Sallyacious

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January 01, 2008

Secret Places

One of the things I love about London is all of the discoveries a person can make there. Not only are there these brilliant blue and green plaques on the walls of various buildings which give you an idea of their historical significance (we found the place where the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed while taking a random stroll through Bloomsbury, thanks to a helpful blue circle), but there are all of these wonderful alleyways and passages and nooks and crannies to peep through. Just wandering through the West End you come across marvelous sights, even without trying.

(This is actually on the grounds of the Kings College of London School of Medicine in Lambeth. I shot it from the Albert Embankment, after noticing it on our first walk. It was obviously part of an interior prior to the Blitz. I have no idea who the fellow is, but this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. So many secrets make themselves known to you if you just keep your eyes open in London.)

Part of this has to do with the age of the city. So much has occurred in London over the years, and by over the years, I mean over the last couple of millennia. Things have been happening on that section of the Thames for at least the last 2000 years, so there's all kinds of stuff to be discovered. As I said to Dave one day while we were walking, I think I could spend the rest of my life in that city and not learn all of her secrets.

(These were both taken on Boxing Day, during our walk through the City.)

I didn't carry my camera with me most of the time we were there because we walked a lot and it's big and bulky and I didn't really want to have to worry about it. I thought about taking my point and shoot too, though I decided against it due to the seeming silliness of carrying two cameras with me. I really should have included it. It's not so artsy fartsy as the big camera, but I've taken some great shots on it, and it would have fit beautifully in a coat pocket. This is all my long and involved way of saying that I only took my camera two of the nine days we were there, and so have limited photographs. Though I did snag Dave's camera for one of those other days, to get some pix of a place I loved when I lived there and found again this trip.

There were four things I remembered from my time in London in 1988 that I wanted to see again this time, if I could. Three places and one piece of art that I had been enchanted by while I was there, that stuck in my memory and fed my dreams. They were the things that popped into my head every time I thought of London in the last 20 years.

I found them all again this trip. Three of them, I wandered across completely by accident, and if we'd turned and looked in a different direction during a specific moment on our Boxing Day walk, I would have also stumbled upon the fourth. As it was, I had to search it out. How lovely a gift is it, when the things that touched you--small miracles all of them--come back to you by happenstance during your one opportunity to see them again?

I have pictures of two of those miracles. For the others, I'll try to find images on the net for you. Because my taking photos of either one would not have been appropriate.

Neal's Yard
A friend of mine gave me the book London Walks before I left for my semester abroad in 1988. One of those walks included a teeny nook near Covent Garden called Neal's Yard. It is so small that you can't find it on most of the handheld maps, you have to search for it in the A-Z, a book-sized map of London. You enter through a covered passageway which opens into this lovely little courtyard. It was a fairytale place, and I only managed to get there once. I really wanted to go again this trip, but I wasn't going to carry the A-Z around with me either. (Question: How do you wander around in London and not look like a tourist? Answer: Don't carry a huge fucking bag full of maps and cameras.)

On Christmas Day, we went out for a walk and I took the 35mm camera with me, figuring there would be fewer people out and I could get the shots I wanted to then. We wandered through the West End, among other places, and when I saw a sign for Seven Dials, I insisted we go that way because I'd always wanted to know exactly what it was. I am an idiot for not taking a picture of it, but there you are. It's a seven-sided sundial in the middle of a traffic circle, fed by seven one-lane, one-way streets, with small, colorful shops on each rather pointy corner.

We tried to figure out how to tell the time, but it was an overcast day with the kind of light that doesn't allow for any shadows. At random, we turned to wander down one itty-bitty street and I gasped with incredulous joy. Because there on the wall ahead of us was the street sign for Neal's Yard. I dragged Dave along immediately.

It was even more wonderful than I had remembered.

Photograph of St. Paul's During the Blitz
One of the obligatory tours one takes in London is through St. Paul's. When I was there in 1988, I marveled at how little I liked the space within. It was too busy and overworked for my personal taste. (You'll see in a moment what my preference in churches runs to.) There were too many people and too much ornamentation and it was the fifth or sixth thing we'd visited that day and I was overwhelmed by it all, though I tried to appreciate it anyway because you're supposed to. So I was pretty meh about the whole interior of the cathedral, though I was trying to see why everyone else loved it so much, when I came around a corner and saw this picture (the one with the smoke). It stopped me dead in my tracks.

On our next to last day in London this time around, I was wandering through the Tate Britain, trying to find the Pre-Raphaelites and Hogarth. I'd already spent four hours looking at Turner and Millais, so I was a bit dazed and dazzled, and I read the map wrong. I entered a gallery of black and white photographs and realized I was lost. So I looked at the map again, figured out where I meant to be headed instead and turned around to leave. I stopped dead in my tracks again. Because there on the wall, right next to the doorway I'd just come through, was that photograph. I'd been wanting desperately to see it again, but not interested enough to drag Dave into St. Paul's just to see a picture. This is what I mean by little miracles.

