London required a total change of pace. We went from driving around with our lunch, water, snacks and wet weather gear in the back seat of the car, to being on foot with just backpacks. The list of things we both wanted to do in London was long. We only had 2 weeks and the list would have kept us going for 2 years, but we gave it our best shot! Twelve days. Fifty-four things we managed to do/see/experience out of a much longer list. In this, and the next blog post, I will attempt to convey something of our time in London, and some of the things we did and experienced, in no particular order.
We walked, and we walked and we walked. By the time we had been there 2 weeks I’m sure my legs were a lot shorter than when I arrived. One of our favourite things to do in London is explore the city on foot, discovering layers of history, interesting little streets, buildings ancient and modern, and green spaces in surprising places. It always feels like an adventure.
At the end of the day, when our feet and knees were screaming that it was time to stop, and the backpack felt heavier than when the day started (even though we’d consumed all the food and water), and the nearest tube station was some distance away, then London did start to pall a little! But the next morning we’d be ready to embark on some new adventure and keen to get out and pound the streets again. ‘Foot care’ became an important part of the daily ritual (and knee care and back care….)
The biggest disappointment in London was our apartment. No photos of the interior this time because, although it was in a 1920s building and had lots of original art deco features and was quite large and light, it was also cramped and cluttered with lots of bad furniture and, what’s worse, it was grimy.
The lovely green park out our windows turned out to be over the road from a pub and from opening till closing time was occupied by loud drunks (usually the same drunks all day). In the evenings there was a daily drumming competition – two sets of rather competitive and not very good drummers getting louder and louder till the park closed at 9pm. So this accommodation gets another 2 out of 10 from us. And the ‘2’ is only for the location. It was in Grays Inn Road – within walking distance of the City and lots of the places we wanted to see on this trip.
We often walked to and from the City. Even though on our last trip when we had stayed in Westminster, and had been there for 6 weeks, there were lots of things that we’d not managed to do that we did manage this time. Such as visiting the Museum of London. It has a huge collection – more than 7 million objects – and there is a lot on display. Much of the story it tells is also the story of Britain but through objects found in the London area. The earliest stuff was interesting but you have never seen so many adze heads in one place and I got a bit adzed out. My favourite was the medieval room. I could have spent the whole visit just in that space.
The Museum is in the Barbican centre. It’s a part of central London that was so badly destroyed during the Blitz that it was decided to ignore the original street plan. The Barbican was built over what had been several blocks. Nearby are some quite large bits of the Roman wall that originally went around the Roman city of Londinium, and which largely defined the geography of the subsequent City of London.
And just outside the City stands the church of St Giles Cripplegate – a family church for both of us. Our first attempt to visit the church found it closed, but the second met with more success. The church was badly bombed in the war but the parish made the decision to have it reconstructed much the same as it had been beforehand. Some of the monuments from inside the church were saved, as was all their silver plate! Many famous people have strong connections with the church including Shakespeare who lived in the parish for a time and wrote 3 of his plays there; Sir Thomas More was baptised there, Oliver Cromwell was married there and John Milton’s family worshipped there. Milton himself was buried in the church.
We had hoped to see in the church of St Sepulchres (a family church for G.) but it was closed. Instead we had a lovely lunch in Greyfriars garden, which has been planted in the ruins of the former Greyfriars church – destroyed in the Blitz. It has become another of the many green spaces found right through London.
St Eltheldreda’s, in Ely place, was also closed on our first visit but we were able to see it on a second try. It was the medieval chapel of the Bishops of Ely. There is an undercroft (fancy word for basement) that is the same age but used for weddings so was decked out with a bar, DJ’s desk and circular tables as well as the usual gear that medieval bishops used! Apart from a section of Westminster Abbey it is the only surviving London building from the reign of King Edward I and gives a real insight into what a church would have looked like at that time. It was saved from the Great Fire only by a change in the wind, and also survived the Blitz. It is one of very few churches in the centre of London to have managed to stand through both events, although it needed a little restoration work after the latter. As part of this process a series of statues were placed high on the side walls, representing historical people who lived in the area at the time the church was built. They look great – until you discover that they are made of polystyrene. Rather spoils the effect!
