Its raining so not too good to be outside today. Leather Lane is a good compromise, sandwiched between the Grays Inn Road and Hatton Garden the market offers the usual low rent mix of mobile phone accessories, global food (Daddy Donkey's Kick Ass Burito's being a favourite) clothes strictly for fancy dress, knock off DVD's and seeds and nuts for the corpse dodgers.
In amongst this however is some great architecture (in individual buildings) good cafe culture, and a great independent bookstore ( The Soho Bookshop) with a design specialism upstairs and a porn shop in the basement for those who like to mix the two. Haircuts are a fiver, your shoes can be re-soled, and the fellafels from Sara's grocery are authentic.
The nature of markets in London and our relationship with them is strange. If Leather Lane were not there, few would mourn its passing, but as a part of the character of this eclectic part of town, it is as essential as black cabs and red buses. It sells little of value and probably provides grey earnings for a range of illegals and benefit cheats but nevertheless is unique in its diversity and provides part of the flavour for "midtown", hidden from the agents boards and grade a offices the agents sell , separate from the girly bars on the Farringdon Road, discrete from the Victorian splendour of Smithfield and the Holborn Viaduct and cheek by jowell with the precious metal dealers and diamond merchants of Hatton Garden. Indeed the difference between the traders in Leather Lane and Hatton Garden is hard to see beyond the sharp suits and doorway heavies. This analogy could be stretched to include those who ply there trade in Grey's Inn as well but with less obvious doorway heavies.
As a footnote a good place to spin off is Brookes Market, now no longer a market but a square notable for its european influences (if you can see beyond the preponderance of Camden bins) and the beautiful gothic of St Albans the Martyr in the corner. Here on a rainy day, it is possible to still sit beneath the impermeable canopy provided by the London Planes and dream of better days.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
St Pauls
Rather than sit through an office lunch at the screen reading and eating crap I have decided to roam my local world for an hour when work allows.
Today I ended up at St Pauls. I've lived in London most of my forty odd years but had never been inside. Breathtaking.
Whilst in poorer times I have objected to paying to get into Churches I handed over the cash and started roaming, I only had one objective, to climb the dome. After two laps I found the stairs, a lazy slack spiral at first ascending in pidgeon paces up a long climb to the internal gallery (the Whispering Gallery) that wraps the inside of the base of the dome. The scene inside is fascinating and to watch a service from here amazing, the mosaics on the floor and the brightly frescoed walls and dome above reflect Wren's desire to bridge the gap between heaven and earth. An artifice achieved.
Alone it is difficult to whisper to oneself across the great chasm but the italians mumbling faberanza got the message across adequately.
A little door on the far side has an arrow pointing up and through a narrow set of stone steps, past ancient oak doors and iron framed oriel windows leads another stair, a tighter stone circle, up to the external "Stone Gallery". From here you step outside, breathe heavilly and look to the horizon. Fabulous views open up and the scale of the cathedral starts to take over your head. It is vast. You look down on churches, offices and Paternoster Square, full of insects going about London life without looking up, never quite appreciating what looms above.
A lap of this deck enables you to gather the strength and breath for the last stage up to the Golden Gallery. This is a more daunting climb, gone are the stone steps replaced by a lattice of iron spirals in sets of 20 steps between landings, rising through the inside of the dome shell between the outer surface and inner trappings. The ironwork is old and rests on beams upon beams with rather worrying later concrete interventions moulded around the stairs. Again you pass tiny oak doors and lattices of footways and passages, here more precarious and less enclosed than at the lower levels, you pass vestiges of original stone and timber stairs long ago abandonned and leading in alternate directions. My heart was pumping hard, either from the climb or the vertigo. Finally you arive at the last flight a narrow place of stone steps, lowering ceilings and steep ascent, you enter a chamber with the obligatory tourist guards, and make a final stumble, back on stone, up onto this gallery that runs around the outside of the top of the dome, before the stone ball and lantern rise up above.
If you thought the previous views were good here you can almost see the Sea to the east as you overlook the Port of London, the Thames runs shimmering in a loop to the south beyond to the downs and to the north the Weald Ridge, Wembley and Harrow. London seems but small and its edges within touching distance. This view is amazing. In medieval London this must truly have felt like rising up to god, with no buildings over a few stories back then, the feeling must have been one of fear and awe. This remains. The power and grandeur embodied in this monument will stand in comparison to any contemporary buildings in history as a testament to the power of religeon and the unutterable stupidity of man. The ability of Man to create this and then dedicate it to a deity shows how low our self esteem must be, when simply to build this edifice should demonstrate that man alone has the power of creation.
I loved it. Where to tomorrow?
Today I ended up at St Pauls. I've lived in London most of my forty odd years but had never been inside. Breathtaking.
Whilst in poorer times I have objected to paying to get into Churches I handed over the cash and started roaming, I only had one objective, to climb the dome. After two laps I found the stairs, a lazy slack spiral at first ascending in pidgeon paces up a long climb to the internal gallery (the Whispering Gallery) that wraps the inside of the base of the dome. The scene inside is fascinating and to watch a service from here amazing, the mosaics on the floor and the brightly frescoed walls and dome above reflect Wren's desire to bridge the gap between heaven and earth. An artifice achieved.
Alone it is difficult to whisper to oneself across the great chasm but the italians mumbling faberanza got the message across adequately.
A little door on the far side has an arrow pointing up and through a narrow set of stone steps, past ancient oak doors and iron framed oriel windows leads another stair, a tighter stone circle, up to the external "Stone Gallery". From here you step outside, breathe heavilly and look to the horizon. Fabulous views open up and the scale of the cathedral starts to take over your head. It is vast. You look down on churches, offices and Paternoster Square, full of insects going about London life without looking up, never quite appreciating what looms above.
A lap of this deck enables you to gather the strength and breath for the last stage up to the Golden Gallery. This is a more daunting climb, gone are the stone steps replaced by a lattice of iron spirals in sets of 20 steps between landings, rising through the inside of the dome shell between the outer surface and inner trappings. The ironwork is old and rests on beams upon beams with rather worrying later concrete interventions moulded around the stairs. Again you pass tiny oak doors and lattices of footways and passages, here more precarious and less enclosed than at the lower levels, you pass vestiges of original stone and timber stairs long ago abandonned and leading in alternate directions. My heart was pumping hard, either from the climb or the vertigo. Finally you arive at the last flight a narrow place of stone steps, lowering ceilings and steep ascent, you enter a chamber with the obligatory tourist guards, and make a final stumble, back on stone, up onto this gallery that runs around the outside of the top of the dome, before the stone ball and lantern rise up above.
If you thought the previous views were good here you can almost see the Sea to the east as you overlook the Port of London, the Thames runs shimmering in a loop to the south beyond to the downs and to the north the Weald Ridge, Wembley and Harrow. London seems but small and its edges within touching distance. This view is amazing. In medieval London this must truly have felt like rising up to god, with no buildings over a few stories back then, the feeling must have been one of fear and awe. This remains. The power and grandeur embodied in this monument will stand in comparison to any contemporary buildings in history as a testament to the power of religeon and the unutterable stupidity of man. The ability of Man to create this and then dedicate it to a deity shows how low our self esteem must be, when simply to build this edifice should demonstrate that man alone has the power of creation.
I loved it. Where to tomorrow?
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