July 2021 – slightly weird

23rd July 202129th July 2021

The Royal Exchange and a quick stroll through Leadenhall Market

Friday, 23rd July (with the 13th briefly), 2021

The distance from Hackney to the Royal Exchange and Cornhill

On my second visit to Cornhill, I decided that with only one goal (St Peters) I’d start off with a visit to the Royal Exchange. I’m pretty sure it was closed for a while since it’s a collection of high end shops and a Fortnum and Mason’s restaurant. The view of and from the main entrance has always been one of my favourites in The City.

Reflections at Wormwood Street — Even before I’d got off the bus, I was engaged with this view through the bus window, a very clear reflection of the Old City on a New City glass front

I took the bus from Liverpool Street Station intending to get off just after the intersection, but the stop was quite a distance west. I stopped right outside the Bloomberg Arcade and it would have been tempting to spend some time there too, but if I don’t focus these days, my main destination slips my grasp. Best to hurry on, eyes averted from all the photo opps, and head directly for – in this case – the Royal Exchange.

Mary Harris Smith was an accountant and entrepreneur. She became the first woman to complete the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales qualification but was denied membership because she was a woman. This plaque is on the City of London Magistrates’ Court

St Stephen Walbrook, by Bloomberg Arcade

I almost did it but I chose to travel on the back streets – Bucklersbury, St Stephens Row and Mansion House Place – and got a tiny bit distracted along the way…

Hawksmoor’s St Mary Woolnoth – a clumsy looking church with a very ornate gilded gate. The site has been used for worship for at least 2,000 years. Partially destroyed in the Great Fire, it was repaired by Wren and rebuilt by Hawksmoor after it was found to be unsafe. It reopened in 1727. It’s used by London’s German-speaking Swiss community, and is the official London church of British Columbia, Canada

Lombard Street runs between King William Street and the Royal Exchange. It’s a lovely curved narrow street that I must look at more carefully soon

The Royal Exchange is a fantastic building. It looks so impressive and when I first stepped inside many years ago, I was surprised to see that it was really a shopping mall, but a high end one with Tiffany’s, Hermes, Aspinall, Jo Malone, and Fortnum & Mason occupying some of its space. This year it is celebrating its 450th anniversary.

There’s a lot of history in this building so here are some of the highlights.

The original Royal Exchange, a trading floor, was opened by Queen Elizabeth I in 1571. Thomas Gresham, an English merchant and financier, added two additional floors of shops to the original trading floor creating Britain’s first shopping mall in 1660. Only six years later the Great Fire destroyed the building and in 1669 a second site was opened this time with merchants and brokers. In 1838 it was again destroyed by a fire on Lombard Street. In 1844 Sir William Tite won an architectural competition to design the third (and current) Royal Exchange. He reverted to the original layout and included an imposing, eight-column entrance inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. The building was officially opened by Queen Victoria in 1844.

To more modern times – in the 1980s, The Royal Exchange briefly became a trading floor again, and the roof was replaced. In 2001 the Grade I-listed building was extensively remodelled by architects Aukett Fitzroy Robinson, and was transformed into a luxury shopping and dining destination. Though an entirely different building from his original design, the modern-day The Royal Exchange pays homage to its founder in its gilded copper grasshopper weathervane – a symbol taken from the Gresham family crest.

Grasshopper! — The weathervane with a grasshopper, to honour Thomas Gresham (taken by Krish, the tall one!)

The Royal Exchange entrance is very beautiful — The entrance is very beautiful

If you stand at the entrance, there’s a great view towards central London. Right now it isn’t as wonderful as it was. So much is lost by Fortnum and Mason’s bow to the pandemic outdoor terrace and its patio umbrellas.

If the exterior is impressive, the interior is just as eyecatching, if not more. The F&M colour scheme rules these days and some of the shops haven’t reopened since closing for the first lockdown, but the overall effect is beautiful.