Ely Place is an anomaly in a city of anomalies. It sits in the heart of London but is technically part of Cambridge. It is owned by the Crown and so it is gated, with limited access for vehicles and a security warden on the gates. In a tiny alley off Ely Place is the equally tiny Ye Old Mitre pub. If you didn’t know it was there you might never find it as it’s barely visible from the street. Clearly plenty of people do know it’s there, as it was very busy when we visited at a lunchtime with scores more arriving as we left. Legend has it that Elizabeth I danced around a cherry tree in front of the pub. The remains of the tree are now incorporated into the building. We sat in the main room, on wooden seats that looked very old, arranged around the perimeter of the room amongst small wooden tables, near a sign which asked patrons not to remove seats from around the walls. It felt more like a church meeting space than a pub.
As well as the Roman wall G. visited the Roman amphitheatre under the Guildhall and we both went to the Mithraeum, which is the remains of a Roman temple to the god Mithras. It’s under the new Bloomberg building in the City. The ground level in Roman times was about 7 metres lower than today! Originally discovered in the 1950s, on a bomb site, it has been reconstructed on its original site for the first time. Viewing the temple itself is very atmospheric – Bloomberg have done a good job. The only other Roman activity on this London visit was lots of roamin’ around the city.
The Guildhall art gallery is always a treat. It’s small and very doable in a fairly short time. They have a lot of art that relates to London. We went there mostly to see their Pre-Raphaelites, but found plenty else to enjoy including a gorgeous work by Frederic Leighton.
Another surprise here, because it wasn’t well publicised, was a fabulous exhibition about the art of the artist and ceramicist William de Morgan, who worked with William Morris and many of the Pre-Raphaelites. The exhibition looked at the influence of de Morgan’s famous mathematician father on his work. We lingered much longer than originally planned and both got a lot out of it.
While we were there London had a massive thunderstorm. We tried to leave but ended up sheltering under the verandah at the front, along with a lot of other people, and eating our lunch while we waited. Eventually we made a mad dash for the nearest place with coffee, which turned out to be an Italian wine bar full of suits. The coffee was priced accordingly – we have found prices vary from about A$5 to A$7 per cup. This one was at the top end, but the rain continued so we had two (each)! Even the Londoners were calling the weather atrocious, but it passed eventually and we could continue with our day.
Frederic Leighton, known as Lord Leighton (1830-1896) was working at the same time as the Pre-Raphaelites and was friends with many of them. He was well known in his lifetime and was President of the Royal Academy. He built a house with two things in mind – entertaining and art. It had a large purpose-built studio. We visited Leighton House Museum in Holland Park (after a pleasant walk from the tube through the park) and really enjoyed it. Holman Hunt lived around the corner and we could just imagine the parties involving his Pre-Raphaelite friends. He had art works on his walls by a number of the Pre-Raphaelites and had William de Morgan create ceramic tiles to decorate some of the rooms.
We visited 5 important houses in London, in all. London seems to have lots of little museums that were once houses of significant people. The William Morris Gallery was another that we dithered about seeing, as it was a distance from the centre of town and we begrudged the time spent in the underground when we only had two weeks. But as it happened it was on a really fast line – 15 minutes on the train and 15 minutes walk at each end, which is not bad by London standards.
The house is in the suburb of Walthamstow, which has a strong Islamic presence, but cheap looking housing and run-down shops. There was a large and lovely park and the gallery, in a very grand house where Morris did some of his growing up. We had expected to spend about an hour there but took a lot longer. There was a strong focus on his business – Morris & Co – and on processes used to make the textiles, wallpapers, embroideries and furniture and it was very well done. A section on his political beliefs and activities was excellent. There is a nice café where we could eat and have coffee outside in the park. It had good wifi, and a very nice shop. We came away with a much better understanding of Morris’s life and the things that motivated him. Oh, and did I mention that there is a lot of Pre-Raphaelite art there?
We have a fabulous book, in our own little UK library at home, called England’s Thousand Best Churches, by Simon Jenkins. We discovered it on our first trip to the UK and have used it this time as well. Jenkins has listed accessible churches, that have outstanding features, by county and rated them from one to five stars. Using this guide we have found some fantastic churches that we would never have discovered on our own, and we were keen to explore some of the London churches that he recommends.
