Helen Stephenson's "Hidden London" Walk Pictures

We gathered in the foyer of our building in Leadenhall Street, and when our guide Simon arrived, he led us west along Leadenhall Street. We stopped on the corner of Lime Street to look across Leadenhall Street to the mediaeval church St Andrew Undershaft in St Mary Axe. The Swiss Re Building, commonly known as "The Erotic Gherkin" forms the backdrop to the view of this church.

We then did a little detour along Lime Street to walk around the outside of the Lloyd's Building.

Our next stop was the Leadenhall Market. Many of us walk through Leadenhall Market at lunch time, but we probably don't stop to admire it. There are dragons everywhere. They are a constant theme throughout the City of London. The whole market is decorated in the Victorian style and businesses have to comply with that decorating standard - even Pizza Express! The old iron rails and hooks where meat and game were hung still exist and can be seen on the frontage of many of the premises. Here I've shown the beautiful lantern ceiling at the heart of the market.

It just so happens that I "did" Leadenhall Market in 2005 during London Open House Weekend, and have taken the odd picture of it at other times, too. If you want to see some of those pictures, click here.

We walked across Leadenhall Market and out onto Gracechurch Street, where we crossed the road and dived down a little alleyway that I'd never really noticed before. It led to the churchyard belonging to St Peter upon Cornhill. The entrance to the church is a red door accessed from Cornhill, and once we'd viewed the churchyard, we retraced our steps back to Gracechurch Street and went left around the corner into Cornhill.

When a businessman from the past wished to buy some of the churchyard of St Peters to build on, initially the church refused to sell. Eventually, the land was acquired for building, and the building which was erected sports three devils on its facade, apparently in defiance of the original non-co-operation of the church!

Then it was down another alleyway off Cornhill, where we saw St Michael Cornhill.

We went through a few more little alleyways, where I snapped plaques marking the spot where London's first coffee house stood; and where the Marine Society first met. Coffee houses were very important in the London of a couple of hundred years ago, as they were the places where businessmen met and did business. Lloyd's, London's big insurance market, started life in a coffee shop.

Next stop was Lombard Street, the traditional banker's street in The City of London. We spent some time admiring the signs outside the various premises, and particularly admired the grasshopper, which is depicted in both a sign and in the lintel of the premise's main doorway.

I managed to photograph the sign for the Guild Church of St Mary Abchurch, but omitted to photograph the church itself!

My next three pictures are of a building with very fine plasterwork over the twin doorways.

My next picture is of the blue plaque marking the spot where Laurence Pountney Church and Corpus Christi College stood. I was over three centuries too late to take a photo of these buildings, as they were destroyed in 1666 in the Great Fire of London.

We crossed Cannon Street and went down one of the small side roads on the south side of the station, Dowgate Hill, where we found some splendid livery halls. The next few pictures were of the entrance to the Tallow Chandlers Hall.

This decoration appeared on a number of pillars in the street, and I don't think it was associated with just one building - but I could be wrong!

I think the pictures to the left and right are of the entrance to the Skinners Hall, but I'm not absolutely sure about that. The head is in the lintel of the doorway.

From Dowgate Hill, we turned right into Upper Thames Street, and walked west. We took a side turn into college street to see St Michael Paternoster Royal.

We continued west until we got to Garlick Hill, where we saw St James Garlickhythe. This church survived both WWI and WWII, although it did sustain some damage. However, in 1991, it was further damaged by a crane collapse on a nearby building site and required restoration.

These two pictures are actually the same picture. I took it to be viewed in the upright format on the left, but found it also "worked" when viewed horizontally!

We continued west along Upper Thames Street and crossed Upper Thames Street using a pedestrian bridge, from where I took this picture looking back to the east. St James Garlickhythe is on the left of the picture.

We walked down to the riverside and were close to the Millenium Bridge, also known as the "Wobbly Bridge", although the wobble has long since been corrected at vast expense. From this vantage point, the modern replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre can be seen.

These two views weren't strictly part of the walk, but were things I spotted anyway. On the left, under a span of Southwark Bridge, you can see part of the white bow of Silver Cloud, who happened to be tied up alongside HMS Belfast that evening; and on the right, over a span of Southwark Bridge, you can see the tower of Southwark Cathedral (which is not a Wren church) against the backdrop of one of the Guys Hospital buildings.

Anyway, back to what our tour guide was trying to show us... These two views of the beach visible when the Thames is at low tide are red in colour due to the amount of clay deposited on them. When London Bridge was the only bridge over the Thames, people used to cross to Shakespeare's Globe in boats, and tobacco was sold already packed into clay pipes, which the smokers often discarded into the river after smoking their contents.

Here is a view of Wren's most famous church, St Pauls Cathedral. It's covered in scaffolding which in turn is covered in plastic printed to look like the facade it's hiding, and they've done an excellent job, as you probably wouldn't realise that this isn't the real facade unless you looked very closely.

These two pictures were taken from near St Pauls, but looking in the other direction. On the left is a picture of the "Wobbly Bridge". This picture of it leaves me in no doubt about why I feel unsafe walking on it. Just look at the way that the structure leans outwards! On the right is a statue commemorating the firemen who maintained a round-the-clock vigil at St Pauls Cathedral during The Blitz and successfully put out all fires that started there, thus saving the Cathedral for us today, although everything around it was devastated.

The next building was used until recently as the Choir School by St Pauls, but is now a youth hostel. Our guide said that it would be worth getting out the YHA card for the night just to stay in such a lovely building.

Our next location was the site of King's Wardrobe, which was destroyed in 1666 in the Great Fire. It was located in a rather built in courtyard and not much light was penetrating by that time of the evening, so the picture on the left is a bit below standard, and I had recourse to the pop-up flash on my camera for the picture on the right.

Continuing westwards, our guide found a place where you can see the spire of St Bride, Fleet Street to the west and the dome of St Pauls Cathedral to the east. I think we may have been on Carter Lane.

Here is the figure of the Black Friar on the outside of the pub bearing the same name, which is to be found at Blackfriars, which was the end of our guided walk, and a place where we tarried for some time and attended to our thirsts!

Here is our tour guide Simon, all wired up for sound during our walk. He did an excellent job!

That may have been the end of the official part of our walk, but I still had to get home, and decided to walk across Blackfriars Bridge and go to Waterloo to catch a train home. It was the ideal part of twilight as I approached the bridge and I put my camera onto a beanbag to steady it and took a few more pictures.

The first two feature the Oxo Tower and have a part of the London Eye peeping out from behind another building.

Next come three views of Charing Cross Station with Waterloo Bridge and the Thames in the foreground. Note the bus trail in the middle picture! There's also some movement of the boats on the Thames. (These were 2-second exposures.)

Next comes another view from the north bank of the Thames. I believe that some of these buildings house the Ministry of Defence, but I'm not absolutely sure of that.

Next I pointed my camera back to the south side of the Thames for another look at the Oxo Tower and the London Eye. Although there is less than ten minutes between this picture and the others of the same view, the light has changed considerably.

Next up is a panoramic view of the whole backdrop to Waterloo Bridge, as seen from Blackfriars Bridge.

I finished by zooming in on the scene on the north side of the Thames.

That was the last of the light, so I made my way to Waterloo and caught a train home.