Chapel of St. John's, Tower of London
One of the earliest tours my student group did during our tenure in London was the Tower. We saw the Crown Jewels, we went into the torture chamber, we did the whole thing. Including the White Tower. Which is where our guide led us into one of the most beautiful and peaceful places I've ever been, the Chapel of St. John's. We didn't spend as much time in there as I would have liked, I could hang out in that room forever, as it turns out, and soon our guide was ushering us off into the next space. But I've dreamed about that room since, wondering if it could really have been as beautiful as I remembered.

On Saturday, our last day in London, we visited the Tower. We were doing the Armories self-tour, where you are forced through the building in a specific path (especially on days as busy as Saturday was) and suddenly, we came out of a stairwell into the Chapel of St. John's.

It was every bit as beautiful and peaceful as I remembered it being. And it continued to be for at least five minutes before some entitled asshole jumped the velvet ropes to snag some photographs he just had to have. The reason I don't have any pictures of the chapel? It's a church. There are signs at the entry saying, more or less, "This is a sacred space. Gentlemen, please remove your hats. Please refrain from speaking." Then a glob of tourists poured through the door and started chatting in their outside voices "What is this, then? It's a chapel. No, you can't take pictures in here. But he's taking pictures." etc. And the peace was shattered and we left. Which is too bad, because it's so lovely. I would like to go back some day when I can spend an hour or so in the room. Alone.

St. Dunstan's-in-the-East
One of the first things the faculty of ILACA (the program I studied with) inflicted upon us while I was a student in London was a day-long walk through the city. It was to help us adjust to the time zone and to introduce the city quickly. Basically, they exhausted us and overwhelmed us with information so that we'd sleep better that night and maybe deal with the jet lag and time change more quickly. (It didn't work for me, I spent the first two weeks of my stay there waking up at 2am for no particular reason. The same thing happened this trip, though only for three days.)

We started at the Tower Hill tube station and I still don't remember where we were when they finally let us go home. I do know that it was a long walk and that the Monument was a part of it. And St. Dunstan's-in-the-East. Though I was tired enough even at that point to not catch the name of the church. Which was a pity, because I only saw it the once and had intended to visit it again, though I couldn't remember where in the city it was. Obviously, I didn't get back to it again while I lived over there.

But I really wanted to see it on this trip.

I'm not sure how or why I knew this, but I knew it was a church near the Monument. And so, while we were walking in that area on Boxing Day, I tried to find it again. (I also spent a lot of time looking at the churches noted on that section of the A-Z. Two names kept popping out at me, St. Dunstan's and St. Magnus the Martyr. I figured that St. Dunstan's had stuck with me because one of the later stops on that wearying day was to St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, which I had hated with the passion of a culture-shocked 20 year-old college student who has not been sleeping well and has walked too far and seen too many churches and other places in a one-day time span. Twenty years later, I still remembered the name of that church.

I didn't find the church I was looking for on Boxing Day. Which is highly ironic. Because if Dave and I had turned around and looked in the opposite direction while gazing up at a large pseudo-gothic business building on Great Tower Street (The London Underwriting Centre, as it turns out), we'd have seen it. It was a block away.

Another church, however, caught our eyes that afternoon. It intrigued us both enough that Dave wrote the name down because he wanted to know more about it. St. Magnus the Martyr. He looked it up a couple of days later when he opened his wallet and saw the name. I looked at the website after he was done, and found a list of links to other churches in the City. (I swear there's another one every two blocks. It's pretty incredible.) St. Dunstan's-in-the-East was on it, so I thought I'd go ahead and check, and lo and behold, it was the place I was looking for.

Built by Sir Christopher Wren after the Fire, St. Dunstan's had a tower that also withstood a serious gale that leveled several other churches and the Blitz. The rest of the church didn't make out so well, though after the bombing the walls were still standing. When the Anglican Church reorganized after WWII, they opted to not rebuild St. Dunstan's-in-the-East. So the City of London turned it into a park. It opened in 1971, and I visited it in 1988.

I remember how peaceful it was when we walked in on that first mad tour, and I'd vowed to make it back somehow. This trip, on my very last day in London, I did.

I was not carrying my camera, so I borrowed Dave's point and shoot to take these.

The interior:

The exterior:

A nine day trip. Four fuzzy memories of places and images that stopped my heart and sparked my imagination twenty years before. How miraculous is it that I discovered all four again, almost completely by accident? This is how magical our trip to London was.

Posted by sally at January 1, 2008 11:30 AM

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