slightly weird

2nd August 202117th August 2021

Monument and stewed cheese

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.

Towards The Ship — Off of the bus and down an alley, with a glimmer of a pub at the 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.

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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

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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

25th June 20211st July 2021

The mostly new Museum of the Home

Friday, 25 June, 2021

The Geffrye museum has finally reopened (June 12), except now it’s called Museum of the Home and, as with any museum at the moment, you have to book ‘a slot’ to go in. Luckily for me, it’s close to home and also very close to my physiotherapist.

People have questioned me, Museum of the Home, what does that mean? Built in an area that once boasted many furniture makers, in almshouses from 1714, it originally showed ‘the middle class’ interiors through time. As well, there were always modern exhibits of how people lived in their own spaces. When the museum closed to renovate, there was an opportunity to put a bigger focus on the latter. The larger space can now house events and classrooms.

I have gone to the museum over many years and I’ve done the almshouse tour. But my favourite has always been Christmas time. And before Christmas I’ve gone to the wreath workshops, then afterwards to the Twelfth Night celebrations. I went soon after they closed for a hardhat tour and was really looking forward to seeing the finished renovation. The links are all to past blogs mentioning these visits.

On its very first day of reopening, the museum encountered opposition.

There has been a lot of controversy about the statue of Robert Geffrye which stands outside. Geffrye had connections with the forced labour and trading of enslaved Africans and it was money from his estate that allowed the building of the almshouses that now house the museum. There has been a demand for the statue to be taken down, indeed all statues and memorials to those involved with slave ownership. Despite the protests, the museum’s Board of Trustees decided in July 2020 to leave the statue where it is and contextualise it. The day of the reopening, there were protests by Hackney’s Stand Up To Racism group.

I wasn’t sure if our visit might be disrupted by the protests when we went the next day, but it was quiet.

There’s a new entrance now, at the back of the almshouses, by the Hoxton Overground station. We arrived by bus at the front of the almshouses so had to walk around the block to get in. I believe that there would normally be an entrance from that direction, but like many places the museum is operating a one-way system – so in at the back, out at the front.

HRNX art from Cremer Street — HRNX art seen from Cremer Street

Molly's Café — Molly’s Café, on the corner of Cremer and Geffrye Street, is now the museum’s café. It’s in a once-derelict Victorian pub, The Marquis. It’s named after Molly Harrison, a museum curator and educator in the 40s and 50s

Back of Molly's Cafe — As Victorian as Molly’s Café is at the front, the back is 21st century (notice the clear ghost sign beyond it)

Ghost sign on Cremer Street — Gordon Fabrics ghost sign on Cremer Street

Hoxton Station and the museum entrance — On the right is Hoxton Overground Station, in the left foreground is Molly’s Café, and further along – opposite the station – the new museum entrance

Entrance to Museum of the Home — The entrance to the museum is the lovely atrium where the café used to be. We were greeted by a young woman who checked us in and sent us on our way

We started on the lower floor, on the one-way system. This lower floor is what was made during the renovations. It features how people live and what home means to them, in terms of culture, religion, and comfort. During the hardhat tour I couldn’t imagine what would go in there but many old spaces had been uncovered and I really like this ‘new’ area. The chance to see how everyone creates their own space is really welcome.

Ethelburga Tower is an exhibit I had seen years ago at the museum. There’s a nod to it here. The exhibit showed how identical council flats in a tower block (apartment building) were used and furnished differently by each tenant. I find it fascinating

A collection of floor/vacuum cleaners throughout time

One of the most fascinating things in the museum is the John Evelyn Cabinet, purchased by its owner in 1644. Sounds like it was in the V&A before. I wouldn’t want it in my house but it’s an elaborate work of art, which would make any cabinetmaker cry with envy. Its description is as elaborate as the woodwork, but in brief it’s an ebony veneered oak cabinet made up of many drawers, fourteen of which were secret. It was probably bought in Florence during a European ‘grand tour.’ John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist. I’ll let you read more about the cabinet yourself. If you’re a cabinetmaker, you can read about the construction in detail here. For me, even without its astounding appearance and construction, it is of significant importance. In 1813 diaries were discovered in one of the secret drawers. They were published in 1817. Although Samuel Pepys’s diaries are more celebrated, Evelyn’s diaries came first and probably prompted the attention given to Pepys’s. I’ve read neither so there’s a challenge!

John Evelyn’s Cabinet. My photo won’t do it justice so check it out from this page.

In this room you could play classic videogames on an old TV set

Doll at the Museum of the Home — Me being me, this is my favourite thing downstairs, a doll from the almshouse time. Maybe not an artifact but a new one, but I love it

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