Indie Temple Of Love ๐
Recently London has what is called an 'Open House Festival' which runs this year from 14th - 22nd September, but if you missed out this year it will be back again for 2025 I am sure with many and often different venues to visit, keep an eye open for it at the link above. In short, the Festival allows ordinary 'Joe Public' into houses, buildings, gardens over London's 33 boroughs that would normally be off bounds, but during September London opens it's doors to some wonderful architectural gems from Georgian, Victorian masterpieces to stunningly beautiful gardens. It is a kind of 'bucket list' thing to do for us and also a pretty impressive thing if you are a visiting tourist as the whole 'fest' is free!
Trippin' Around Temples & Gardens
The weather was lovely and warm and the sun shining, Mrs Akin and I headed up town to Temple to explore the delights of Inner and Middle Temple belonging to the English Legal system. Before we got there we popped into 2 Temple Place which we have visited before and is featured in my previous post on this site at Medicine, Art, Food, this time there was no exhibition, but just the chance to wander around the beautiful building. We headed over the way to Inner Temple and wandered around the roads inside and it was very much a little oasis of calm with beautifully kept gardens (the plants were lovely), water fountains and sculptures. It felt like you weren't in the hustle of London!
We hit Middle Temple Hall and the beautiful Temple Church in all it's gothic glory. The vicar gave us some wonderful facts about the history of it.ย The Church was built by The Knights Templar and completed in 1185, it sought to replicate the splendour of the Church Of The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Temple Church sustained a lot of damage during World War 2 but has been restored to its former glory with its stunning stained glass windows and gothic style arches, have to be honest I am a bit of a sucker for church architecture as per my previous posts.
We exhausted the delights of Temple and headed up along Strand and onto Chancery Lane to visit the Maughan Library (part of Kings College), again another architectural stunner!
Treading The Boards Near The Adelphi
We trotted along by the Adelphi Theatre to a lovely little pub Mrs Akin had found tucked down a side alley called The Nell Gwynne (well worth a visit!) we then headed off around to Shaftesbury Avenue and cut into Chinatown to get some food and after to walk it off (as if we hadn'tย done enough walking!) wandered around near Drury Lane before we headed off back home again catching the bus from outside the Savoy along Aldwych.
And all round lovely day, nice to get out of the house and where we live and explore some other areas of London.
Temple Of Love Record Sleeve Picture Source: Discogs.com
Those Temple Vibes
So, for every bit of travel I do there is usually a tune I have floating around my head to remember the day by and this post is no exception, as you can probably guess by the title of the post the track by goth rockers The Sisters Of Mercy and was the soundtrack/earworm I had whilst exploring Temple, so what better than their track 'Temple Of Love' released on the independent Merciful Release record label in 1983, initially not charting the mainstream UK Charts, but hitting #1 in the UK Indie Chart of that year.
At the time of release the band were:
Andrew Eldritch - Vocals
Gary Marx - Guitar
Craig Adams - Bass
Doktor Avalanche - Drums
Ben Gunn - Guitar
The band would have to wait until 1992 and a good few line-up changes when it was re-recorded and featured Ofra Haza it became their biggest UK mainstream chart reaching #3. You can catch her beautiful vocals at the link 'Temple Of Love 1992'.
If you like that whole goth rock style and also the Merciful Release record label you can catch more at the links Goth Rockย and Merciful Release Records.ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย
Picture Thanks
Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis on Unsplash
Photos by ๐ ๐โ ฐ๐ฌ๐ รีผแซโ ฐ๐ฎ ๐๐๊โฑฟ