A guided London walk underneath the Capital
Yesterday afternoon I braved the cold, drizzly (with occasional hailstones) weather to travel to London for a walking tour 'Beneath London's Streets'
I got rather wet on the way and it was cold (4C/39F which went down to 2C/35F by the end of the two-and-a-half-hour walk), but I really enjoyed it and learned a few new things which is always a good thing. Under the cut for things that caught my eye (lots of pictures!)
I walked from London Bridge across to Tower Bridge as we were meeting at Temple Hill station:
A view of the end of the bridge.
A lovely view of The Tower of London and to the left is the remains of the Roman City wall, which has a medieval wall built on top of it (it's the majority of the wall that you can see). Our guide explained that Tower Hill Station (opened in 1967) was built on the remains of The Tower of London Station which closed in 1884. They had issues with so much Roman wall underneath the ground that they pretty much tore it down to make way for the station. However, on one of the platforms you can see part of the wall.
Another view of The Tower, with Tower Bridge just visible behind it (and damp tourists in front of it).
Our next stop was the former Mazawattee Tea Warehouse which was built in 1864 and now houses underground tourist shops
You can see the vaulting of the basement of the original building
There's a commemorative roundel set in the original stone floor to explain the history
This is a reminder that back in 1884 many of the workshops of London used a hydraulic power system to power cranes, lifts and other workshop machines. At its peak, it also powered revolving stages at the London Palladium and the London Coliseum Theatre. The system used high-pressure water from The Thames with a network of pipes to buildings. The system was still in use in the early part of the 20th century, but electricity started to take over and during WWII it took a lot of damage which was hard to repair. It eventually closed in 1977. Today, this tunnel is used by a telecoms company to run cabling under The Thames.
Our next stop was All Hallows by the Tower church - originally an Early Medieval Anglican church and most likely the oldest church in London (founded in AD675). Some of the original church survives, but it was heavily damaged during WWII and rebuilt.
Inside
We went down into the vaults under the church - on the way there was some rather nice art:
First Steps by John Robinson:
Adoration of the Magi (School of Peter Paul Reubens 1620). It's a mystery where this painting came from as there are no records about it.
In the crypt, there is a Saxon arch over the remains of a Roman villa with a terracotta tessellated floor (probably a kitchen area) from the second century AD discovered in 1926
This continues down into the rest of the crypt. It was weird walking on a Roman floor...
Roman artifacts in the crypt museum:
A painting of the damage taken during the Second World War:
The original door
There's a small chapel dedicated to St Clare in the crypt - this stained glass was salvaged from another church after the War.
We continued on past many reminders that we were in the City of London (dragons on everything!):
Continuing on down Monument Street to The Monument to the Great Fire of London
Originally Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren designed the monument to contain a subterranean scientific laboratory with a reflecting mirror so that it could be mounted with a telescope. The idea was to record the position and movement of stars and to prove that the Earth orbited the Sun. However, the vibrations from nearby traffic meant that it was unusable, so it just turned into a viewing tower.
The very stylised depiction of the rebuilding of London being overseen by King Charles II on the side of the monument
The Royal Exchange building
There are two statues nearby - this one is of James Henry Greathead - a tunnelling expert and Chief engineer for City and South London Railways. His great invention was a tunnelling shield (more of this later). This statue is also a vent for the underground station below (you can just see the vent toward the top of the plinth).
We went underground into Bank Station. I like these boards the staff do on a daily basis to cheer everyone up:
I learned a nerdy thing - these little blue plaques denote the depth of the underground station with a reference number beneath. 1 is the nearest to the surface, and 7 (Hampstead tube Station at 58.5 metres/92 ft) is the deepest.
Bank Station has a shop on one of the platforms which is the deepest one on the underground network:
In one of the tunnels, you can see an example of a tunnelling shield. This was where the workers digging out the tunnels by hand would stand (imagine a wall of earth and rock behind the tunnel sign which they would be knocking through). The shield protected the workers from falling earth and following behind would be workers shoring up the tunnel as they moved slowly forward.
An example of Labyrinth was designed by Mark Walling. 270 of these are in different stations on the London Underground to celebrate 150 years of its existence in 2013. This is the first time I've found one! *chuffed*
The next stop was The London Silver Vaults.
This rabbit warren of antique silver vendors was amazing! Inside there's one of the original safes:
I wouldn't like to try and get through this entry door!
There were many pretty things I would have liked to take home, here's a few:
I really enjoyed the walk (11,700 steps!) and I will look out for more of the tour guide's walks as he was incredibly knowledgeable. It had finally stopped raining on the way home, and I just missed the rush hour - I ended up catching the train I used to catch when I worked in Islington which was a real deja-vu moment! LOL! Needless to say, I was quite cold, so a hot shower was very welcome when I got in!
