Domine Dirige Nos:The Higher The Buildings, The Lower The Morals.

"I don't know what London's coming to. The higher the buildings .... the lower the morals" - Noel Coward

 

The City of London's official motto is Domine Dirige Nos ("lord, guide us") but I think Noel Coward's characteristically pithy put down of the square mile's capitalist ethos is far more fitting, There is, no doubt, lots of interesting architecture and lots of absorbing history in this smallish part of London - but most of the year it's full of business people in suits braying into mobile phones and getting pissed up in Leadenhall Market.

It seemed to me the best time of year to explore the area would be betwixt Christmas and New Year when most, if not all, the offices would be closed down. On the downside, this meant most of the pubs and other infrastructure would be closed down but the City is not the weekend/bank holiday ghost town it once was (in the 90s the area would have been dead) so I felt certain we'd find enough to sate our needs - and so it proved.

It wouldn't be the most challenging walk but it was one I'd been meaning to do for some time so I was pleased that, myself included, nine of us turned up for the day. That's what I'll accept as a "good turnout". After observing Mini Eggs (I loves 'em) making their seasonal debut in the Honor Oak Sainsbury's I took the train to London Bridge, wandered about, observed a self-driving vacuum cleaner, and met with Adam, Ian, Pam, and Mo. Dave Fog was around but, disappointingly, seemed to have bored of waiting for us and headed back home.

Aware that most of your standard greasy spoons are closed at this time of year we headed down to Hays Galleria (Christmas tree still looking resplendent) and sat outside, sort of, at Cinq where some of us were just in time to get a veggie breakfast. I had a cheese and tomato ciabatta with a cappuccino (having already had two croissants at home before leaving, I'd woken very early) and, once Vicky had joined us - and what a font of local knowledge she proved, we headed out to the side of the Thames and met with Tina and Neil (the latter supposedly nursing a hangover but seemingly in good spirits) looking out towards HMS Belfast.

The post-Christmas markets were still doing a roaring trade and this made for slow going as we passed City Hall, the Bridge Theatre, and a statue of various animals on some Heath Robinson style velocipede. There were elephants, giraffes, gorillas, hippos, and chimps and there were excited tourists and their children too. Why? Who knows. But people seemed to be enjoying it.

Across the river there were views to 20 Fenchurch Street (the Walkie Talkie, Rafael Vinoly, 2009), 122 Leadenhall Street (the Cheesegrater, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, 2014), and 22 Bishopsgate which doesn't seem to have a wry nickname but is the second tallest in London, in the UK, and in the whole of Western Europe. We'd started under the shadow of the tallest - The Shard - strictly speaking in Southwark and not the City - in all categories. Incidentally, as all Europe goes there are five taller buildings than the Shard in Russia and one in Poland. 22 Bishopsgate comes in at 17th overall behind a few more Russian buildings and a couple of Turkish towers.

We continued down to an even more famous, and more enduring, landmark - Tower Bridge. Which we crossed. I've written about Tower Bridge before but it was opened in 1894 and the architect responsible was one Horace Jones whose grave you can find in West Norwood Cemetery.

On the other side you walk between the much older Tower of London (a blog in it's own right, surely) and one of the WeWork offices where Ian, sometimes, works and, sometimes - generously, invites his friends, us, for free drinks. Most convivial in the summer with the views of the Tower, the Bridge, and the river.

Obviously there are so many buildings, and so many stories, in the City that the walk, and this account of it, will be a whistle stop tour but I will pause, as we did, a little longer on some buildings to consider them and one of them is St.Botolph's Aldgate which we reached after walking up the Minories and past Tower Gateway DLR station.

Built in the Georgian style by George Dance the Elder (see also St.Leonards in Shoreditch and St.Matthew's in Bethnal Green) and completed in 1744 it marked the point where we turned briefly down Aldgate High Street and then into Middlesex Street and the Petticoat Lane area. We passed the Bell, the spiritual home of the London Fortean Society and - therefore - a venue frequented by me, and with textile shops flanking us to the right and brutalist architecture to the left one of our walkers pointed out their own flat. We'd already been passed two of the gang's occasional offices. What a personal walk this was becoming.

We observed that Frying Pan Alley was NOT shaped like a frying pan (perhaps they used to sell frying pans there) and we carried on along the pedestrianesed and picturesqure Artillery Passage. This is the sort of area, surely, that Hollywood film makers would want access to when they wish to capture an authentic Victorian vibe.