We discovered that the city churches can be tricky to access – they are not left open and unattended like the country churches, and so keeping these city buildings accessible depends on finding enough volunteers. A group has recently formed called The Friends of the City Churches. They manage the church buildings of several churches and provide volunteers to keep them open a few days per week. We struck it lucky with a couple we tried (and were out of luck with several others that were closed).
After the Great Fire of 1666 Sir Christopher Wren was given the task of rebuilding St Pauls and many of the fire damaged churches. His churches are all different. He designed them using the original footprint of each church, and often the congregation requested he reproduce particular features that they had liked from their old church.
St Mary Abchurch is one such small Wren church in The City, built when Wren was trying out some ideas for the dome in St Pauls. Its four walls support the dome without columns. It is what Jenkins describes as a ‘complete Wren interior’, having not had anyone muck it about over the centuries. It has fabulous wooden carving behind the altar (called a reredos), done by Grinling Gibbons, who was a master carver whose work is in Hampton Court, Windsor Castle, St Pauls, and many of the great houses from that time. It was said that he ‘gave to wood the loose and airy lightness of flowers’. Jenkins gave it 3 stars and we thought he got the rating right but it was a very dark little church.
Just around the corner is St Stephen Walbrook, another Wren church. We walked in and were blown away. It is light and airy – no stained glass to stop the light getting in. There is another dome – bigger than St Mary Abchurch, and covered in floral carvings. The church has recently had a rearrange and now the altar is in the centre of the building with the seats right around it. The move was apparently a bit controversial, as was the new altar by the sculptor, Henry Moore. We loved this church and think it really deserved its 4 star status in Jenkins book.
We had many walks in and around the City, exploring little alleys and making pilgrimages to famous places. We renewed our acquaintance with Temple – which is like stepping back in time. It is one of the main legal areas of London and has many old buildings around courtyards with gardens and fountains. Such a delight to stroll through. We revisited Postman’s Park, not far from St Pauls, where there is a wall of decorated ceramic tiles commemorating ordinary people who have done extraordinary acts of bravery. The tiles were designed by William de Morgan. We walked through Lincolns Inn Fields, the largest public square in London and mentioned in literature by people such as Charles Dickens. We strolled through Charterhouse Square and through the site of Smithfield meat market with its decorative Victorian flourishes. We checked out the sites of a number of homes of ancestors. Sadly all gone, either in the Blitz or in the slum clearances.
We visited Bunhill Fields, where John Bunyan and Daniel Defoe are buried, and so were some of my ancestors in the 18th century. Most of the graves are fenced off so that we could only gaze at them forlornly across the iron fence rather than get in amongst them and read the inscriptions. I spent a morning at the London Metropolitan Archives trying to find the location of some of their graves but drew a blank. G. had more luck visiting one of the large city cemeteries where he was able to locate the approximate site of the burial of one of his ancestors.
Next to Bunhill Fields is the John Wesley Chapel. It was closed when we were there and I hoped to return but never made it. I have London ancestors who were friends of John and Charles Wesley and would have worshipped here so I would have liked to see the interior but had to make do with the outside this time.
We visited the Silver Vaults, which I had read about but hadn’t really intended to seek out. Then late one afternoon, as we were walking along Chancery Lane, headed for home after a day in the city, we spotted them and couldn’t resist the temptation to look. The vaults are underground and contain dozens of little shops selling a huge range of silver. After a bag search you descend the stairs and enter the vaults through a massively, thick door. Once in there the ceilings are low and the shops mostly small. We peeked in the doors but the proprietors had clearly judged that we were tourists and not likely to purchase and so they mostly ignored us. They were right – we oooh-ed and aah-ed at the beautiful things but were not tempted to buy. No photos allowed in the Silver Vaults, unfortunately.
And no photos in Leighton House, either. But we made up for that everywhere else, taking several thousand photos in our twelve days in London. More of our London exploits in the next blog, very soon!
What we would do again
- Self catering accommodation
- Stay close to the city
- Try to see more good London churches
What we would not do again
- Stay at the same accommodation
- Actually we would do everything else again!
What I did on my holiday 
The silver vaults!! I ran across them when I was 19 and spent 2 days in London before heading to summer school in France. I still remember them clearly, and have a toast rack from there. Amazing that they are still there 50 years later.
Sally S.
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Glad you enjoyed the trip down memory lane!
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