Category: Architecture

Tuesday, 21 September, 2021

There’s a mouse in the house. There’s a man hunting the mouse in the house. There may be other verses. Every day Krish is consumed with finding where the mouse, mice, are coming from. This is far more important than trapping a mouse, since there will still be entry gates (like those of London) to attract more mouse tourists into Jishville – Jish being our version of us as Brangelina. At any rate, I can’t really move around much – I’m trapped by boxes (moved out from shelving where they were invisible) and barriers that do as much to trap me emotionally as physically.

So I really had to go out and be a tourist outside of Jishville.

Off to Guys again, with a simple plan – to walk from London Bridge to Tower Bridge, not very far at all.

First I walked the brief distance to the junction of Tooley Street and Borough High Street.

The Shard is the landmark for the area. It’s very tall and has a unique design and it towers over the streets in all directions. It may have always happened anyway but it feels like the rest of the surrounding area felt it needed to keep up. There’s been a lot of renewal here around Borough Market (the other landmark, although not towering) including an overhaul of London Bridge Station – and you know how I love a good old and new mingle.

In the photos below, you can see the old, but also how the old and the new happily cohabitate. It’s interesting to see how often the new is just knitted into the old seamlessly, like a really good darn in your favourite sock.

Yes, three entrances of various types all into the same station from the same street.

Tooley Street isn’t modernised when you get past the station entrances. In fact, there are a lot of old buildings, each fairly unique – including the old London Bridge Hospital itself.  Not so old in fact, since this private hospital was finished in 1986.

I was headed for Hays Galleria, a building I happened on when I first came to London and began exploring. South Bank was a favourite walk and I took so many visitors along the river. My tastes have changed a bit, but Hays feels like a great respite from the bustling Borough Market and South Bank.

Hay’s Galleria was a warehouse and wharf (Hay’s Wharf) for the port of London. At first there was a 1651 brewery here. The warehouse and wharf was its next incarnation in 1856. A Grade II listed structure, it closed in 1970 after several redevelopments and disasters such as fire and bombing. Today’s incarnation came in  the 1980s. The feeling in here is quite unique. I imagine myself in a disused railway station rather than a wharf or dry dock. The arched ceiling does that for me. None of the shops interest me particularly. Some sell expensive clothes. There are some fancy independent cafes and a few franchises in here, but who really cares. It’s just nice to sit quietly and have a glimpse of the river just beyond the entry where the ships would have come into the wharf to unload and be reloaded with tea and dry produce. The wharf went through a bunch of revelopments, including after being bombed in WWII, but then closed as a wharf in 1970.

At any rate, it’s a feast to my eyes and senses and it was definitely the only must-do today.

The focal point of the Galleria is The Navigators, 1987, a sculpture by David Kemp. I’d describe it as a steampunk ship. While I was sitting there, it started to do what is probably a time marking thing. Water was sprayed from the bank through to a globe, and fell down to power a wheel. I took a video or two, which I’ll put at the end. It’s a cool and elaborate metal mechanical  (enough adjectives?) sculpture, but why not something more of a cargo shipping theme, given the location?

Continue reading “South Bank – being a tourist in London”

Wednesday, 1st September 2021

Throgmorton Street is  so short, I thought I’d be through in a few minutes but it’s a street packed with lovely things, and that’s before I’ve even walked down its few courts and alleys.

Looking at the map you can see Throgmorton Street clearly marked. The diagonal Old Broad Street  will lead you eastwards to the back of Broadgate/Liverpool Street station. I started my little walk at the southern entrance to Austin Friars passage, where Throgmorton Street cuts cleanly into the junction the passage makes with Old Broad Street. The western end of Throgmorton Street stops at the back of the Bank of England. At any rate, it’s not hard to see – even without panning out to the bigger map – that is a bit of a warren.

The street is named after Nicholas Throckmorton, chief banker of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The stock exchange was on the south side from 1972 to 2004.

The Throgmorton Restaurant, between the Stock Exchange and the Bank of England, was opened on 15 October 1900.

J Lyons & Co., a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884, had an 80-year lease on the property in 1897 from the Worshipful Company of Drapers. It was a celebrated eating place by the stockbrokers, bankers and insurance brokers who have dominated this  area for generations. By all accounts the interior of the restaurant was incredibly grand, with many rooms. The restaurant business ended in the  1970s.

I have so many happy memories of having tea and cake or sandwiches at Lyons Corner Houses around London. The best are from the 1960s when I worked close to the one on the Strand. I’d buy the cheapest lunch – tomato sandwiches – with the luncheon vouchers that were part of my salary. I’d eat these sandwiches in Trafalgar Square and save the rest of my voucher money so that every Friday I could combine them to have a really special lunch.

Another fun thing about Lyons is Nigella Lawson’s connection –  her mother, Vanessa Salmon, was an heiress born into the Lyons Coffee House dynasty. I loved Lyons chocolate cupcakes and found them one day in Morrison’s supermarkets. My fond memory of peeling off the foil cups, then peeling the chocolate icing off the chocolate sponge bottom, to eat last, was tarnished when I tasted them – they were awful! Had they changed or had my memory been faulty? Likely both.

At any rate, the lanterns and everything about the door is gorgeous (there are two identical doors). The place continued as a restaurant, owned by Mitchells & Butler from 2004 to 2013. I’d missed it.

The original Drapers Hall was built in St Swithin’s Lane in the 1420s, then the present hall was bought from King Henry VIII in 1543. It had been the property of Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chief minister. Thomas had been instrumental in the arrest and execution of Anne Boleyn, and later was executed himself, his property forfeited to the king. The hall was rebuilt after the Great Fire and then in 1772 was again rebuilt. The latest alteration was in 1898-9. What I’ve seen of the inside from pictures shows enormous rooms like a palace. In fact, the halls are often shown in television series and movies, such as The King’s Speech.

Through the gates at the left (closer views below) is Throgmorton Avenue, which runs from here to London Wall. It’s a private road belonging to the Drapers’ livery company, with these splendid gates on each end.  Today this end was closed. The gates to London Wall are controlled by the Carpenters’ Company. All this tells me is that there are bits of the area I need to see more of, since Krish tells me that he was lucky enough to see the gates open one day with some ‘old’ carpenters in their livery having a lunch break.

Continue reading “Short and sweet – Throgmorton Street, and a view of St Paul’s”