Strictly speaking, we'd leaked out of the City and into Tower Hamlets but a walk around the perimeter (and I know, I've done a few) always tends to breach those perimeter lines and is all the more enjoyable for doing so. With views up to Hawksmoor's resplendent Christ Church we took a brief detour into Spitalfields market (far more corporate than it used to be but still not without charm) and observed some quality old style shop frontages (who knew shows used to specialise in paper bags and 'strong carrier bags') and some more elephant models. Including some kind of motor trike that may not have had an elephant on it when we arrived but soon had a right Nelly astride it.

Back in the square mile (which is neither square nor a mile in length in any direction - but close enough for that name to have stuck) we emptied out on to Bishopsgate near the Bishopsgate Institute (architect:Charles Harrison Townsend, also responsible for the Whitechapel Art Gallery and my local Horniman Museum), Dirty Dick's once famously filthy pub (somebody mentioned they once had dead cats lying around in there) and what appeared to be, but may not have been, an Aston Martin Formula E racing car.

More tall, glass, some would say faceless, buildings surrounded us as we dipped behind a now unused part of Liverpool Street station and took in some more unusual statues before heading past Finsbury Circus (as ever, nobody was making use of the bowling green) and on to our first stop, we're we'd meet with Mike, at the Barbican. He'd forewarned us that the Horrible Histories crew had taken over the main bar and a chance of seeing them proved more tempting than the possibility of a pint in The Jugged Hare.

Off the pop following a blood test that revealed I have a slightly fatty liver (reversible) and that I am prediabetic (also reversible), I took a 'lemony' lemonade and we all sat for a pleasant hour or so in the foyer of the Barbican bar. A beer would have been nice but I really didn't miss it very much at all and I must stress that I have not been told by any medical personnel whatsoever not to drink alcohol - it is very much my own choice and it almost certainly won't last forever.

On a trip to the toilet I heard the Horrible Histories gang going about their Christmas show. It sounded loud and riotous and I thought how much my god-daughter Evie (a massive fan of HH) would have loved it and also thought that I need to get on with watching the last ever series, and Xmas special, of Ghosts. I will do soon.

I popped outside to take a few snaps of the lake, the towers, and the general architecture I admire so much. If I was rich enough I'd quite like to live in the Barbican. It really is an oasis of calm in the middle of a hectic city. Built by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, it's a residential complex of about 2,000 flats, maisonettes, and even houses. It was once the ward of Cripplegate but that was almost, some of St.Giles-without-Cripplegate church aside, destroyed during World War II.

Between 1965 and 1976 the Barbican rose from Crippelegate's ashes thanks to Chamberlin, Powell and Bon who had built the nearby Golden Lane Estate beforehand. Those who have called the Barbican home include Arthur Scargill, Benazir Bhutto, George Best, and the recently departed Shane MacGowan (friends of mine were raising a Guinness or two to the former Pogues frontman across town in The Toucan that very day) and the three skyscraping towers were, until 2008/9, the tallest residential buildings in the whole of London until the Pan Peninsula on the Isle of Dogs took over.

The towers are named Cromwell (after Oliver), Shakespeare (after William), and Lauderdale (after, er, the Earls of Lauderdale). The Barbican Arts Centre came after the properties and was opened in 1982 but has expanded to include a theatre, a three screen cinema, an art gallery, a concert hall, a library, seven conference rooms, and three bars.

One of which is was time for us to leave - but Vicky had a little surprise for us. She had a key that took us through a private, residential, section of the complex. It was all I could do not to press my lemonade smudged nose up to the huge windows and gawp at the spacious, and well decorated rooms. Property envy I had for sure.

We emptied out on the Beech Street underpass. Nobody seemed interested in checking out a nearby Banksy so we crossed Aldersgate Street and headed down Carthusian Street (past the Sutton Arms, once a regular post-Barbican Art Gallery pint stop for me) and stopped for a while at Charterhouse Square as Vicky told us about the history of the Charterhouse. Of more interest to some was the block of flats to the side of it were the fictional Poirot once lived.

We carried down along the side of the former, and massive, Smithfields market - where the new Museum of London will eventually open - and, after an impromptu tribute to Andrew Weatherall, crossed Farringdon Road and continued along to Holburn - just to the north of Holborn Viaduct.

