Toilet Map

With all the talk of council funded toilets being closed because they are too expensive to maintain, one former Victorian toilet block has been turned into a temporary art gallery.

Image courtesy BBC News

On the first day of opening the organisers said about 80 people visited, with 40 coming the following day.

A nice idea, but I also can’t help but wonder how many people would have visited the venue were it were still performing the function for which it was originally designed.

Actually, I wonder how many turned up expecting it to be performing its original function!

More at the BBC News website.

An occasional series about some of the conveniences listed in the Toilet Map.

Probably the main set of public toilets used in Greenwich town centre, these subterranean Victorian style toilets are looking a little sorry for themselves today.

Functional, although on the day I visited it was raining, and I hope the water on the floor was rainwater, and not the results of neglected plumbing!

In need of sympathetic repairs to the men’s urinal where the protective layers are wearing away, the four dark wood cubicles seems to date from the time when cubicles might be charged for – especially as one still has the word “Free” in faded lettering on the top.

I haven’t been able to easily find out when they were built, although I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that they are built at the same time as the railway that runs underground right next to them, but that is just speculation.

A nice touch is that the wash basins are still in a separate room from the main urinals, as would have been fairly commonplace at the time they were built. The toilets themselves extend under the pavement, where glass bricks let plenty of light in below and prevent it having the air of a dank dark hole.

Obviously, as a bloke, I am not going to be peering into the ladies toilets, and handing my camera over to a passer-by to take a photo for me would probably get me arrested. Likewise, one of the reasons why the main Toilet Map lacks photos of the exteriors is the difficulty of getting a photo without someone in the way – although I could adopt the Google method of burring out faces if people really want photos in the future.