Thursday August 12, 2021
Every time I’ve gone to Liverpool Street with Krish (who goes on to Guys) I’ve meant to check out the new shops they’ve built into the Broadgate exit from the station. Before, it was a shop-lined walk back to an open area where you could sit on the steps and enjoy your lunch. Inside the Broadgate circle were some popular chain cafes – places I’d think of eating and then was put off by queues and prices. In that respect, it hasn’t much changed.
Now from the back of the station where you’d walk at ground level to Broadgate, you can go an alternate route to an upper level — up the escalators to some fancy new shops, look out at Old Broad Street from the top and circle around to Broadgate Circle where it’s expanded to some upper cafes where I’m plagued by queues and prices! Somewhere in my head I’m thinking maybe it always was here. Such thinking can give me a headache though, so I’ll just say that, if it was always there, it’s been refreshed. It’s open, bright and very, very different than the old station roads of Liverpool Street and Bishopsgate.
A little something about Broadgate – it’s a hub of office buildings linked by public squares located on the original site of Broad Street station (closed in 1986) and beside and above the railway approaches into Liverpool Street station. It covers 32 acres and brings the world of finance together with food, retail and culture. 19 million people come here to work, and to shop, dine and be entertained in the mainly-pedestrianised development. Building started in the mid to late 80s. Broadgate Circle was completed in 2015, not so long ago.
I considered each fast food place. The dim sum was motioning, the poke bowls were fascinating, but I moved on towards Finsbury Avenue Square, an area I didn’t recognise as having seen before. To get to it I had to walk in a seemingly narrow area by an interesting metallic structure.
