(I've got quite a bit to get through, so I've split this post into three parts)
I finished up work last week and am lucky enough to have a two week break before starting the new job on 1st March. I've decided that week one of this employment limbo will be devoted entirely to London, the city I have called home for nearly 20 years. Usually I'm either too busy, too knackered or just too plain lazy to take advantage of the bewildering amount of things to do in London, but here's the perfect opportunity to do some of things I've been meaning to do for years.
My aim is to experience one main event each day, but I also want to allow room for chance and serendipity to feature. So, yesterday, being Monday, I kicked off my "London Love-in Week" with a trip the museum dedicated to the capital, The Museum of London.
Emerging from the Moorgate tube station, I made my way down London Wall in the direction of the museum. I haven't been to this part of the City for a while and the first thing that struck me were the new buildings that now line the street. It's a very urban space with raised pedestrian walk ways that skirt the boundary of the Barbican Centre. 125 London Wall (designed by Sir Terry Farrell and occupied by JP Morgan) straddles the road below and along with the adjacent buildings it blocks the western skyline, making it feel more like a downtown US or Japanese business district. It also has a Pizza Express that is literally suspended from the building's underbelly.
One of the new buildings that caught my eye was One Coleman Street near the junction with Moorgate and London Wall. A Swaine, Hyden, Connell building, it has angled contradicting windows set into a precast concrete panels with stainless steel trim. Not your typical smooth glass exterior, it definitely has as retro feel and its oval shape provides a softer edging to both London Wall and the public space that sits next to it on Coleman Street. It's a fantastic addition to the street's architecture which already counts buildings from venerable architects such as Richard Rogers' 88 Wood Street, with it's coloured vents (a visual reference to Rogers' iconic Pompidou Centre in Paris) and more recently the Norman Foster designed One London Wall at the western end. These are all on the south side of the street while the north side is blessed with scatterings of the original London wall fortification: amazing to see given the amount of continual rebuilding that has taken place over the years. These fragments, while not completely hemmed in, are dwarfed by the colossal Barbican Centre and 140 London Wall, aka Bastion House which is a 70's modernist style belter. It looks like something you'd find in central Nairobi and to be honest I'm surprise it's still there at all. That said, the raised walk way, another throw back to modernist planning offers up a fine view of the street's ancient namesake and is worth the effort of climbing the stairs.
I wasn't in a hurry to arrive at the museum and decided to head over to Smithfields for some lunch before history lesson of London. On the way, I passed through Love Lane (it was Valentine's Day after all) and the ruins of St Mary's Aldermanbury. It's now a small park dedicated to the Shakespearean actors who first published his works and it's ruins were shipped out to Fulton Missouri after WWII. From there I went on to discover the charming St Anne's Lutheran Church, a small square red brick and white stone church designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren in 1680.
Inside, it's a simple symmetrical space, said to be styled on the shape of a Greek cross. I entered to find a lunchtime recital already in mid flow with someone playing the French Horn accompanied by the piano. I guess the church was hoping to appeal to the hoards of bankers and lawyers who fill the surrounding offices by offering musical and maybe even divine respite during their lunch hour - a kind of spiritual off-set. Instead it was half full of retired folk who appeared more interested in the tea and biscuits laid out on a trestle table at the back of the church than the lady puffing her way through Haydn at the front.
Perhaps if I worked nearby I might become a regular to St Annes, but today I stayed to listen only for about ten minutes before continuing on my way to Smithfields via the warren of lanes and small alleys that lead through St Bart's Hospital complex and Cloth Fair.
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