London Open House
This is where I tell you all how wonderful the London Open House weekend -- an annual event where various private buildings and features in many London boroughs are opened up to the public -- was, except that I wasn't in a position to go.
I'm hoping that a few of the people that I'm chained to post some pictures; though vicarious living isn't quite the same as doing it yourself, there's still something to be gained from sharing other peoples' experiences.
The one I wanted to see the most, besides the inaccessible 30 St. Mary Axe, was the Kingsway Tram Tunnel at Holborn... but these pictures take a little of the edge off my disappointment. All said, it really has been a fun and relaxing weekend; there's always next year.
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We cycled over to the gherkin well before opening time this morning, but already the queue was unbelievable, with further crowds flocking from all directions. We shrugged and headed home.
Yesterday included a couple of Open House visits, notably to the Old Session House on Clerkenwell Green, a former court and holding prison, now a Masonic temple. The current incarnation is mostly rather municipal-function-room in feel, but the dungeons are creepy, and the sole surviving cell is enough to turn anyone into a claustrophobe.
Convicted petty criminals would be bundled out through tunnels at the back directly onto Fleet River boats, and thence to ships on the Thames for transportation to Australia -- a journey of months that killed many, but was still preferable to being locked up in the local houses of desolation -- while their accusers sipped sherry with judicial pals in the lodging rooms above.
How many ghosts must haunt that building...