Fortnum and Mason tea in one of its boutiques

Looks so Italian! — If Gresham was inspired by Belgium, the overall feeling to me is Italian. I think I could be in a grand galliera in Milan or Turin

Continue reading “The Royal Exchange and a quick stroll through Leadenhall Market”

23rd July 202118th September 2021

A walk to Cornhill – 2: St Michaels and St Peters

13 and 23 July, 2021

Cornhill, first mentioned in the 12th century, is a ward and a street in The City. The street goes between Bank and Leadenhall Street. Cornhill is one of the three ancient hills of London, the other being Tower Hill and Ludgate Hill. This was the site of the Roman forum of Londinium, and later a corn market, which gave the area its name. Here also was the first underground public toilet, which cost 1d, creating the term ‘to spend a penny.’ Today, the street is associated with opticians and makers of things like microscopes and telescopes. To me, it’s just a beautiful street with some stunning architecture.

Finally we reached St Michael’s Cornhill, but before we went into the church, we wandered down St Michael’s Alley. At the bottom is The Jamaica Wine House, known by locals as The Jampot. The red sandstone building dates from 1869 and was designed in art nouveau style. Many of the original features are still here, On this site in 1652, London’s first ever coffee house opened. Samuel Pepys was one of its earliest patrons. There’s a lovely detail from the original coffee house, Pasqua Rosée. At the back there are medieval courtyards.

At the back, a glimpse of St Michael's Tower — At the back, a glimpse of St Michael’s Tower

With not much time before evensong begun, we went back to the church.

In front there is a beautiful war memorial.

The World War One monument — DURING THE / GREAT WAR / 1914–1919 / THE NAMES WERE / RECORDED ON THIS / SITE OF 2130 MEN / WHO FROM OFFICES / IN THE PARISHES OF / THIS UNITED BENEFICE / VOLUNTEERED TO / SERVE THEIR COUNTRY / IN THE NAVY AND / ARMY + OF THESE / IT IS KNOWN THAT / AT LEAST 170 GAVE / THEIR LIVES FOR THE / FREEDOM OF / THE WORLD.

St Benet le Fink and St Peter le Poer — The two parishes of Benet (short for Benedict) le Fink and Peter le Poer (thought to be a reference to the poverty of the medieval area) were united to St. Michael’s upon the demolition of the former church. But ‘le Fink’? Not sure about that

For those who love historical and architectural detail, St Michael Cornhill was built over the northern part of the great Roman Forum. It’s a medieval church with the original building lost in the Great Fire of London, leaving just the tower. It’s been in existence since 1055 and was under the patronage of The Drapers’ Company during the 15th century. The present Gothic Revival style church is attributed to architects Christopher Wren (there’s doubt about that), with Nicholas Hawksmoor between 1669 and 1672. The tower was designed by Wren and Hawksmoor in the ‘Gothick’ style between 1718 and 1722. It has twelve bells cast by the Phelps Foundry of Whitechapel. Sir George Gilbert Scott, architect of the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, remodelled the interior in the High Victorian manner between 1857 and 1860. It has Tuscan columns and still has pre-Victorian features, with panelling and sculptures dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. The Church escaped serious damage in the Second World War and the interior was restored in 1960, with the roofs and the nave of the tower being renewed in 1975.

There’s a very interesting organ in the church. It’s built so that two parts join at a 90 degree angle. The sound was very full, but the recording I made didn’t bring that out so I was disappointed. There have been some famous organists, some serving the church for many decades. The present organist has been there for over fifty years, a fact Krish and I found quite astounding. It must be humblng to sit at the organ and play on it knowing how many other hands have touched the keys and produced music. I’m a bit sad that my recording was so poor because it was an unusual piece being played. I did find this video online that may very well be the sort of music I heard – not your normal choral sound. It’s too bad that there is a focus on hands and feet and no pull back to see the organ itself.

