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Soho & Covent Garden to South Bank

Walk This Way Golden JubileeBridges

architecture + history at your feet

The construction of the Golden Jubilee Bridges has

re-drawn the map of London, opening up unparalleled

access between two of London’s most exciting areas:

the West End and South Bank. Walk This Way will guide

you around the history and architecture that is now linked

by the new Bridge. From the public squares of the West

End: Soho, Leicester and Trafalgar; to the spectacles of

South Bank: London Eye, National Theatre and Oxo Tower;

and then back to the Embankment and Covent Garden.

See www.southbanklondon.com for a more detailed profile of the buildings andstreets featured in Walk This Way – Golden Jubilee Bridges.

At a brisk pace, the Walk This Way Golden Jubilee Bridges route will take at least 60minutes, although it is recommended that you allow more time to stop and sightseeat various points along the route.

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Hungerford Bridge and the Golden Jubilee Bridges

The bridge remained this way throughout the twentiethcentury, though it temporarily received a second walkway in 1951, when an army-issue Bailey Bridge was added forthe Festival of Britain. In 1996 a design competition was

won by architects Lifschutz Davidson and engineers WSP, who designed two new footbridges on either side of therail crossing.

The construction of these footbridges was a complexengineering feat, constrained by building in a busy tidalriver near two submerged underground lines. Concerns thatthe piling work for the bridge foundations could triggertime-delay fuses of unexploded World War II bombs on theriver bed (the bridge itself took a direct hit) and flood thenearby tube lines led to the design being modified and thefoundations being dug by hand.

As the bridge supports lay in the path of navigationchannels, ship impact barriers had to be created. Three40metre, 225-tonne concrete beams were shipped upriverand lowered into place using cranes and divers. Thesemassive buffers are visible at low tides.

In 2002, after one million work-hours, the new bridgesopened. Each one is a 300m concrete deck attached to aseries of leaning suspension masts with steel cables. Theoverall effect is to create a tunnel of light focusing on eitherend of the crossing and distracting the viewer from theadjacent railway bridge. The new bridges are capable ofcarrying more than four times the number of people acrossthe river than before, creating a strong link between theWest End and South Bank.

Named after the Farleigh Castle Hungerfords ofSomersetshire, the seventeenth century Hungerford Marketwas found on the north side of the Thames. In 1845, it wasconnected south of the river by a massive suspensionfootbridge, also named Hungerford.

An advanced design by renowned engineer IsambardKingdom Brunel, at 660 feet in length, Hungerford Bridgewas the second longest in the world. Its two red-bricksupports (‘Surrey’ and ‘Middlesex’) incorporated landingpiers and internal stairways for ferry passengers. Thepopular design became the subject of many paintings andan early photograph.

In 1859 the Charing Cross Railway Station was built onthe site of Hungerford Market. While most stations werenot permitted in the centre of London, Charing Cross andits then-neighbour, Cannon Street, were allowed across theriver and for this, a bridge was required.

In 1864, the railway company replaced the crossing with asquat railway bridge of iron girders. The railway engineer,John Hawkshaw, did preserve the red-brick piers, however,and recycled the suspension elements in Bristol’s CliftonBridge. Hawkshaw also added two narrow walkways eitherside, though one was later removed as the railway waswidened, leaving the only direct connection to South Banka single, narrow, congested footbridge that proved almostuniversally unpopular.

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TransportGeneral travel information can be obtained on Transport for London’s 24-hour number: 020 7222 1234, www.tfl.gov.uk

Underground StationsTottenham Court Road Northern & CentralLeicester Square Northern & PiccadillyCharing Cross Northern & Bakerloo Embankment Northern, Bakerloo, District and CircleWaterloo Northern, Bakerloo, Waterloo & City and Jubilee*Westminster District, Circle & Jubilee*Southwark Jubilee*Temple District & CircleCovent Garden PiccadillyHolborn Piccadilly & Central

* these station exits are wheelchair accessible. Covent Garden stationsuffers from severe congestion and is exit-only from 13.00 to 17.00 onSaturdays. Commuters are advised to use alternative stations.

RV1 Bus ServiceRiverside 1 is a bus service linking Covent Garden, South Bank, Waterloo,Bankside, London Bridge and Tower Gateway, providing a cost-effective,easily recognisable link to over thirty of London’s attractions.

Route AccessibilityA lift service is available on both sides of the foot-bridges on South Bank and on the downstream side of the footbridge on thenorth bank (see map). There is a steep gradient up Savoy Street betweenpoints 27 and 28. An alternate route is to continue along the down-stream footbridge, through Charing Cross station and east along theStrand, re-joining the route at point 28.

