We had fingers crossed that our tour guide wouldn't be a resting actor, like Richard III, our guide to Little Venice. Jean, is a Freeman of the City and member of the City of London Historical Society, who writes and lectures on local history, literature, and genealogy. And what an interesting tour she gave too. Now if only we knew what a Freeman of the City is. If you're wondering how we came to choose this particular walking tour, perhaps it's how it was described in the brochure: Mystery plays and plague pits; riots, bodysnatching and bombing; jousting and jesters; bloodshed and burnings; monks, murder, and medicine.
We meet Jean at St Paul's tube station, and there are over 50 other people, making this the largest walking tour group we have been on. The simple act of paying took on monumental proportions. And crossing roads with a party of this size was an exercise in crowd management. Lucky it was a bank holiday Sunday, so there was very little traffic.
Our first stop is Postmans Park, named because it adjoins the GPO and is where the postmen would rest. This small green oasis, with its tinkling fountain contains a very moving memorial to ordinary people who have died while saving others. It's shielded by a low canopy on the boundary of the park and is very easy to overlook. We're certainly glad that Jean pointed it out to us. Painter and social radical GF Watts, had an idea to commemorate “heroic men and women” for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee year in 1887. No one supported the idea so he did it himself, with his wife Mary continuing to add tiles after his death in 1904; a tradition that continues today.
We continued down a street named Little Britain, passing between some of the buildings of St Bart's Hospital, reassembling in the park near the entrance to the church of St Bartholomew. In the middle ages this park, then located outside the city, was the site of jousting tournaments and fairs. What remains of the monastic church of St Bartholomew is entered through a gateway in a three-story Tudor building adorned by a statue of St “guess who?”. Originally the hospital was an arm of the monastery. But the monastery grew in size until it was appropriated by Henry VIII during the dissolution of the monasteries. Very little remains of the monastery today, just the small park, a small parish church and one wing of the cloister. Although the hospital continues to grow to meet the needs of the community. I'm sure my (Andy's) father would be pleased, as this is where he did his medical residency.
We learn about the body snatchers of the early 19th century who provided St Barts medical students with corpses to dissect and study, by removing bodies from fresh graves. A profitable business for local villains.
Smithfield Green was a place of execution for several centuries. Among the most notable to be executed are William Wallace, and the Protestant Martyrs under Queen Mary's rule.
Across the green is Smithfield Market, originally a live animal market on the outskirts of the City, it is now a wholesale meat market. Meat has been bought and sold at Smithfield for over 800 years, making it one of the oldest markets in London. A livestock market has occupied the site as early as the 10th century. Approximately 120,000 tons of produce pass through the market each year, including meat and poultry, cheese, pies, and other delicatessen goods. Bargaining between buyers and sellers at Smithfield sets the guidelines for meat and poultry prices throughout the UK. The ancient meat market has recently undergone a major refurbishment resulting in the creation of a thoroughly modern temperature controlled environment inside a magnificent Victorian building. Units are divided into a number of temperature controlled areas. Customers are able to walk along the central avenues choosing from the goods on display. If however they want to take a closer look inside the shop they must be dressed in clean protective clothing in order to comply with hygiene regulations.
We turn next into Cloth Fair, a very narrow one-way street, whose evocative buildings and lanes have survived both the Great Fire and the Blitz, including London's oldest lived-in house. From the middle ages until Victorian times the green fields of Smithfield held an annual fair and it was in Cloth Fair that the Guild of Mercers (cloth sellers) set up their stalls. There were even courts that followed the fairs to settle disputes between buyers and sellers. Sorry it was too narrow to take any meaningful photos.
We walk through back alleys to Charterhouse Square. The square has a beautiful key garden in the centre, surrounded by Regency period town houses. The garden, like other enclosed gardens is owned by the residents, who pay for the upkeep of the garden and receive a key that gives them access to the locked garden. The Charterhouse Square garden is built on the site of a plague pit, where victims of the black death were buried in a communal grave. At the edge of the park a monastary was built to house the monks who were to pray for the souls of those who died without the benefit of clergy or absolution. The original monks came from Chartres in France and from this name is derived Charter House. And at the eastern edge of this park stands the Art Deco building that is the home of TV’s Hercule Poirot.
It was slightly surreal to be standing in such a lovely square, with the sunlight glinting through the beautiful trees and listen to Jean's tales of the horrors of the black death, bringing to life tales from long ago.
The tour was taking longer than planned because of the large group of people, many of whom were dawdlers. It seemed to take an inordinate amount of time for the last of the stragglers to catch up again at each new stop, and allow Jean to continue with her fascinating commentary.
But we did eventually make our way to St Johns Gate in St Johns Lane. The Gatehouse is home to St Johns Ambulance Museum. Which is closed on public holidays. But for the record here is the address, as you'll see it's an easy one to remember: The Museum of the Order of St John, St John's Gate, St John's Lane, London.
We continued our walk to the Karl Marx Library, an unimposing lightly-rendered brick building that fronts Clerkenwell Green. Now Green is a misnomer, as the green seems to have been long gone. Today Clerkenwell Green consists of a concreted area in the centre of a wide street through which several trees are growing. Today London's May Day and other protest marches begin from this location.
Originally this area was named Clerkenwell Green because it was the last place to graze the animals being herded to Smithfield Market. Yes the fresh water well still exists in Clerkenwell. It is located in the basement of a building in Clerkenwell Road.
We pass a pub with a traditional name, but named untraditionally. See if you can work out what we mean in the photo below:
The walk ends at Farrindon Station which was built as part of the first Metropolitan underground railway line opened in 1863. The station and its surrounds are now rather run down, but scheduled for refurbishment works, as is much of London, for the 2012 Olympics.
And so our tour of Secret Clerkenwell ends some two hours later and Clerkenwell is a secret no longer.
