Monday, 2 August, 2021
I have yet to exhaust the area around Cornhill. It would be easy to feel exhausted, to be fair. It’s like burrowing down in the earth, only to feel that you’ll never reach centre. Except that this burrowing is exciting, finding sparkly minerals as I go and part of me hoping there actually is no centre. I don’t have a clue how many days or hours I’d need since an inch away there’d be another countless layers of earth to burrow…I’ll just wish instead for a hundred more lifetimes, if that’s enough. Perhaps 100,000. So buckle up, this will be another long one.
My plan today was to see Pudding Lane and the Monument and then meet Krish. I went from Liverpool Street Station to Fenchurch Street on a grey day when I knew the photographs might not be as sparkly. In fact, London when it’s grey is just London, so best to capture it in its relaxed state.
From Fenchurch Street, I set my destination but I can’t resist an alley and I saw one that was quite wide, only loosely an alley, and thought it might be an interesting shortcut when I saw what looked like a pub at the bottom and a promise of another exit, so not a dead end.
But I was headed to Pudding Lane.
Pudding Lane is a small street in London, widely known as the location of Thomas Farriner’s bakery, where the Great Fire of London started in 1666.
This is where it’s said the Great Fire of London started (on 2 September 1666) at Thomas Farriner’s bakery, the King’s baker. It was on the eastern side of Pudding Lane, one of the first one-way roads in the world in 1617. Pudding wasn’t a sweet thing. It’s what the butchers called the offal that they took down to the river to the waste barges.
This sounds ‘romantic,’ but Pudding Lane today isn’t quaint or anything of the kind. Instead it’s a rather barren narrow street with some boring office building on either side. I was so unimpressed that I didn’t see the plaque to the bakery and fire that Google assures me is there. That teaches me to look more closely or do a little bit of research before I leave home.
Opposite where the bakery stood, is the Monument (The Monument to the Great Fire of London.) It’s 202 feet (52M) high and it was built that high to mark the bakery site, 202 feet west. It was designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke – a Doric column topped with a gilded urn of fire. (The Golden Boy of Pye Corner marks the spot where the fire was stopped, near Smithfield. See my blog that mentions it.) It’s closed now but inside there are 311 steps leading up to a viewing platform. At one time it would have had a great view of the river and The City.
Standing at the west side of the Monument at the wonderfully named Fish Hill, to the north is Monument Tube station and to the south is the river and St Magnus The Martyr church on Lower Thames Street. I haven’t been there for years but inside there’s a four metre model of the old London Bridge, and outside some masonry thought to be from the bridge.
I hadn’t been this close to the Monument for over a decade and I was amused by stone benches, which were engraved with the rhyme of ‘London’s burning.’ When I was a child, we would sing this in rounds, but I’m quite sure I had no idea at the time that it referred to the Great Fire. It was just fun to sing. As well as the benches there was a drinking fountain nearby with the rhyme engraved on a metal plaque.
Back on the street, the new London is back in sight, but around here there are many alleys connecting the long streets to others parallel.
Krish wanted to show me St Clements, ‘the oranges and lemons’ church, and an alley he’d discovered. It was built after the Great Fire, another Christopher Wren church – I have the impression of an immensely busy man whenever I think of him – and is off Eastcheap. Apparently cheap has nothing to do with frugality, although somewhat since it’s the old name for a market. This particular street was the east market.
I read that it’s no longer used as a church, but houses charity offices, so I won’t be going inside. Outside, though, the views are lovely! There are gorgeous details on the buildings and on King William Street we saw a phoenix. From 1915 until 1983 this was the headquarters of the Phoenix Assurance Company. The City then was home to numerous insurance companies.
I finally got to walk along Lombard Street too, although I couldn’t see the shop signs promised. What I did see was this lovely golden (Gresham of course) grasshopper dated 1563.
Krish wanted to show me ‘Chance Alley,’ which turned out to actually be Change Alley aka Exchange Alley. It’s a narrow alley connecting shops and coffeehouses and is only one of many alleys that create shortcuts in The City. Quoted from my brother, who may have taken the quotes from elsewhere: “..the hub for buying and selling shares in the South Seas Company, shares that rose and rose as people got ever greedier and the Company less and less honest until the Bubble burst. Over a thousand pounds per share in June 1720 dropped to £175bby December. Lives were ruined. Thomas Guy made a huge amount from those shares, selling before they fell. So, the ground there has seen much excitement as well as misery.”
Krish loves this industrial type of alley. This one, however, had a lot of interesting things on the walls and, as business-like and mid-century it is on the outside, there’s a ton of history to consider in a very small space. I’ll just caption the photos!
We were hungry! I thought we might find a patio or perhaps get some takeaway and sit somewhere. Instead Krish surprised me by saying if we could find a place that wasn’t crowded, he’d eat in (after promising he would never do that right now). Then began the usual routine where he races around from window menu to window menu, sometimes doubling back for another read…it’s quite a performance.
After looking at a few menus, he chose Simpsons Tavern (you can see its lovely hanging sign on the left of the photo above, and in we went. Simpson is in an alley – Ball Court – easily overlooked, and has a long history, dating from 1757. The amount of history, along with all the other dates and events I’ve written about so far forces me to ask you to clink the link and read about it for yourself.
The inside is small, although there’s a side bar and also a downstairs area. There are some dark wooden banquettes to sit in. The atmosphere was cosy, the servers had an intimate style, and the menu was meat-heavy. Since originally the owner had been known for cooking fish that were brought up from Billingsgate, I was surprised to see no fish at all. However, we were gently reminded of tradition when ordering.
We never eat large amounts so as always we had a starter and a main between us, hoping there was a good dessert to follow up with. Our starter was slow cooked pork belly, which was very tender inside but a bit tough outside. The crackling on the side was tooth-breakingly hard but eaten anyway – its another Simpsons famous treat, apparently. They also brought us a nice dish of mustard. We ordered the steak and kidney pie, and were informed this was always eaten with their ‘especially meaty’ sausage. So on came the pie, with just a top golden crust. It looked small for two, but was so meaty we had trouble eating it all. The steak was very tender, the kidney was perfectly trimmed and in good proportion, and the gravy was worth every drop. As for the sausage, a quote found by my brother records a visitor saying ‘”sausages you can place confidence in, no London “bags of mystery.” The mystery for us was why they were held in such esteem since the sausage was good but not spectacular. However, at least we fulfilled tradition.
Well, almost. We had thought about dessert (but not terribly keen on the daily choice of apple crumble or ginger pudding) but the server again nudged us to try the ‘you must have this or you haven’t been to Simpsons’ choice of stewed cheese. Indeed, they’ve been selling it since they opened and remains their most popular dish. This was a slice of everyday white toast, with a ramekin of cheese (some references say stilton) browned on top…like a rarebit, I said. It had a strong, cheesy flavour (the recipe I read said that it was stewed with lots of onion, while another said ‘mustardy’). We liked it, didn’t love it but again fulfilled tradition. Somehow that felt right!
Krish now says that we should hit all the old City pubs (does he know how many there are?) and try all these traditional dishes served the way they must have been for years. So the search begins for menus that don’t feature nachos or brownies – not so easy in 2021 no matter how historical the venue!
Not surprisingly, after our meat feast lunch, we felt like a post-lunch nap. We walked along Bishopsgate at practically a snails pace towards our train and then home, napping the rest of the afternoon away. Who needs dinner?
