Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
DICK WHITTINGTON
The City's Lord Mayor is elected on an annual basis, and the most famous Lord Mayor of the
lot is
Dick Whittington
(c.1350-1423) of pantomime fame. The third son of a wealthy
Gloucestershire family, Whittington was an apprentice mercer, dealing in silks and velvets,
who rose to become one of the richest men in the City by the age of just 21. He was an early
philanthropist, establishing a library at Greyfriars' monastery and a refuge for single mothers at
St Thomas's Hospital, and building one of the city's first public lavatories, a unisex 128-seater
known as “Whittington's Night Soil House of Easement”. The pantomime story appeared some
two hundred years after Whittington's death, though quite how he became the fictional
ragamu
n who comes to London after hearing the streets are paved with gold, no one seems
to know. Traditionally, Whittington is leaving London with his knapsack and cat, when he hears
the Bow Bells ring out “Turn again, Whittington, thrice Lord Mayor of London” (he was, in fact,
mayor on four occasions and was never knighted as the story claims). The theory on the cat is
that it was a common name for a coal barge at the time, and Whittington is thought to have
made much of his fortune in the coal trade. There's a statue on Highgate Hill commemorating
the very spot where Dick allegedly heard the Bow Bells, and a stained-glass window in
St Michael Paternoster Royal, on Skinner's Lane, near where he lived.
11
granite obelisk and a dragon weather vane. The tower also contains postwar replicas of the
famous “Bow Bells”, which sounded the 9pm curfew for Londoners from the fourteenth
to the nineteenth centuries, and within whose earshot all true Cockneys are born. The
original interior was totally destroyed in the Blitz and is a postwar re-creation, but the
church's medieval crypt survived and is home to the atmospheric
Café Below
(see p.376).
St Mary Aldermary
Bow Lane • Mon-Fri 9am-4.45pm •
T
020 7248 9902,
W
stmaryaldermary.co.uk •
!
Mansion House or Bank
At the southern end of Bow Lane lies the church of
St Mary Aldermary
, whose interior
is a rare foray into the perpendicular Gothic style by Wren, based on the original
church - the plaster fan-vaults and saucer domes in the aisles are the highlight and,
as a bonus, there's now a great café called
Host
in the nave.
Bow Lane
itself is a lovely,
narrow, pedestrianized street redolent of the pre-Fire City, jam-packed at weekday
lunchtimes with o
ce workers heading for its sandwich bars and pubs.
Blackfriars
Most folk heading south from St Paul's are aiming for the
Millennium Bridge
(see p.227), to cross over the river to Tate Modern and Bankside. However, instead
of simply heading for the bridge, it's worth taking time to venture into the backstreets
and alleyways, or go for a stroll along the
Riverside Walk
which now extends all the way
from Blackfriars railway bridge to Tower Bridge.
Blackfriars
, the district between Ludgate Hill and the river, is named after the
Dominican monastery that stood here until the Dissolution. The monks' old refectory
became Blackfriars Theatre, where Shakespeare and his fellow actors performed in the
winter months. Although the area was destroyed in the Great Fire, it suffered little
from wartime bombing and remains a warren of alleyways, courtyards and narrow
streets, conveying something of the plan of the City before the Victorians, the German
bombers and the 1960s brutalists did their worst. The best place to go for a taste of the
monastic is
The Black Friar
, 174 Queen Victoria St, which boasts a fantastically ornate
Arts and Crafts
pub interior (see p.390).
Church of Scientology
146 Queen Victoria St • Mon-Fri 9.30am-10pm, Sat & Sun 9.30am-6pm • Free •
T
020 7246 2700,
W
scientology-london.org •
!
Blackfriars
Built in the 1860s for the British and Foreign Bible Society, the London headquarters
of the Church of Scientology look like an Italian
palazzo
. If you're prepared to put up
