London General Tips by yooperprof

Favorite Thing: An outstanding baroque Church in Westminster, St Mary le Strand sits in the middle of one of London's busiest thoroughfares. It was built between 1714-1717 and was designed by James Gibbs, the classically (Italian) trained architect also responsible for St. Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Sq., and for the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford. A beautifully rich and warm interior. St Mary-le-Strand was damaged during the 1940 Blitz, but not irreparably.


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Favorite Thing: "St. Bart's" is one of the most "medieval" places remaining in London.

Constant rebuilding - and a relatively high level of prosperity - helps to explain the general lack of surviving medieval structures in central London. The Great Fire of 1666 didn't help matters either! The church of "St. Bartholomew the Great" - close to the famous meat market in Smithfield Square - is one of the few places remaining in the City (aside from the Tower) where it's possible to get a sense of Norman and Plantagenet London.

The Church was founded in the 12th century by the monk Rahere, whose tomb is a well-maintained survivor from the past. Seating in the church is traditional - in the collegiate manner - and the acoustics here are phenomenal, with a remarkable resonance and vibration. St. Bart's has seen its ups and down - after the abolition of the monasteries in the 16th century it was even used as a barn! In the 1800s, the Victorians heavily rebuilt the church so that it would be more in keeping with their strange notions of what a "gothic church" should look like. But in spite of many depredations, St. Bart's still retains its ability to cast a medieval spell on those who enter its doors.


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Favorite Thing: Baroque grandeur - a splendid Christopher Wren interior. This is the official church of the Corporation of the City of London - it's a stone's throw from the Guildhall.

Heavily damaged by bombing in WWII, very beautifully restored.


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Favorite Thing: Actually, all that's left is the steeple, which Ian Nairn called Christopher Wren's best.

The rest of the church was destroyed in the Blitz.

Just to the east of Holborn Viaduct.


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Favorite Thing: St. Giles's Cripplegate was one of the few City churches to make it through the Great Fire of 1666, but it was not so fortunate in the twentieth century. This medieval church which has been heavily "restored" and basically re-created - first by the Victorians in the 1800s, then by modern preservationists in the late twentieth century. (St. Giles was heavily damaged by bombing during World War II.) The church is a survivor - and its presence next to the Barbican Tower Blocks is suggestive of the way in which London itself has its own geology, layers of the past piling upon one another much like the strata of metamorphic rocks.

Incidentally, the "Cripplegate" in its name has nothing to do with people on crutches. A medieval word, "creple," refers to an underground passage beneath a fortified wall. A street - or "gate" - ran next to this tunnel, hence "creplegate".

More of interest: the great poet John Milton is buried here, his resting place marked by a stone inside the church. Also buried here is the Elizabethan explorer Sir Martin Frobisher.


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Favorite Thing: Londinium was the site of a Roman encampment, and evidence of Rome's presence here can be seen in several places, most dramatically in a stretch of well-preserved Roman Wall near the south end of the Barbican Development. Several sections of the wall were unearthed as a result of the destruction of the 1940s and subsequent rebuilding of this chunk of the city.


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Favorite Thing: Famous from 145 different films or television mini-series set in London and dealing with the difficult path from Crime to Punishment, the Law Courts are a symbol of Britain's pride in its Common Law traditions. Architect G.E. Street designed the building in the 1870s as a Gothic Palace in its own way every bit as magnificent as the Palace of Parliament. Here are 64 courts, 7 miles of corridor, and over 1000 rooms.

The main entrance to the Courts is off the Strand, but my photo shows the Carey Street side.


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Favorite Thing: You won't find luxury accomodations at Lincoln's Inn - unless you are in the Bar! London has four "Inns of Court" - the others being Inner Temple, Middle Temple, and Gray's Inn. All are "great and good" medieval establishments for the study and practice of the Common Law. Lincoln's Inn is the largest and the best preserved, having escaped World War II without major damage. It's a place to feel connected with the past and with the generations of lawyers and legal scholars who have lived and worked in its buildings.

Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in Central London. Many historic and interesting houses are here, including Sir John Soane's Museum. There used to be the most amazing collection of tall plane trees in the square, but many of them were toppled during the Hurricane of 1987.


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Favorite Thing: Richard Rogers - born in 1933 - unleashed this post-modern office block upon the London scene in 1986. It's one of the most daring - if bizarre - structures in Europe. Rogers was also responsible the Pompidou Center in Paris - a museum for modern art that was dedicated in the middle of the 1970s. Both buildings incongruously place their basic "skeletal" infrastructure on the outside, enabling them to create dramatic spaces within. More than any other single architect of our time, Rogers literally encouraged people to think "outside the box" when it came to designing urban buildings.

I think the Lloyds Building looks like a motorcycle engine. When you are strolling through the City of London, it's very startling to come across Lloyd's, particularly within the context of the traditional 19th buildings that surround it.

In recent years, some very important architects have made London a place to find "edgy" design. I can't wait to see the famous new "Erotic Pickle" office tower!


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Favorite Thing: The courtyard of Somerset House has the "coolest" fountain in Central London. Somerset House is a majestic mansion on the Thames, just upriver from Charing Cross. It's been recently reconverted from governmental offices to a new incarnation as the home of the excellent Courtauld Collection of Paintings, as well as the London outpost for St. Petersburg's Hermitage Collection.


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