I got rather wet on the way and it was cold (4C/39F which went down to 2C/35F by the end of the two-and-a-half-hour walk), but I really enjoyed it and learned a few new things which is always a good thing. Under the cut for things that caught my eye (lots of pictures!)
I walked from London Bridge across to Tower Bridge as we were meeting at Temple Hill station:
A view of the end of the bridge.
A lovely view of The Tower of London and to the left is the remains of the Roman City wall, which has a medieval wall built on top of it (it's the majority of the wall that you can see). Our guide explained that Tower Hill Station (opened in 1967) was built on the remains of The Tower of London Station which closed in 1884. They had issues with so much Roman wall underneath the ground that they pretty much tore it down to make way for the station. However, on one of the platforms you can see part of the wall.
Another view of The Tower, with Tower Bridge just visible behind it (and damp tourists in front of it).
Our next stop was the former Mazawattee Tea Warehouse which was built in 1864 and now houses underground tourist shops
You can see the vaulting of the basement of the original building
There's a commemorative roundel set in the original stone floor to explain the history
This is a reminder that back in 1884 many of the workshops of London used a hydraulic power system to power cranes, lifts and other workshop machines. At its peak, it also powered revolving stages at the London Palladium and the London Coliseum Theatre. The system used high-pressure water from The Thames with a network of pipes to buildings. The system was still in use in the early part of the 20th century, but electricity started to take over and during WWII it took a lot of damage which was hard to repair. It eventually closed in 1977. Today, this tunnel is used by a telecoms company to run cabling under The Thames.
Our next stop was All Hallows by the Tower church - originally an Early Medieval Anglican church and most likely the oldest church in London (founded in AD675). Some of the original church survives, but it was heavily damaged during WWII and rebuilt.
Inside
We went down into the vaults under the church - on the way there was some rather nice art:
First Steps by John Robinson:
Adoration of the Magi (School of Peter Paul Reubens 1620). It's a mystery where this painting came from as there are no records about it.
In the crypt, there is a Saxon arch over the remains of a Roman villa with a terracotta tessellated floor (probably a kitchen area) from the second century AD discovered in 1926
This continues down into the rest of the crypt. It was weird walking on a Roman floor...
Roman artifacts in the crypt museum:
A painting of the damage taken during the Second World War:
The original door
There's a small chapel dedicated to St Clare in the crypt - this stained glass was salvaged from another church after the War.
We continued on past many reminders that we were in the City of London (dragons on everything!):
Continuing on down Monument Street to The Monument to the Great Fire of London
Originally Robert Hooke and Sir Christopher Wren designed the monument to contain a subterranean scientific laboratory with a reflecting mirror so that it could be mounted with a telescope. The idea was to record the position and movement of stars and to prove that the Earth orbited the Sun. However, the vibrations from nearby traffic meant that it was unusable, so it just turned into a viewing tower.
The very stylised depiction of the rebuilding of London being overseen by King Charles II on the side of the monument
The Royal Exchange building
There are two statues nearby - this one is of James Henry Greathead - a tunnelling expert and Chief engineer for City and South London Railways. His great invention was a tunnelling shield (more of this later). This statue is also a vent for the underground station below (you can just see the vent toward the top of the plinth).
We went underground into Bank Station. I like these boards the staff do on a daily basis to cheer everyone up:
I learned a nerdy thing - these little blue plaques denote the depth of the underground station with a reference number beneath. 1 is the nearest to the surface, and 7 (Hampstead tube Station at 58.5 metres/92 ft) is the deepest.
Bank Station has a shop on one of the platforms which is the deepest one on the underground network:
In one of the tunnels, you can see an example of a tunnelling shield. This was where the workers digging out the tunnels by hand would stand (imagine a wall of earth and rock behind the tunnel sign which they would be knocking through). The shield protected the workers from falling earth and following behind would be workers shoring up the tunnel as they moved slowly forward.
An example of Labyrinth was designed by Mark Walling. 270 of these are in different stations on the London Underground to celebrate 150 years of its existence in 2013. This is the first time I've found one! *chuffed*
The next stop was The London Silver Vaults.
This rabbit warren of antique silver vendors was amazing! Inside there's one of the original safes:
I wouldn't like to try and get through this entry door!
There were many pretty things I would have liked to take home, here's a few:
I really enjoyed the walk (11,700 steps!) and I will look out for more of the tour guide's walks as he was incredibly knowledgeable. It had finally stopped raining on the way home, and I just missed the rush hour - I ended up catching the train I used to catch when I worked in Islington which was a real deja-vu moment! LOL! Needless to say, I was quite cold, so a hot shower was very welcome when I got in!