London Night and Day E-Book

Matt Brown

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 190

Beschreibung

Like New York, London can be enjoyed all day and all night. This insider's guide gives you the gen on where, when and how to enjoy London at any hour. It covers places to stay, places to eat, drink, dance and be entertained and informed. Including all the main and famous places in London but with the added twist of highlighting some of the lesser-known parks, palaces and museums. The book is structured by hours of the day, so it gives the ideal time to do any number of great things in a great city, from breakfast places and tea at 4, to cocktails at 6 and midnight walks. Discover gin palaces, walks beside the Thames, Hawksmoor churches and haunted pubs with this indispensable guide. Each entry lists the nearest tube stop so this grand city can be explored with an Oyster card! Author Matt Brown from legendary London blog the Londonist is probably the most London-obsessed person there is. He brings his own extensive knowledge of the city to the book, revealing an array of new experiences even for the long-term Londoner and the discerning tourist. With London Underground going 24 hours in September, this is a timely book to discover some of the hidden charms of this fascinating city.

Leseprobe

LONDON NIGHT AND DAY

LONDON NIGHT AND DAY

THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO LONDON IN 24 HOURS

MATT BROWN

CONTENTS

Introduction

6 am Dawn of London

7 am Breakfast

8 am Escaping central London

9 am Shopping

10 am London at work

11 am Visitor attractions worth your time

12 noon Lunch

1 pm Parklife

2 pm Smaller attractions

3 pm Glorious minutiae

4 pm A relaxing cuppa

5 pm A bridge into evening

6 pm Pubs

7 pm Evening entertainment

8 pm Dinner out

9 pm A cocktail or two

10 pm Late-night fun

11 pm Getting home

12 midnight Night thoughts

1 am A walk through the city

2 am Open all night

3 am Ghostly London

4 am Night markets

5 am Up with the sun

The London Year

Acknowledgements

Index

My London

INTRODUCTION

In 1951, London played host to one of the greatest celebrations in the country’s history. The Festival of Britain reinvigorated a tired, post-war city, spurred redevelopment of the industrial South Bank, and gave visitors a glimpse of a brighter future. Those visitors were not just Londoners. Hopeful pilgrims journeyed from all quarters of the UK, and from overseas. Like all visitors, they needed a guidebook to help them make the most of their time in London. Many were published; few had any longevity. And then there’s London, Night and Day illustrated by Osbert Lancaster.

This remarkable guidebook raises eyebrows to this day. For cartoonist Lancaster and his anonymous scribe, the city was not some orderly metropolis to be catalogued and commended. It was a messy, dirty place with plenty of good and plenty of bad. Unlike many guidebooks of the day (and today), the book is filled with opinion and personal observation. Its other notable feature is that it follows the clock twice round, offering insights into the capital at every hour of day and night.

In September 2015, the inner workings of London are shifting gear once more. Five tube lines – the Central, Jubilee, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria – will stay open all night on Fridays and Saturdays. The rest will follow a few years hence. This simple change to the transport network will have enormous repercussions for London. At a stroke, it will be much easier to move in and out of the city after midnight, both practically and – even more important – psychologically.

Although taxis and night buses have always made nocturnal socialising possible, the talismanic lure of the tube will undoubtedly swell the numbers willing to do so. This will inevitably result in a wave of new businesses such as all-night cafés and bars, and a revival of the clubbing scene, currently in the doldrums. Whole new mythologies and folk culture will undoubtedly emerge, as people get used to the horrors and the wonders of the 4am tube.

This seems, then, like the ideal moment to catalogue the 24-hour city as it currently stands (or otherwise). Drawing on Lancaster’s 1951 volume for inspiration, this book is divided into 24 chapters, each following an hour of the clock, and what one might do within that hour. Of course, a book like this could never encapsulate everything that is possible in London, and simply to write a checklist of the very best would be lazy, when any competent Internet search will fulfil that need. Instead, like Lancaster’s example, you will find me an idiosyncratic and occasionally opinionated guide. I’ll reveal some of my favourite shops, restaurants and bars, but I’ll also lead you along dark alleys, through industrial landscapes, and to parts of London you might never have heard of. The fruits of more than a decade exploring and writing about the capital are here caramelised into a collection of insights that I hope you won’t find anywhere else. Above all, my aim is to instil a sense of wonder about what this great city offers, at any hour, day or night.

