Hidden Corners of London

It is a temptation when visiting London to allow yourself to be carted around from one major site to another without getting the real feel of London. You must wander off the beaten track and find the unexpected hidden corners of London. Hidden Corners of London are places where you can have a quite wander around. If you choose a weekend you will almost certainly be on your own and even a weekday you will find them quite.

Amen Corner

The only residential street within the shadows of Saint Paul’s Cathedral and indeed the quietest spot within the square mile. With the picturesque 17th - century houses built for the clergymen of the Cathedral with the peaceful name of Amen Corner. Protected by the rear wall that once held the inmates of Newgate Prison in their cells on the opposite side. The ironwork around the doors still holds the torch snuffers as well as the old gas lamps.

An old piece of Newgate Prison Wall That Still Survives today.

Ely Place

Ely Place where a Beadle is still the law behined these gates and his little lodge can be seen on the right in the photo. At the end of Ely Place can be found St Ethelreda's church. The gardens of St Ethelreda were said to produce the finest strawberries in London and were mentioned in Shakespeare's Richard III. (Act II, scene 4), Gloucester: My Lord Ely!
Ely: My Lord?
Gloucester: When I was last in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there: I do beseech you send for some of them.
A Strawberry Fair is still held every June in Ely Place for charity.
As you pass back on the right a very narrow alleyway that runs between Ely place and Hatton Garden, and just pass the Mitre tavern you can still see above your head, one of the few remaining metal posts preventing Horse riders riding through.

Henry VIII's Hidden Barn

This elegant hide away that goes unnoticed by the busy visitors to the clubs of St James's street, with its lovely display of flowers and antique lamplight decorating this rather idilic Blue Ball Yard. Today it belongs to the rear annexe of the Stafford hotel, although during the eighteenth century it was a stable and going still further back in time was said to have been a barn belonging to Henry the VIII, and was part of his Royal Palace of St James's.

Pickering Place

Almost opposite King Henry’s old barn is Pickering Place, squeezing in between two 16th century shops is this narrow passageway where you can go back in time to the days when England owned America and the Republic of Texas was governed from an office where the light on the right glows above the office door. This passageway leads you into a small courtyard that still belongs to the 16th century.

The plaque on the side panel announcing the Republic of Texas legislation to the court of St. James 1842 - 1845.

Jamacian Wine House

The narrow courts that the experienced office workers juggle their way through on their busy day with well rehearsed ease. Where by chance if the unexpected explorer glimpses these passages they find themselves back almost in the seventeenth-century. St Michael's Alley is one such place where the delights of coffee was first sold by Pasqua Rosee setting up his shop on the site now occupied by the late Victorian - Jamaica Wine House. The coffee houses that now swamp the city with their exuberant prices are still much cheaper than they were in those distant day's.

Simpson's

And their neighbours along the same alleyway is Simpson's.

Riceyman Steps

This is the Location of Arnold Bennett's Riceyman Steps off Kings Cross Road, that tells a wonderful story of 1919's Edwardian London. In 1888 at the age of twenty-one, Arnold Bennett left Staffordshire for London, ten years later he had his first novel, A man from the North published. The compelling book Riceyman Steps he wrote during his mid fifties in 1923, it portrays life around these steps and is set in Clerkenwell. With the following description, "Riceyman steps, twenty in number, are divided by a half landing into a series of ten." The central figure of this story is Henry Earlforward a bookseller who has his book shop with one window facing Kings Cross Road and another window and door in Riceyman Steps. At the top of the steps is Granville Square, that in this book becomes Riceyman Square. The description of the Square and surrounding Clerkenwell area, just after the first World War is truly remarkable. If you want a good read of this near forgotten classic book that brings to life Clerkenwell in the autumn of 1919 then treat yourself to the hard to find,
Arnold Bennett, Riceyman Steps.

The old tree in Wood Street

This famous tree marks the site of St. Peter in Chepe, a church destroyed by the Great Fire. The terms of the lease of the low houses at the west-end corner are said to forbid the erection of another storey or the removal of the tree. Whether this restriction arose from a love of the tree, as we should like to think, we cannot say. All that remains to remind us of this ancient church is this quite, little garden churchyard and of course this famous tree.

Wordsworth has immortalised this fine tree in Wood Street by his plaintive little ballad;

THE REVERIE OF POOR SUSAN.
At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years;

Shrine of O’meara Street

At the side of the railway arches that serve trains in and out of Waterloo Station, is the shrine of O’meara Street, built in the front area of The Church of the Precious Blood. It is the most unlikely spot to find this quite corner of South London. Said to commemorate the nearby burial plot where some unmarked graves of the prostitutes from the medieval days of the Bishop of Winchester’s Bankside Stews were discovered. A nice spot to linger before returning to the mad rush.

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