In this photo you can see the right angles of the organ

Continue reading “A walk to Cornhill – 2: St Michaels and St Peters”

12th July 202118th September 2021

A walk to Cornhill – 1: Elizabeth Line and Austin Friars

Monday, 12 July, 2021

Krish has been walking from Liverpool Street Station to Guy’s Hospital three times a week for a while now. He gets excited about what he sees along the way. As always, The City feels infinitely explorable. How else can you walk around the streets so often and still discover something new and interesting. He discovered some City boundary bollards and the church of St Michael’s Cornhill. The last time he’d walked by, he’d seen that there was a choral evensong on Mondays and asked if I wanted to go. Sure!

So off we went. Krish had been at the hospital in the morning, came home for his lunch by 2pm, and by 4:30pm we were off again retracing his earlier footsteps.

I had a very hard time choosing which photos to show you since it felt like every step of the way there was something that was interesting, eye-catching, and almost certainly with a fascinating back story, and so there are a lot of photos.

In fact, I took so many photos and found so many interesting things along the way, I’m dividing my walk into two blogs. It may even become three, since next week I hope to go back to Cornhill to look at a couple of other things, and may even make it to the Royal Exchange. It will be hot so you just never know how long this will take and when and if this will all happen. Suspense!

This, then, is the first blog where I’ll talk about the Elizabeth Line and about Austin Friars.

Liverpool Street Station has had a metamorphosis while I’ve been pandemicking (did I just coin a word, and is it any coincidence that if you take the middle bit of it out you get ‘panicking’?). The north end of the station (I’m terrible with compass locations, but bear with me) which was the more modern Broadgate Circle, has now become a larger Broadgate area with new shops and restaurants. There’s a bank of escalators now that leads to this complex – I walked along here the day I helped a lady find her bus. That day I’d planned to look around and find some lunch but helping her foiled that plan. And now I see that I need to visit again and take photos and discover what might be here. Sometimes the infinity I’ve mentioned above weighs on me, but then it’s exciting to think that I’m actually unlikely to run out things to look at and see, especially if things keep changing.

Why the redevelopment? Well, it’s because of the new Elizabeth Line, which is expected to open in the first half of 2022. The new line is ambitious at 69 miles long and will shorten the journey and reduce connections for anyone travelling to or from Heathrow Airport.

Nine new Elizabeth line stations are being delivered as part of the Crossrail programme – Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Custom House and Woolwich.

For me, the savings in time isn’t that major with 50 minutes versus an average hour and ten minutes from Liverpool Street, but it’s good that there are no changes. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing it finished and, although I’m not keen on the tube, having my first ride.

But enough of the rail services – the walk has only just begun. Here’s a YouTube video for you, though:

Krish told me he’d found a secret alleyway. He’d noticed it and then one day decided to walk down it to see where it led. I didn’t take a photo before going down, since I had no idea what I’d find once there. I did find it online, though – with apologies to the original photographer.

Entrance to Austin Friars Passage — If you aren’t paying attention, it’s easy to miss this entrance to Austin Friars Passage, Krish’s secret alley. Credit Iansvisits for this photo. He writes a lot about this alley too

The secret alleyway he’d discovered was Austin Friars Passage. He’d unlocked an area that has such a rich history, it’s hard to know where to begin, so I’ll take a simple approach. In this area there was once a priory for some Augustinian monks. Austin is just a short form of Augustinian – who knew! It was probably founded in the 1260s and dissolved in November 1538. It covered an area of about 5.5 acres consisting of a church at the centre , with a complex of buildings behind it providing accommodation, refreshment and study space for friars and visiting students. There were also gardens where the friars grew vegetables, fruit and medicinal herbs.

The sign here says 1853 but the wall is much older — The sign, a boundary marker for All Hallows Wall, on this old bulging wall says 1853 but there’s another parish marker dating from 1715 – from the since-demolished church of St Peter le Poer. I missed photographing the older sign

Old and new signs in Austin Friars Passage — Old and new signs at the far end of Austin Friars Passage. Pater & Co was mostly likely stockbrokers. closed in 1923. You can clearly see the Victorian tiling that lines this narrow passage