Underground Car Park Odyssey: A Tour of the City of London With The Gentle Author
It teemed with rain, I slopped my way to St Paul’s Cathedral, London through slithering puddles. Thankfully the Gentle Author wears a recognisable hat, and we were able to shelter under the expansive porch. When we were ready to move (at high speed) the sun shone — hooray! (and I probably steamed!)
But first there was marble to inspect. When the marble was placed in situ, it was soft, hardening over time. This means that we can find ornate, scrolling 18th century graffiti! and a bird carving. How unexpected. You can also see outside the luxuriant floral swags installed by a rebellious Grinling Gibbons — willfully contradicting the plain exterior designed by Wren.
Best of all we headed under a car park — feeling very James Bond — and I thought we might pop up in my favourite Bond location — Smithfield. But no, amongst all the spaces is a bit of Roman wall. Horribly fenced in my metal mesh fences, it is a wonder! Thankfully the door was unlocked the other side to allow us to exit, but it also makes you consider how much the original street level has risen over time. What a wonder — I still can’t believe that something so ancient (thousands of years old) is adrift like this, forlornly still standing encircled by parking bays.
We saw the garden and remains of a church where Shakespeare worshipped and would have walked, plus his patrons. We learnt why Amen Corner, close to St Paul’s is called so — Ave Maria Lane gives a hint — during religious processions, the song was sung here and finished at Amen Corner. Giving us a fascinating hint into the hidden lost life of the city.
We stood and imagined a galleried coaching inn, now gone, with travelers whizzing about to the farthest parts of the UK. There was a statue which had been remounted several times as the landscape was demolished and rebuilt around it. Apart from the Gentle Author, I would never have seen it. Astoundingly the streets still retain the shape of these lost inns.
Be warned — the Gentle Author is not a fan of Postman’s Park, seeing it as memoralising stupidity and unnecessary risk; personally I’m more of a appreciator of this creation of endeavouring to help others even at risk to their own lives. Though some of the ends recorded are dramatic and sad. The tiles show people trying to do the right thing, to help, even though they weren’t able to succeed (and it is being modernised with new tiles being fashioned. It is also a beautiful place (and apart from our charging tour party) a great place to study, think, reflect, meet a friend in.
Though I jest at my tour guy, his stories are the things which set the tours ablaze. He also highlights the underlying stories of London. We stood in the centre of the city — the Bank of England and the Royal Exchange — the commerce powerhouses of the city, and also of injustice and corruption. Eloquently and poignantly the Gentle Author reminded us that all this wealth came from somewhere — mostly the exploitation of others through the Atlantic Triangle and enslavement. As ever he made me look and look again, to think. Also appreciating that we are no longer in muddy streets. I enjoyed displaying a fantastic pannier dress made for a rich woman displaying her wealth at court from the Museum of London (we buzzed past the closed skeleton of this building earlier on in the tour, contemplating the many Londoners lodged within it, dislodged by HS2 and other re-developments). Learning that Sir Thomas Gresham (he of the College) got fat and rich off of the profits of enslavement — I’m still not sure what to do with it. But we need to know and we can’t look away.
Lombard Street was a wonderful treat — with tradesmen style signs hanging off of the buildings (re-hung at the height of a person on horseback to protect pedestrians from falling signs), including a huge golden Gresham grasshopper, a fiddling cat, a striped barber’s pole (beware the barber surgeon!) and Charles II! They are all indicators of how much commerce influenced the shape of the city — in the past people navigated their way ‘by the sign of’ rather than by reading street signs or maps. We also saw the Hawksmoor spectacle of St Mary Woolnoth, in Lombard Street, modelled in part on Bernini’s baldaquin in Rome — it’s theatre and extraordinary.
Ending the tour in myth and ancient times, we halted at the church which was at one end of the old London Bridge, imagining the many feet and carts which passed over — and their stories. I’d also begun to long for a 360 degree revolving head, there were so many wonderful things to contemplate and see, including the Stationers’ Hall (where the stationery stationary was officially sold — ink, paper and all, from a stall), and where printers copyrighted their works — as well as the first presses being set up. To say nothing of the beautiful late 18th/early 19th century houses where CND was formed.
A friendly group, you’ll experience things which are easy to overlook, consider hidden lives, contemplate the nastiness of facades — the Gentle Author pointed one out where the new floors jarred against the original window layout, mocking the retained building structure entirely. As with his Spitalfields Tour, the Gentle Author brings to mind the hidden in plain site, appraises what is with who and what is important and leaves you thinking (and in the City of London itself, angry).
