engines, while the towers (from left to right in the photo above) camouflaged other necessary elements for the works: a spiral staircase for roof access, the boiler-house chimney, and an elevated water tank that increased water pressure. By 1971 the building had long outlived its initial purpose and the current owner, the Metropolitan Water Board, applied for its demolition. After much debate, the building was heritage listed Grade 2* in 1974, thus designating it as a "particularly important building of more than special interest," but it remained unused. In 1988, the building was once again at risk of being sold, but only some of the surrounding land was sold, and the castle remained derelict. In 1994, plans were finally approved to renovate the interior into a climbing centre, and the castle was reborn in 1995 as the Castle Climbing Centre. Spread over a rabbit warren of three levels, and including a shop and a café, the interior of the castle is likely unique from any other castle you may come across!