6 am

DAWN OF LONDON

Have you ever wondered where London came from? The start of the day is as good a time as any during which to contemplate the beginnings of the city.

Those of us who are still living in the capital in 2043 will surely hear all about it. That year will mark the 2,000th anniversary of the founding of the city, and the festivities will no doubt rival London’s other great parties, such as the 1951 Festival of Britain and the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.

Our city was established and named Londinium by a wave of conquering Romans around 43AD. No one is certain where the name came from, though it is likely to reflect an earlier Celtic origin. Before the Romans, there is no evidence of any sizeable settlement, but that’s not to say nobody was here...

DISCOVER LONDON BEFORE LONDON

It’s difficult now to imagine the land before the city, but there are places where the ancient landscape asserts itself still. Take a walk along King’s Cross Road, for example, from Clerkenwell towards the terminus. See how the road meanders and twists? Notice how, after a while, the sideroads climb steeply away from you? You are walking along the valley of the River Fleet, and those gradients were cut from the clay many millennia ago. This primeval landscape has made its mark on the buildings as well as the street pattern. When you reach King’s Cross station, seek out the new concourse. Its sweeping saucer shape is no accident. The roof was made this way to fit the curve of the neighbouring Great Northern Hotel (a good place to grab an early morning coffee, by the way). The hotel, in turn, has a curved profile because it follows the turn in the medieval Pancras Road. Why does the road bend at this point? Because it followed the banks of the River Fleet. The engineers who worked on the new concourse didn’t know it (I asked them), but their building ultimately takes its modern form because of a river that existed before anyone had heard of stations, or railways, or London. (We might take things back one stage further, by observing that the river’s course would have been determined at the end of the last ice age, when glacial meltwaters first carved out the Fleet Valley; and then to make the connection that the concourse resembles a giant glacier – but then we really are straying into the shadiest realms of psychogeography.)

You can find evidence of ancient rivers all over London. The Walbrook once flowed through the heart of Roman London. Its contours are still present in the valley between Ludgate and Cornhill, and a street named Walbrook follows its course. The Tyburn made its way through Marylebone and Mayfair before disgorging into the Thames at Westminster. A cursory glance at a street map readily reveals its meander – look for the twisty likes of Marylebone Lane and Bruton Lane, which stand out against the grid-like street patterns of the West End. In south London, the Effra gave shape to Brockwell Park, runs round the boundary of the Oval and bequeathed its name to any number of roads, schools, pubs and cafés. Whole books have been written on the subject. Most of these rivers have long been culverted and turned into sewers – visible just at the Thames, where giant floodgates only release them in storm conditions. But they are still down there, waiting for a time when humans have abandoned London, and the ancient landscape can reassert itself.

There are other ancient sites around town, although time and tide have mostly erased the evidence. The Vauxhall and Nine Elms area is particularly noted for its prehistoric finds. A few years ago, timbers from 4,500BC were found in the riverside mud, just next to where the Effra meets the Thames. Whether this was a type of fishing pontoon or an early bridge is debated. You can only see the timbers during the lowest tides each year. Nearby, archaeologists working on the new US Embassy site discovered Paleolithic remains (as far back as 10,000BC) left by hunter-gatherers. It’s not uncommon for flint tools of this era to be recovered from the Thames, though it requires a trained eye to interpret them.

Several locations in Greater London have ancient associations. Horsenden Hill near Sudbury Town tube was home to an Iron Age community some 2,500 years ago. The view from the top is spectacular, all the more so considering that it has been appreciated since before the Roman conquest. This, in fact, is a great spot to watch the dawn, with the sun rising just to the side of Wembley Stadium. Meanwhile, a trip to Epping Forest (Theydon Bois tube) will reveal the remains of two Iron Age forts, hidden among the trees. Loughton Camp and Ambresbury Banks are both from around 500BC, retaining ditches and earthworks excavated 15 generations before Julius Caesar ever spied Britain. They are poorly signposted and require a bit of map-work, but this means you’ll probably have them to yourself. There is no better spot in London to contemplate the ephemeral nature of life, and our tiny part in the turning of the centuries.

