Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
St Giles-without-Cripplegate
Fore St • Mon-Fri 11am-4pm • Free •
T
020 7638 1997,
W
stgilescripplegate.com •
!
Barbican
The Barbican's solitary prewar building is the heavily restored early Tudor church of
St Giles-without-Cripplegate
, now bracketed between a pair of artificial lakes, and
overlooking an impressive corner bastion of the old Roman fort. It was in this church
that Oliver Cromwell was married in 1620 and John Milton buried in 1674 - he was
subsequently exhumed in 1793, his teeth knocked out as souvenirs and his corpse
exhibited to the public until the novelty wore off.
Museum of London
150 London Wall • Daily 10am-6pm • Free •
T
020 7001 9844,
W
museumoflondon.org.uk •
!
Barbican or St Paul's
Hidden in the southwestern corner of the Barbican complex is the
Museum of London,
whose permanent galleries are basically an educational trot through London's past
from prehistory to the present day, illustrated by the city's major archeological finds
and some great scale models. The real strength of the museum, however, lies in the
excellent temporary exhibitions, gallery tours, lectures, walks and videos it organizes
throughout the year.
11
London until 1666
The permanent displays start on floor E (where visitors enter), with a section on
London before London
. Here, you'll find a cave-bear skull from half a million years
ago, Neolithic flint tools, not to mention a lion skull, a hippo's tooth, an auroch's
skull and an elephant's foot. The
Roman London
section includes the Bucklersbury
mosaic floor, displayed in a mock-up of a wealthy Roman dining room, gold coins,
marble busts from the Temple of Mithras (see p.174) and mock-up Roman shop
displays. Highlights in the
Medieval London
section include a reconstructed Saxon
home, a model of Old St Paul's and a wonderfully over-the-top video on the Black
Death. Look out, too, for the Cheapside Hoard, found by workmen in 1912, and
containing the finest collection of Elizabethan and Jacobean jewels in the world.
Modern London
The museum's post-1666 galleries are all on the ground floor (L2), and begin with
Expanding City
, which includes revealing sections on how slavery helped increase the
city's wealth, an original Newgate Prison door and a recreation of a pleasure garden.
he
People's City
section traces the history of the suffragette movement and the
political struggles of the 1930s and features one of the most popular sections, the
Victorian Walk
, with several streets of reconstructed period shops from a toyshop to a
barber's. You can relax in a mock-up interwar cinema and watch old footage of prewar
London, admire the wonderful Art Deco bronze lifts from Selfridges, or play on the
interactive Charles Booth map which plotted the city's poverty in 1889.
The postwar section features snapshots from each decade: a model of the Skylon from
the 1951 Festival of Britain, some groovy Swinging Sixties clothes, punk and Silver
POSTMAN'S PARK
Opposite the former General Post O
ce building, south of the Museum of London, lies
Postman's Park
, one of the most curious and little-visited corners of the City. Here, in 1900, in the
churchyard of St Botolph, Aldersgate, the painter and sculptor George Frederick Watts paid for a
national memorial to “heroes of everyday life”, a patchwork wall of majolica tiles protected by a
canopy and inscribed with the names of ordinary folk who had died in the course of some act of
bravery. It exhibits the classic Victorian sentimental fascination with death, and makes for macabre
but compelling reading: “Drowned in attempting to save his brother after he himself had just been
rescued” or “Saved a lunatic woman from suicide at Woolwich Arsenal station, but was himself run
over by the train”. In 2009, the first new addition for 78 years was added to the wall.
