Blue Badge Guides

As part of British Tourism Week, a series of free walks took place in London today, all dealing with the notion of "great British" in one way or another. All the walks were led by Blue Badge Guides, each of whom undergoes eighteen months of rigorous training before attaining Britain's highest guiding certification, the Blue Badge (yes, there really is a physical badge, and the guides wear them around their necks). We didn't know what to expect from our walk, entitled The Great British Bard: the City of Shakespeare's London, but we headed down to the City to join the tour, where we were thankful there wasn't a repeat of last week's mix-up that saw us being turned away from a guided walk. Although the walk was scheduled to take two hours, our enthusiastic guide ended up chatting quite a bit at each stop and no one seemed to mind that the interesting tour ended up going 45 minutes over the advertised time. The tour was very loosely based on Shakespeare's comings and goings in the City, with a lot of information about buildings, streets, and the ways in which various parts of the streetscape have changed or stayed the same since Shakespeare's time. We started out at St Paul's Cathedral, which we learned that Shakespeare would have known, albeit in an older, different form than currently stands on the site. At one time, Old St Paul's Cathedral was one of the longest churches in Europe (Shakespeare would have known the church without its towering spire, which was hit by lightning before he was born), but after it was damaged in the Great Fire of 1666, the current St Paul's was built on the same site. The church is currently undergoing extensive restoration in preparation for its 300th-birthday celebrations later this year--you can see some of the scaffolding on the left, and the memorial to the old cathedral's cross on the right:

Next we headed over to neighbouring Paternoster Square, which was much less bouncy-castle-y that the last time we were there. Our guide told us that while most people think the column in the square is a memorial to the Great Fire, the flame at the top of this quiet fountain instead commemorates the 29 December 1940 Blitz destruction of Paternoster Square, then home to many book publishers' offices and their warehouses. Some five million books burned that night, and fire raged through much of London, killing 163 people and seriously injuring 509 more; destroying many buildings (including eight Wren churches, but amazingly, not St Paul's); severely damaging Guildhall; and closing hospitals, underground and railway stations.

Strangely, the monument is unmarked, and if online information is any indication, it seems that our guide was right about most people misunderstanding what is being remembered here. In a city filled with monuments and their accompanying plaques, why doesn't this one come with an explanation? The Old Deanery is just across from St Paul's, and serves as the residence of the Bishop of London (the third most powerful person in the Church of England, after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York). Built by Christopher Wren in 1670, the building sits behind locked gates in a quiet lane:

The former choir boys' school for St Paul's is next door, and now houses a youth hostel!

Shakespeare spent quite a lot of time in this part of the City, buying a home in the area and coming and going from nearby Blackfriars Theatre where the acting company, The King's Men (of which Shakespeare was one), performed at the time. But what does this have to do with the tiny, quiet courtyard to where we walked next?

Now the site of 63 short-term-rental apartments used as corporate accommodation by business visitors to the City (who else could afford the rates, which start at £230/night?),

the courtyard was once the location of the King's Wardrobe, where ceremonial clothing and cloth worn by members of the royal family on special occasions was stored and made.

The Shakespeare connection comes from the recorded account by the Master of the King's Wardrobe that William Shakespeare came here to pick up 4.5 bolts of scarlet cloth which would be worn by the King's Men during the upcoming coronation of James I. Before we left the courtyard, our guide pointed out the purpose of the different unique patterns over the various doorways:

Bob said he already knew this story, but it was new to me: apparently, back in the day before numbered addresses, when you were invited somewhere, say for dinner, you would know you were at the correct door on the street when you found a pattern that matched the one you had been sent with your invite! By the way, the house that Shakespeare bought in 1613 used to be in the location below, but was torn down in the late 1700s, and a pub now stands on the spot:

The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries occupies the oldest surviving livery hall in the City, having been rebuilt (after the Great Fire) in 1672. Shakespeare is thought to have had a close connection with a member of the guild, something that was useful for those plays that featured apothecaries and/ or their various herbal cures and poisons.

The hall was one of the buildings whose interior I was very curious to see during last year's spectacular Open House London, but there were so many great buildings to see during that two-day snoop that most of my list went unseen. (You could live in London for your entire life and probably not gain access to all the buildings that participate in the event.) While this next sight was unrelated to our walk, I quite liked the Rubik's-Cube-inspired tiling:

Ah, but back to the tour . . . we stopped at this historic plaque, which commemorates the priory whose name is also that of this particular area of the City.