We can go still further back. As you walk around London, pay close attention to the stonework, especially on buildings made from white Portland stone. Many of these blocks contain tiny imperfections, with peculiar helical forms. These are the traces of ancient gastropods, bivalves and other small creatures that gave up their lives many millions of years ago. You can find these fossils on numerous buildings, including the Guildhall and the southern entrance to Green Park tube, which features particularly honeycombed stone. Strange to contemplate, but St Paul’s Cathedral rests on the shells of a million ancient sea snails. You won’t be told that by the tour guides.

SEEK OUT THE ROMANS

For its earliest years, London was engirdled and bounded by its old city walls. You can still trace their route around the Square Mile via a series of (rather dated) plaques. Outside Tower Hill tube station stands a tall section of surviving wall, presided over by a statue of Trajan, the emperor whose reign coincided with the first flourishing of Londinium as a major trading city. You can’t follow the walls immediately north because of a new development, but head up Cooper’s Row and into the courtyard of the Grange Hotel (it looks private, but there’s a right of way). Here you will find London’s most impressive section of wall. It towers over the courtyard and even incorporates an arch one can walk through. Much of the stonework is medieval, but if you look down into the pit you’ll see the tell-tale red bricks of Roman origin.

The relics do not surface again until the revealingly named street known as London Wall. Fragments can be seen along this road, and are best glimpsed from the Barbican highwalk (where it still exists – another new development has dismantled part of it). The stretch towards the Museum of London is particularly bountiful, as we reach the part of Londinium that once contained a garrison fort. Remains of that structure can be seen along Noble Street and, on rare occasions of access, in the basement of the London Wall Car Park. The museum itself has a large Roman gallery (due for renewal soon), and an outlook on to a section of wall.

From here the wall headed south towards the Thames. No fragments remain above ground, but some pieces still exist in the basements of buildings along the route. The famous Old Bailey gets its name from the wall (a bailey is an enclosed courtyard), and indeed I’ve seen significant remains of the wall down in its basement, which are sadly not open to the public.

There are numerous other places to glimpse the legacy of the Roman Empire. Perhaps the most impressive ruins are to be found in the basement of the Guildhall Art Gallery (Bank), where stones from Londinium’s amphitheatre were uncovered in the 1980s. This would have been a site of gladiatorial spectacle, and London’s first sporting arena. The remains are eerily lit, and it’s not unusual to find yourself completely alone down there.

Two churches, St Bride’s on Fleet Street (Blackfriars) and All Hallow’s-by-the-Tower (Tower Hill), also contain remnants of Roman structures in their crypts. The latter also houses a wonderful model of the Roman city, dating from the 1920s before the amphitheatre was discovered. Leadenhall Market, meanwhile, is built on the site of the old Roman Forum, the huge marketplace said to have been the largest structure north of the Alps. All that remains can be found in the small basement hairdressers on the corner of Gracechurch Street – book yourself an appointment and prepare to travel through time.

7 am

BREAKFAST

London has seen something of a breakfast Renaissance in recent years. Gone are the times when a greasy spoon fry-up or McChain hot muffin were the main options. Early morning dining is becoming something of an artform, no doubt given a fillip by the American and Australian obsessions with both breakfast and brunch. You can now break your fast with cuisines from all over the world. As with other food and drink sections in this book, space does not allow for anything approaching a comprehensive survey. Treat the following as a handpicked selection – some chosen for curiosity as much as quality – from the hundreds of excellent venues across town.

