London In Shades Of Light & Dark ๐
Finally Spring appears to have sprung! The past week has been full of more calm weather here, the sun shining and when in it the rays feel just a bit warmer, it is obviously still not shirt sleeves weather but it is a welcome change from bitter cold winds and rain.
We booked up a little walking tour up town late on a Friday night, admittedly we have done quite a few in the past e.g. The Ripper Walk Tour and The Plague Tour. For this little journey the venue was very specific and also we got a bit of a deal on the tickets, anyway more about the 'dark side' later....
The Light Side
So, with the tour planned for the evening Mrs Akin and I decided to pop down to sunny South London during the day and visit a place and museum neither of us have been to before. We picked up the London Overground at Whitechapel and grabbed the train heading toward Crystal Palace taking the 20 minute jaunt to Forest Hill.
It seemed quite a pleasant area, some nice old architecture and houses reminding me a bit of North London's Hampstead and Highgate, we passed by an old 1920's style cinema which was in fact the ABC at Forest Hill opening in 1928, the building still looks wonderful in all its old style glory, it was after being a cinema turned into a bingo hall which closed in 1996 and in 2001 it re-opened as a Wetherspoon pub (noted for using old listed buildings), sadly they too pulled out and shut up shop in 2023 leaving behind a lovely old grade II listed but unused building. You can catch a photo of it in its original state and its history at ย ABC Forest Hillย .
We carried onwards uphill to our destination and were greeted by the huge clock tower before we saw our quarry 'The Horniman Museum'. Another very impressive looking building, as previously mentioned the clock tower is really quite striking and the building frontage is beautiful, different parts have been added on since its opening in 1901 by a gentleman named Frederick Horniman who inherited his father's tea trading business which was one of the world's biggest. Frederick was obviously well travelled and liked to collect artefacts either natural history to musical from countries he visited, he brought these back and housed them in the museum to share with Londoners. Not only is there a museum, but also gardens set in 16 acres of land containing a beautiful bandstand, ornamental garden, sound garden, pavilion, butterfly house, animal enclosure and nature trails. Some parts e.g. specific exhibitions or butterfly house you have to pay, but for the main museum and gardens it is free and very impressive we immersed ourselves in the exhibits of dress, culture and life from across the world, we lost ourselves in the immense display of instruments from across the globe and made a hideous racket in the music room containing different musical instruments from around the world, as I say really good day out especially for the kids. We headed outside to the gardens and their impressive vista across London and sat by the bandstand in the sunshine taking in the view and enjoying our lunch, we popped around the animal enclosure with its goats, sheep, alpacas and then headed back down the hill and hopped the train to London Bridge.
The Dark Side
Although very pleasant and Spring feeling in the sun during the day by the time we hit London Bridge the temperature was dropping, we headed towards the meeting point which is 'The George Inn' along by London Bridge. What a lovely old pub! It was originally built as a coaching inn with the uniqueness of having galleries, the pub had been there since medieval times and was destroyed, being rebuilt in 1677, evidently Dickens visited it and referred to it in 'Little Dorrit'.
It was really busy even on an early Friday evening, but we managed to grab a seat and drinks and relaxed for an hour before our tour commenced. At 6pm we met our guide by the entrance, an actress dressed in a shawl and bonnet befitting a historical dive into London's past. Considering it was her first actual guided tour having previously been involved in, but not led a tour she did an absolutely marvellous job gathering us all together and leading us off into a world of London's historical and dark underbelly.
Southwark had a reputation for being an area in London full of poverty and crime. The area was originally used by the Romans and then Anglo Saxons and finally William of Normandy who attempted to set it up to rival 'the city of London' just over London Bridge on the north side of the Thames. Details such as the pavement flagstones (all being angled) signified boundary lines, we headed down toward Southwark Cathedral and could see the 'sinkage' over time in that arches that once existed now only showed the very tops of them, the area being notoriously marshy, we were all surprised to be accosted by a medieval tax man (another actress describing the role and grimness of London of the day).
We were taken through Borough Market (in its day simply known as Southwark Market), we learned about the markers on the floors where would have stood pig pens and the grisly reality of London life in terms of poor sanitation. We were then met by two other 'peasants' of the day who described the horrors of simply just existing in a city where literally there was no sanitation and every ounce of human excrement ended up in The Thames, a breeding ground oddly enough for oysters (a poor man's diet in the day) to the problems caused by the excrement which often when the Thames flooded also engulfed the streets and houses with raw sewage, the stomach conditions caused were described in quite graphic detail and in essence many poor folk literally 'sh*t out their own guts' as disease ripped through their intestines.
Cheerful stuff! We carried on and learned more about Southwark Cathedral originally being a priory and the Bishop/Church of the day evidently pushed women into prostitution, we learned that the pub along near where we started out called 'Bunch Of Grapes' had a much more sinister past in that it was originally an alleyway where prostitution existed called Grope C**tย Lane (it was also used as a named alley in other towns across the UK).
Along by Clink Prison we stood above what was the execution area where was described in quite horrific detail the punishment for treason called 'Hung, Drawn & Quartered' yuk! what a horrible and painful way to go! The tour wrapped up back at the George Inn where we where shown 'The Parliament Bar' by our guide who highlighted that back in the day politicians would frequent the pub as it was outside of Westminster they could behave as despicably as they saw fit as they could not be held to account, the Inn was also frequented by South London's finest 'Highwaymen', thieves and wrong 'uns of the day, so Britain's politicians rubbed shoulders with some of London's most criminal elements, got into mayhem and in its way....nothing has really changed!
A big shout out to 'The Cloak & Dagger Tour' for for some wonderful acting and insightful historical information, for anyone visiting London a really good tour to take.
And Musically...
Anyway in celebration of South London, an area I must make more time to visit. I leave you with a track by a bit of a legend called Jah Wobble with his track 'South London Symphony' a dub reggae/world music sound which you can catch at the link here South London Symphony it was released on his own record label on the 'The Electro Dub Extravaganza EP' in 2019. The track listing below:
- Dub Musika (Para Siempre)
- Engage Your Glutes
- Making My Own Way
- South London Dub Symphony
Just to emphasize that whole London thing catch The Clash with 'London Calling' released in 1979 on the major CBS label.
Enjoy the vibes and if you like the Jah Wobble stuff catch my other post Bass...The Final Frontier at the link.
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Catch U All Again Soon!๐คช
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Photo Thanks
Photo by Vsevolod Belousov on Unsplash
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