Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
LONDON'S WALLS
London was a bona fide
walled city
from the time of the Romans until the Great Fire of 1666.
For another hundred years, it still had its
seven gateways
- the last one, Temple Bar, was only
removed in 1878, and now stands near St Paul's Cathedral. Sections of wall were still being
dismantled in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and, if you know where to look, there
are still several substantial slices of the city walls in situ today.
In 120 AD, the Romans built a grid-plan
military fort
to house around one thousand
soldiers, just east of the Museum of London - the wall is visible from the museum, and one of
the corner bastions (complete with section of moat) can be seen from St Giles Cripplegate in
the Barbican. However, it wasn't until 200 AD that the Romans threw up a proper two-mile
long curtain wall, 20ft high and 9ft thick. The walls fell into decay in Saxon times, but were
repaired and restored in the medieval and Tudor periods. On
Noble Street
, just southeast of
the museum, one of the most interesting sections came to light after the Blitz, showing where
the new city walls joined the older wall of the military fort.
There's an o
cial
London Wall Walk
, which starts outside Tower Hill tube, by the remains of
the medieval Postern Gate, although the only other really impressive sections of wall are in
nearby Cooper's Row (see p.187).
11
Jubilee memorabilia from 1977. There's a great section paying tribute to London's
ethnic diversity and a vast model of some 1990s squats on Hackney's London Fields.
Finally, you reach the space reserved for the
Lord Mayor's Coach
, which rivals the
Queen's in sheer weight of gold decoration. Built in 1757, it's still used to parade the
new Lord Mayor at the annual Lord Mayor's Show (see p.26).
Guildhall
Gresham St • Daily 10am-5pm; Oct-April closed Sun • Free •
T
020 7606 3030,
W
cityoflondon.gov.uk •
!
Bank
Despite being the seat of the City governance for over eight hundred years,
Guildhall
doesn't exactly exude municipal wealth. Nevertheless, it's worth popping inside the
Great Hall
which miraculously survived both the Great Fire and Blitz - you must
approach from the reception on the west side of the courtyard, not the quasi-Indian
porch, tacked on by George Dance the Elder in the eighteenth century, to the north.
The hall is lined with statues of worthies and is still used for functions, though only the
walls survive from the original fifteenth-century building, which was the venue for
several high-treason trials, including those of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Lord
Dudley, and, three years later, Archbishop Cranmer. As you leave, be sure to check out
the crazy pagan giants Gog and Magog, who look down from the minstrels' gallery, and
who feature every year in the Lord Mayor's Show (see p.26).
Guildhall Art Gallery
Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun noon-4pm • Free •
T
020 7332 3700,
W
cityoflondon.gov.uk •
!
Bank
Occupying the eastern side of the Guildhall courtyard is the
Guildhall Art Gallery
. Some
of the best works are the Pre-Raphaelite pictures displayed in the first gallery you enter:
Holman Hunt
's
he Eve of St Agnes
(inspired by Keats' poem), painted while he was still
a student, and bought by the gallery's first director out of his own pocket;
Rossetti
's
La
Ghirlandata
, a typically lush portrait, in intense blues and greens, of a model who's a
dead ringer for Jane Morris, with whom the artist was infatuated;
Millais
' two portraits
of his daughter E
e in her Sunday best -
My First Sermon
, in which she sits attentively
listening, and
My Second Sermon
,
when the novelty has worn off and she has dozed off.
Also hiding up here is
Constable
is full-sized oil sketch of
Salisbury Cathedral
,
characterized by loose brushwork and an air of foreboding, and a marble statue of
Margaret Thatcher
, now surrounded by a protective glass cabinet after the head was
knocked off by a protester in 2002.
