The Westway's 55th birthday: from urban eyesore to cultural icon
As millions of Londoners, Britons and tourists flock to Notting Hill over the August bank holiday weekend for the one of the world’s largest street festivals, few will miss the vast concrete pillars holding up the Westway road above them that marks its 55th birthday this summer.
To modern eyes, the idea of an eight-lane road rearing up within central London and then snaking 2.5 miles alongside the roofs of tightly packed inner-city housing seems delusional, selfish and bad for both the environment and the societies living beneath it.
But the idea was born in the wake of the destruction of large areas of central London by the aerial bombardment in the Second World War and an associated appetite to take an innovative and modernist approach to urban development. However, as is common with major construction projects, enthusiasm had turned into approbation by the time of its opening in late July 1970.
Even more breathtaking is the fact that it is just one spur of an interconnected network of high-flying roads that was planned to create a “motorway box” that would have hovered over Camden, Islington and Hackney in the north, and Battersea, Clapham and Lewisham in the south.
Even that was just one part of a larger London Ringways projects that was cancelled in 1973. Indeed, the fierce local resistance to the Westway project and the impact it had on local communities in many ways served as the starting point for subsequent anti-road development movements, which reached their peak with the demonstrations against the Newbury bypass and the M11 link road.
Complicated and contested
Despite its unpopularity, it is now an intrinsic part of London’s western infrastructure, and it is hard to imagine life without it. And as is so often the case with such dominating pieces of construction, Londoners adapt and form their own interpretations of it, like water filling up vacant spaces.
The zone under its giant concrete struts has thus evolved into an unexpectedly vibrant hub for artistic endeavours and grassroots initiatives. During the 1970s, following prolonged abandonment, community advocates campaigned for the land to serve the public interest. This activism resulted in establishing the Westway Trust, which now manages 23 acres of space under the highway.
The area now houses athletic complexes, local centres, and even a city farm. Notable features include the famous Portobello Green with its bustling markets, and the formerly infamous Acklam Hall, which emerged as a celebrated venue for punk and reggae music during the 1980s. The harsh concrete environment that once represented forced relocation has been transformed in many areas by the same neighbourhoods it had initially displaced.
However, the Westway and its surrounding areas continue to be complicated, difficult, disputed, and essential spaces. One Traveller community has underneath a tangle of flyovers near Latimer Road tube station in North Kensington as an official site since 1975 (but for decades before that) and now has Westfield shopping centre at its neighbour.
A drive for music and art
Whatever its origins, the Westway become a symbol of London at its most modern and most gritty, depending on your viewpoint. As a result, it has seeped into an array of cultural and musical outputs. Within literature, JG Ballard's 1974 work Concrete Island follows an architect who becomes stranded like Robinson Crusoe on a wedge-shaped piece of land where the roads meet after his vehicle crashes following a puncture.
This tale unfolds in the area between the M4 and Westway, a location that also features in Ballard's earlier novel Crash from 1973 that tells a story of a group of car fanatics who develop an unusual psychological fixation on accidents, particularly those involving famous individuals, and derive sexual excitement from recreating and being involved in vehicular crashes themselves.
The 1979 film Radio On by Chris Petit, a road movie, features several scenes of the Westway while the area beneath this elevated road served as a location for filming riot scenes in both Breaking Glass and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology series included a time-lapse sequence showing the Westway's construction in its episode about the Black activists, the Mangrove Nine. Additionally, from 1997 to 2005, BBC World Service broadcast a radio soap opera called Westway that focused on the local community living around the road, but which ended 20 years ago.
Several British rock groups have referenced the Westway in their music. The Clash mentioned the highway in their track London's Burning, with Joe Strummer characterising their sound as embodying "the sound of the Westway”. And as if to sum up that cocktail of modernity and urban grit, The Jam photographed the cover of their 1977 record This Is the Modern World beneath the Westway overpass.
Even that was just one part of a larger London Ringways projects that was cancelled in 1973. Indeed, the fierce local resistance to the Westway project and the impact it had on local communities in many ways served as the starting point for subsequent anti-road development movements, which reached their peak with the demonstrations against the Newbury bypass and the M11 link road.
Complicated and contested
Despite its unpopularity, it is now an intrinsic part of London’s western infrastructure, and it is hard to imagine life without it. And as is so often the case with such dominating pieces of construction, Londoners adapt and form their own interpretations of it, like water filling up vacant spaces.
The zone under its giant concrete struts has thus evolved into an unexpectedly vibrant hub for artistic endeavours and grassroots initiatives. During the 1970s, following prolonged abandonment, community advocates campaigned for the land to serve the public interest. This activism resulted in establishing the Westway Trust, which now manages 23 acres of space under the highway.
The area now houses athletic complexes, local centres, and even a city farm. Notable features include the famous Portobello Green with its bustling markets, and the formerly infamous Acklam Hall, which emerged as a celebrated venue for punk and reggae music during the 1980s. The harsh concrete environment that once represented forced relocation has been transformed in many areas by the same neighbourhoods it had initially displaced.
However, the Westway and its surrounding areas continue to be complicated, difficult, disputed, and essential spaces. One Traveller community has underneath a tangle of flyovers near Latimer Road tube station in North Kensington as an official site since 1975 (but for decades before that) and now has Westfield shopping centre at its neighbour.
A drive for music and art
Whatever its origins, the Westway become a symbol of London at its most modern and most gritty, depending on your viewpoint. As a result, it has seeped into an array of cultural and musical outputs. Within literature, JG Ballard's 1974 work Concrete Island follows an architect who becomes stranded like Robinson Crusoe on a wedge-shaped piece of land where the roads meet after his vehicle crashes following a puncture.
This tale unfolds in the area between the M4 and Westway, a location that also features in Ballard's earlier novel Crash from 1973 that tells a story of a group of car fanatics who develop an unusual psychological fixation on accidents, particularly those involving famous individuals, and derive sexual excitement from recreating and being involved in vehicular crashes themselves.
The 1979 film Radio On by Chris Petit, a road movie, features several scenes of the Westway while the area beneath this elevated road served as a location for filming riot scenes in both Breaking Glass and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology series included a time-lapse sequence showing the Westway's construction in its episode about the Black activists, the Mangrove Nine. Additionally, from 1997 to 2005, BBC World Service broadcast a radio soap opera called Westway that focused on the local community living around the road, but which ended 20 years ago.
Several British rock groups have referenced the Westway in their music. The Clash mentioned the highway in their track London's Burning, with Joe Strummer characterising their sound as embodying "the sound of the Westway”. And as if to sum up that cocktail of modernity and urban grit, The Jam photographed the cover of their 1977 record This Is the Modern World beneath the Westway overpass.
And it will be music that will echo under the Westway this weekend and every bank holiday weekend for decades to come. The rhythmic call of steelpan drumming, the Trinidadian sound of soca, the slavery resistance J’ouvert tunes will rival the scores of sound systems that will line the streets as the carnival floats pass through.
The Westway and carnival have separate histories — the latter started in the area in 1966 after moving from St Pancras in north London. But the monolithic road stands as a concrete testament to London's capacity for reinvention—where a symbol of urban planning controversy has become the backdrop for one of the world's greatest celebrations of Caribbean culture, proving that even the most divisive infrastructure can support the rhythms of urban life.