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Alleyways and courtyards of the mediaeval city
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Manage episode 221060 series 3904
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History lovers and those who are fond of spooky alleyways and secret spaces in the mediaeval City of London will love this walk. It covers the same territory as the City walk west of St Paul's a couple of years ago, but there are only two places we visit again so this is genuinely a new delight. Mind you, it will be essential for you to have your wits about you when you do this walk - we dive in and out of tiny entrances almost invisible to tourists, and walk through part of the City you would never find without a guide.
During the walk, we see a memorial to ordinary folk who gave their lives to save others and who would be forgotten except for the good offices of the symbolist painter G F Watts. We walk underneath the Old Bailey and visit St Sepulchre where there is a stained glass window dedicated to musicians and especially the father of the Proms Sir Henry Wood. His ashes are interred in the floor. In the same church is the bell tolled the night before executions in Newgate Prison and a poem exhorting the condemned souls to repent.
After walking through run down and abandoned parts of the old Smithfield Market ripe for redevelopment, we walk into a private road of elegant houses that is technically in Cambridgeshire. Half way up the road is St Ethelreda's Roman Catholic Church and through a hidden gap the most out-of-the-way pub in the whole of London. This is the spookiest part of the entire walk and full of atmosphere.
We then pass through the old Barnard's Inn, once part of the Court of Chancery but now the home of Gresham College where free lectures are given to all comers. We revisit Gough Square where Dr Johnson's cat Hodge is set in bronze on a copy of the famous Dictionary with an opened oyster. Finally we return to St Paul's and Paternoster Square after standing right under the site of the spire which once was the centre of the Blackfriars monastery church and we see the preserved crypt of Whitefriars behind glass in the basement of the Freshfields law office building.
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