CENTRAL

Hamilton Hall

Liverpool Street Station, EC2M 7PY (Liverpool Street)

An increasing number of pubs now offer breakfast. The grandest and busiest of them all is this former hotel ballroom, long since converted into a mega-boozer by the Wetherspoon chain. The breakfast menu runs the full gamut of early morning favourites, from fry-ups to American-style pancakes. The real reason to visit, though, is to witness the troubling number of besuited executives necking a pint or two at 7am. No wonder we had a banking crisis. Most other Wetherspoon pubs in central London open for breakfast. I can also recommend the Fox and Anchor (115 Charterhouse Street, EC1M 6AA), which notionally caters for porters at Smithfield Market coming off shift, but is more likely to be filled with yet more office workers – a demographic catered for by the pub’s ‘City Boy Breakfast’ option.

Regency Café

17–19 Regency Street, SW1P 4BY (Pimlico)

When it comes to the ‘traditional café’, plaudits usually go to the likes of E Pellicci’s or M Manze, but there are many other examples in less fashionable neighbourhoods.

The Regency is one such, occupying a quiet corner of Pimlico, and reasonably handy if you’re visiting Tate Britain. The black tiles and frilly curtain give it an anachronistic film-set look from the outside (indeed, you might have seen it in the film Layer Cake). Within, you’ll find a similar timewarp of Formica tables and photos of old football stars. This is a proper greasy spoon, where a stodgy Full English is the order of the day.

NORTH

The Breakfast Club

31 Camden Passage, N1 8EA (Angel)

The Breakfast Club, despite its name, offers top nosh at any time of day (and see 9pm for a rather special bar at the Spitalfields branch), but the queues often snake for a breakfast bite. Expect diner-style looks and a menu that mixes Full English, pancakes, oats and various egg creations – not all on the same plate. You even get a welcome from a cardboard Elvis, an ambassador for extraneous carbs if ever there was one. Other branches of this popular chain are popping up like toast across London, and now in Brighton.

Camino

3 Varnishers Yard, N1 9FD (King’s Cross St Pancras) This tucked-away Spanish restaurant has served up the tapas for more than a decade, but still feels fresh. The breakfast menu offers hams and cheeses, plus a Full Spanish that runs along English lines, with clever substitutions. Enjoy chorizo in place of British sausage, morcilla rather than black pudding, a roasted pepper standing in for tomato, and toasted mollete bread instead of your standard sliced white. If you really must, there’s a churros + chocolate option, too.

SOUTH

Aqua Shard

Level 31, The Shard, 31 St Thomas Street, SE1 9RY (London Bridge)

Start the day by overseeing the capital from this stylish panoramic restaurant in western Europe’s tallest building. Aqua Shard has proved very popular, and evening reservations must be secured at least a month in advance. Not so breakfasts, which start from 7am and can usually be booked just a couple of days before. To its credit, the restaurant doesn’t simply rely on its views to wow diners. All the usual morning classics are present and correct, but you can also sample a Lobster Benedict or sup a breakfast cocktail (one of which includes cornflakes).

Lido Café

Brockwell Lido, Dulwich Road, SE24 0PA (Herne Hill)

They say you should never swim on a full stomach. The temptation is certainly there at Brockwell Lido, which combines a gorgeous 1930s outdoor pool with one of the best cafés in the south. The caff offers the full range of usual suspects, with particularly good sourdough toasts and three degrees of Full English, to cater for different hunger levels.

EAST

Andina

1 Redchurch Street, E2 7DJ (Shoreditch High Street)

You could easily walk past this Peruvian kitchen, so very plain and understated is its façade. But this is London’s trendiest street and, inside, all is vibrant – from the tightly packed tables to the swirling waiting staff. The food and drink is so colourful, you might want to bring sunglasses. Breakfast options (from 8am) include a Full Peruvian (fried eggs, pork rind known as chicharron, quinoa pancakes and more), and filo pastry with dulce de leche filling.

E Pellicci

332 Bethnal Green Road, E2 0AG (Bethnal Green)

Whole articles have been written about this traditional East End café. Queen Victoria was still on the throne when the Pellicci family, fresh from Tuscany, opened shop in 1900. It’s still going strong with an interior untouched since the 1940s. Every Londoner passes this way sooner or later, from the Kray twins to A-list celebrities, to the legions of regular customers who live more humble lives. Serving from 7am, a huge Full English will cost you little more than a fiver, and in the most traditional setting you will ever witness.