Along Holborn we took in the Holborn Bars, the red terracotta goliath built by Alfred Waterhouse (Natural History Museum, Strangeways prison) and the Tudor fronted Staple Inn, the last remaining Inns of Chancery) before cutting through into a very quiet Chancery Lane. We were almost on the route of last December's LbF walk but a pint in The Seven Stars, this year, was not on the agenda. Roxy Beaujolais would have to wait. We did, however, pass a statue of a snowman and these snowmen statues, one for each line of the song Twelve Days of Christmas, have brought Tina (and her Facebook page) much festive joy this yule.

On Fleet Street, Tina was to pay it back to us by, like Vicky earlier, producing a magical key. Hers allowed us entry into the private and mystical lands of the Inns of Court. She works there. She'd not nicked a key. Obviously everything we saw is absolutely top secret so I couldn't take photos and I can't tell you about any of it. Though there are some photos and you can see them all below - and read (a bit) about it all.

Behind the big black door, there are churches, chapels, offices, homes, parking spaces (!), gardens, bars, chambers (lots of chambers), fancy trees, statues, and lots and lots of very photogenic fir cones. It's a large space that most Londoners will never ever visit even though anyone walking along the Embankment may look in and wonder what exactly is going on in this obviously ludicrously expensive piece of central London real estate.

Usually, lawyers and librarians going about their daily business but in the lull between Christmas and New Year a group of the capital's curious having a nose around for no other reason than because they can. Thanks Tina and thanks Vicky for bringing something to the walk which I could not have imagined when I planned it all that time ago.

Congratulations, also, to Ian who reached his target of 5,000,000 steps just as we came out of the private section by Two Temple Place. He had to run on the spot a bit to get there but, as you won't be surprised if you know Ian, he had a small bottle of bubbly secreted on his person and that was cracked open to celebrate his achievement. I'd actually aimed for 5,000,000 steps this year but, by the end of November, I'd conceded defeat (November was an awful month for walking - among other things) and am now on a mere 4,577,209. Next year's target:- a rather ambitious 6,000,000.

He was still supping it as we reached St. Paul's Cathedral. The walk pretty much over now we made our way towards Brick Lane for a curry but we still managed to pass a few landmarks in the Bank of England (cue My New House by The Fall), James Stirling's Number One Poultry (now, it seems, a popular suicide spot for depressed bankers), the Royal Exchange, and various imposing skyscrapers - lit up impressively as day turned to night.

We took a pit stop at the Hoop & Grapes pub on Aldgate High Street. Some had a couple of beers but I stuck to the blackcurrant and lemonade as we talked about teenage darts prodigy Luke 'The Nuke' Littler, Basingstoke legend Sir John Staly, the ubiquity of air friers, and just how fucking awful Mrs Brown's Boys is.

Mo had left us just before the pub (to go for a bagel on Brick Lane) and Tina and Neil after Ian reached his step target (to go home and see their cat, Oscar), and now it was time for Ian to head back to the South Coast so Arlow could regale him with his version of Cab It Up! Pam, Adam, Mike, and myself continued on to The Famous Curry Bazaar aka Bengali Kitchen on Brick Lane (it had had good reviews so we ignored the eager touts outside the neighbouring eateries) and took a table by the door.

I had paneer jalfrezi (which wasn't very spicy but had too much onion for me) and shared a garlic naan and a pilau rice with Mike. It was good if hardly earth shattering but as you might expect on Brick Lane it came quick so we were all done by about half-eight. Pam and I walked to Shoreditch High Street tube but it was closed so we walked down Norton Folgate to Liverpool Street. She went in to the station and I got a bus to Elephant & Castle and another one home. I was home, sober - stone cold sober, by about 9.30pm (much earlier than usual) and in bed not long after. It had been a pretty successful day and a pretty laid back one too.

Thanks to Pam, Mo, Adam, Neil, Tina, Vicky, Ian, and Mike for yesterday (and to Pam and Tina for the photos used in this blog - and Mike for the one of Ian celebrating his five million steps) and thanks to everyone who was part of an LbF walk in 2023 (a season that, disappointingly, had less walks than normal). That's Pam, Mo, Katie, Vicky, Roxanne, Clive, Adam, Tina, Neil, Ian, and Mike. Next year we'll start in March in Theydon Bois with a walk (another attempt after last year's spectacular mudbound failure) with a walk through Epping Forest and on to Walthamstow. Though if the weather is particularly inclement it will be replaced by a more suitable walk. Let's wait and see. Hopefully see lots of you there.