Our next stop enabled a glimpse of a Wren steeple; St Bride's is known as the Printers' church because England's first movable-type press was brought to the churchyard in 1501, which led to numerous presses being set up nearby, which in turn encouraged writers and other intellectuals to move to the area. It's also known as the wedding-cake steeple, for obvious visual reasons,

although this is not because it resembles a wedding cake, but because it is said to have inspired a local baker to create the first such tiered cake for his daughter's wedding (and the name of the church doesn't hurt either, I suppose). Our next stop was London's central criminal court, the Old Bailey:

We crossed the street, walking past St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate, the largest parish church in the City, whose bells used to ring on days when executions took place at nearby Newgate Prison. Even more ominously, the church's clerk was also responsible for ringing a handbell outside a prisoner's cell to inform the prisoner of his upcoming execution. Apparently, this bell, known as the "execution bell," is on display in a glass case inside the church.

This drinking fountain beside the church was the first such fountain in London, unveiled on 21 April 1859 to quite the crowd (scroll down on this page to see a representation of the opening-day mob scene). The fountain was used by as many as 7,000 people a day, and its popularity led to the creation of over 140 fountains and 150 cattle troughs in just over a decade.

In 1791 the church erected a watch house over its graveyard in an attempt to curb the stealing of newly buried bodies which would then be sold to Saint Bartholomew's Hospital for use in medical-school lectures.

The sight at our next stop reminded me of Manneken Pis (okay, without the peeing, but still),

but it turned out to be a commemoration of the Great Fire of 1666, which started in the king's bakery in Pudding Lane and went on to destroy more than 13,000 houses, 87 churches, and all of the City's important buildings during its five-day sweep through the City of London.

With Smithfield Market ahead of us,

Bob remembered that he still wants to try the butchers' breakfast (a full English fry-up--almost everything you can imagine, fried--and two pints of Guinness!) offered in places near the market. Although it's meant for market employees who need such sustenance after working all morning long, the public is welcome as well, providing their digestive systems are up for the early-morning workout. We passed by St Bartholomew's Hospital's Henry VIII gate, which dates to 1702,

and stopped beside this plaque for William Wallace, who was executed nearby, in a terribly gruesome way that was described in detail by our guide. "Put to death" doesn't begin to provide any sense of the inhumane end that Wallace met.

Still on the same roundabout, we walked through the gatehouse of St Bartholomew the Great, which was founded in 1123.

Here's another view of the gatehouse, looking back from the church courtyard:

The courtyard was a lovely spot,

with the buildings across the lane completing the feeling of being hidden away from the City.

We walked very close to here (actually just on the other side of this fence) on a self-guided walk a while ago, and the fact that the two walks barely overlapped is a good example of the riches to be found by strolling around the City.

We continued walking behind the church,

passing this great building

before emerging at Charterhouse Square, which covers a 1348 Plague pit that holds the mass graves of tens of thousands of Plague victims.

Charterhouse School is one of Britain's most famous public schools (that's "private" for you Canadians reading this), charging more than £26,000 per school year, per student. Yikes.

With one last look at Smithfield before we moved on, I didn't take this photo because of the market; instead, the familiar typography just past the market building caught my eye:

We've walked though the gate at St John's Lane a few times, but our guide told us quite a bit of information about the spot that we had no idea about--exactly why walking tours are so much fun!

Built in 1504, St John's Gate was originally an entrance to the Priory of the Knights of St John,

but the building was later used as the office of the Master of the Revels. As the royal censor, the master evaluated all submitted manuscripts for any offensive content (offensive to the crown, that is) before giving official approval. Shakespeare had many of his plays approved here, and is thought to have brought them to the master in person--walking through this very door, manuscript in hand! (Cue the ooohs and aaahs.)

Our tour ended here, and after thanking our guide for a great walk, we headed back toward home. We hadn't gone far when something in a window made me stop and smile:

I had to know more about this grouchy, marching bear! Craft Central is a lovely place, and the current show was simply wonderful.

I liked the "I Will Stand Guard Room,"

but the piece that had me squealing with melancholy delight was "Specimen Six: Dogga's Ear," whose caption read: "Late last year, the threadbare ear from my childhood companion Dogga was finally separated from his heavy sad body. Dogga's ear was everything to me as a child. It smelt good and it listened. We were inseparable."

Poor Dogga!!! The woman working at Craft Central turned out to be Canadian, and a Vancouverite no less, and the three of us chatted for a while about London and Vancouver, and how we miss Vancouver sushi SO MUCH. After we left the exhibit, we headed toward the bus stop--along the way, I stopped and told Bob to peer over the ledge beside the sidewalk at the sad sight below:

The space appeared to be some sort of city-run playground area, and the bike graveyard was near an on-site storage shed--maybe the bikes were collected from around the borough (there are often bikes, or rather, parts of bikes, left chained up after various bits have been stolen off them) to be disposed of at a later date? In any case, the now rainy afternoon and the fact that the bikes were cuddling on a bed of long-crunchy autumn leaves made the scene seem even more forlorn--perfect timing to go home, dry off, and have a nice cup of coffee.