WEST

Granger and Co.

175 Westbourne Grove, W11 2SB (Notting Hill Gate)

Aussie chef Bill Granger offers a taste of downunder, if that’s not too unfortunate a mix of metaphors. First-timers should opt for the ‘Full Aussie’, an antipodean take on the traditional British breakfast, with added chipolatas and sourdough toast. You’ll also find plenty of novel dishes, such as ricotta hotcakes (basically, American-style pancakes) with banana and honeycomb butter, or courgette fritters with deep-fried egg and halloumi. The whole ethos purports to be ‘relaxed’, but the place is always much too busy for that. A second branch can be found in Clerkenwell (50 Sekforde Street, EC1R 0HA).

Habanera

280 Uxbridge Road, W12 7JA (Shepherd’s Bush Market)

There was a time when you couldn’t find decent Mexican food in London for love nor money. Now you can chow down on Central American delights for any meal of the day. This colourful restaurant opens early on weekdays to dish out breakfast tacos and ‘bacon & eggs burritos’ to those who can stomach such things at the crack of dawn.

8 am

ESCAPING CENTRAL LONDON

It may seem contrarian, in these early chapters, to give instructions on how to leave the centre. I have a good reason, though. Outer London holds many of the most-interesting, best-kept secrets of the capital, but if you want to enjoy them it’s best to make an early start. Plus, heading out of the centre just as all the morning commuters are trawling in gives one a sense of rebellion against the system. Every day should start with an act of non-conformity.

NORTH

Barnet and surroundings

Barnet Museum, 31 Wood Street, EN5 4BE (High Barnet)

The northernmost point in Greater London is a small rhomboid of low deciduous woodland by the name of Tilekiln Osiers. I’ve never been, and wouldn’t recommend that you go either, but it’s always good to know these things. The outer limits of north London do hold many treasures, though. How about a visit to the ancient town of Barnet, at the top of the Northern Line? The area contains a number of attractive Tudor buildings and a landmark church. It was also the location of the Battle of Barnet (1471), a decisive confrontation during the War of the Roses. You can tour the battle site while climbing the hill up to the attractive village of Monken Hadley. Look back across the greensward for impressive views. Barnet Museum is also worth a visit, if only to see the portrait enigmatically labelled ‘G. C. Hudson... hero of the Breeches Incident’. What can it all mean?

ENFIELD WAY

Forty Hall

Forty Hill, EN2 9HA (Turkey Street)

Whitewebbs Museum of Transport

Whitewebbs Road, EN2 9HW (Crews Hill)

Enfield, home of the eponymous rifle, is a sizeable area totally absent from most guidebooks. If you do make the journey, take a look around Forty Hall, a stunning Jacobean mansion surrounded by eminently explorable woods and fields. This former home of a Lord Mayor tells the story of life in the 17th century. Then, take the pleasant walk northwest to London’s other transport museum, Whitewebbs. This small museum is so obscure it lacks a Wikipedia page and only opens Tuesdays and the last Sunday of the month. It’s well worth a visit, though, for the collection of vintage cars, bikes, fire engines and other vehicles.

Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge

8 Ranger’s Road, E4 7QH (Chingford)

A little further to the east you’ll find Epping Forest, a last tract of the Great North Forest that once covered most of the region. It’s easy to get lost in the 6,000 acres (2,428ha) acres of beech and hornbeam, so begin by surveying the woods from Queen Elizabeth’s Hunting Lodge. This unique survivor from Tudor times served as a base and archery platform for royal hunting parties 450 years ago. It’s now a mini-museum of Tudor life, perfect for family visits. From here, the still-vast forest stretches before you and would take days to explore fully. Be sure to carry a map, as mobile-phone signals aren’t always easy to come by. There are many features to seek out, but the two Iron Age forts, mentioned in the opening chapter, are a priority.

EAST

Barking and its Manors

Eastbury Manor House, Eastbury Square, IG11 9SN (Upney)