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.
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.
In the courtyard, from where more alleys radiate, there’s the Dutch Church (Nederlandse Kerk Londen). The original church was granted to Protestant refugees for their church services in 1550 but was destroyed during the blitz. The new church was built between 1950 and 1954. Because the original dates from 1550, it is the oldest Dutch-language Protestant church in the world, and as such is known in The Netherlands as the mother church of all Dutch reformed churches. Right here in London. The church also celebrates individual freedom and is known for its liberal values. In 2016 the first same-sex wedding in a British church was confirmed here.
Going around the side to another cobbled laneway, the new City is ahead and so also is Drapers’ Hall. ‘More than six centuries ago a group of merchants came together to promote their trade in woollen cloth in the City of London. As their guild and fellowship grew, they made philanthropy part of the plan.’. It is one of the historic Great Twelve Livery Companies and was founded during the Middle Ages.
So much to see and learn from and we weren’t at our destination yet. As I’ve remarked, on such a walk you can begin to grasp how unfathomable London seems to be. Those famous words of Samuel Johnson, “Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford” can sound pompous and unlikely, but the more I see of it, the more I realise its density goes beyond space and time.
London isn’t for everyone. I hear tourists, even the most fervent, express distaste for its rough around the edges, dirty, chaotic look and feel. And, although I have a very long passion for London, I get that. I’ve never minded dirt or dereliction. I put it down to having grown up in the East End’s shabby streets. While others couldn’t wait to get away from that, I’ve continued to find it my comfort zone. The more neat and orderly a place is, the less interested I feel in it. I’m pleased that so much of London is under regeneration, and some of the modern areas are quite lovely, but I’m glad they are just oases among the older, scruffier streets. Were I to come back in a century or three, I have a feeling I would be overwhelmingly disappointed in what I would find. And that makes me wonder what those Augustinian friars would feel if they saw their priory area now.