Basic HTML Version
14
City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000 info@cityandvillagetours.com
The Return of the Secret London Tour
From Holborn and Hatton Garden to elegant
Holland Park and including visits to Leather
Lane and London’s oldest Catholic church this
fascinating day is one of our Together Tours
including morning coffee and a choice of hot
lunches. The pub we used changed its
opening hours and ruled itself out of the day
but now they’ve asked us back! So here is a
summary of the day in pictures. Come and
meet the guide at 10-30am for morning
refreshments on High Holborn. The Secret
London morning walking tour doesn’t cover
a huge distance and it starts when we walk out
of the pub and through an arch next door into
Grays Inn, one of the four Inns of Court.
The statue of Francis Bacon stands here as
a former “bencher” of the inn. The poor chap
died of pneumonia after stuffing chickens with
ice in an early frozen food experiment!
From the Inn we emerge into one of London’s
oldest street markets, the famous Leather
Lane said to have been set up by Royal
Charter granted by King Charles II in payment
for a gambling debt. Coade stone charity
children stand above the entrance to the old
chapel and parish
school now known
as Wren House.
One street over and
we find ourselves in
the Hatton Garden
diamond and
jewellery quarter
named after an
Elizabethan rake.
Many of the diamond merchants are still run
by Orthodox Jewish families who retain their
traditional dress codes.
A secret alley leads us
past a tiny pub to the
ancient Catholic gem
of St. Etheldreda on Ely
Place, a private gated
enclave where neither
the Mayor nor the Met
have jurisdiction.