Accessibility InformationTransport for London 020 7126 4059National Gallery 020 7747 2885London Eye 0870 990 8885Hayward Gallery 020 7921 0813Oxo Tower Wharf 020 7401 2255Royal National Theatre 020 7452 3000Royal Festival Hall 020 7921 0971Royal Opera House 020 7340 4000

Key1 Soho Square2 Greek Street3 Gerrard Street4 The Empire5 Leicester Square Gardens6 Odeon Theatre7 National Gallery8 St Martin-in-the -Fields9 Nelson’s Column

10 South Africa House11 Charles I Statue 12 Charing Cross13 Northumberland Avenue14 London Eye15 County Hall16 Shell Building17 bfi London IMAX Cinema18 Waterloo Station

19 Hayward Gallery20 Oxo Tower Wharf21 National Theatre22 National Film Theatre23 Waterloo Bridge24 Royal Festival Hall25 Embankment Gardens26 Cleopatra’s Needle27 The Savoy28 The Lyceum Theatre29 Bow Magistrates Court30 Royal Opera House31 Covent Garden Piazza32 St. Paul’s Church

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Soho Square

Initially named King Square after itscreator, Soho Square was built for titledgentry made homeless by the Great Fire. It contains a monument to Charles II anda half-timbered Summer House (added in 1875–76). Once used to house anelectrical transformer, it is now a park-keeper’s hut. A French Protestant Churchand St Patrick’s Catholic Church (bothcompleted in 1893) are present in theSquare, evidence of the internationalrefugees that sought out Soho.

Greek Street

Greek migrants first came to Soho afterthe Ottoman invasions of the seventeenthcentury and Greek Street still retainsbuildings that date back to past ages: theHouse of St Barnabus for DestituteWomen, built in 1746, and the MaisonBertaux patisserie, the oldest in Londonand structurally unchanged since 1871.

Gerrard Street

Acquired by Baron Gerard of Brandon atsword-point, Gerrard Street was developedfor aristocratic residents. As areas furtherwest grew fashionable, it became home tothe immigrant communities who couldafford its low rents: French, Italian, Jewishand, in the post-war period, thousands ofagricultural workers from Hong Kong. Thesignificance of the Chinese communitywas recognised by Westminster Council in1985 when the street, now identified as‘Chinatown’, was pedestrianised andrenovated with Chinese style decoration.

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Soho Square

‘So-ho’ was an ancient hunting cry used when sighting

prey and the area was used for such sport as late as 1562.

Confiscated from Westminster Abbey by Henry VIII, lack

of interest and building restrictions resulted in little

development until the Great Fire of 1666. With the City

destroyed, the green fields of Soho were chosen to house

the aristocracy. As Soho declined as a fashionable address,

political and economic migrants were drawn there, including

four thousand French Protestant Huguenots, fleeing

persecution in 1685. By the nineteenth century, Soho

housed ethnic minorities from all over Europe, including

radicals fleeing the failed revolutions of 1848 (such as Karl

Marx) and in the twentieth century, it has seen the growth

of its Chinese community. The long history of ethnic diversity

has resulted in a cosmopolitan mix of cafés, clubs,

restaurants, theatres and dwellings, while the lack of

sustained redevelopment has enabled historic buildings,

dating as far back as the seventeenth century, to survive.

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Gregory King 1681

Variousfrom C17th

Nicholas Barbon1677–1685

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The Empire

The ‘Empire Theatre of Varieties’ was a bigsuccess with Victorian London and hadshown moving pictures since the 1896Lumière brothers projections. Bought byMGM to be a flagship cinema in 1925,the theatre was given a lavishly-decorated3,000-seat auditorium, drawing twomillion visitors annually. Reconstructed in1962, the stalls became a Mecca DanceHall (‘The Equinox’ from 1992) while themain cinema has a redesigned art-decoauditorium. The 1928 frontage wasrestored in the 1980’s.

Leicester Square Gardens

When developing his Square, the Earl of Leicester was obliged to provide atree-planted public area, to compensatethe parishioners, who had traditionalrights to dry clothes and graze cattle onthe fields. In serious disrepair by 1874, thegardens were restored by James Knowlesafter being purchased for the public bynotorious fraudster Albert Grant MP, witha marble fountain and central monumentto Shakespeare.

Odeon Theatre

Over a hundred ‘Oscar Deutsch EntertainsOur Nation’ cinemas were built in the1930s. The most ambitious project wasthe Leicester Square cinema: amonumental building with a dramaticblack tower and art-deco lettering, fourtimes the cost of other major Odeons.Deutsch's death in 1941 marked the endof his cinema building, though many ofthe original constructions survive today, ascinemas, bingo halls or even churches.

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Named after the owner, Robert Sidney, Second Earl of

Leicester, the private gardens known as Leicester Fields

were developed into a residential square in 1782. The

Third Earl permitted booths to be built, which evolved into

shops and exhibitions. In the nineteenth century, the

residents made way for turkish baths, oyster rooms and

exhibition centres, the most noteworthy of which was

James Wyld’s Great Globe (a massive sphere from

1851–62, containing a map of the world on the inside).

Four great theatres were built in the Square: Alhambra

(1858), the Empire (1884), Dalys (1893) and the

Hippodrome (1900). In the late twentieth century, the

Square was pedestrianised, refurbished and the theatres

turned to cinemas: the Empire switched to screen in 1928;

the Alhambra became the Odeon (1937); the Dalys was

replaced by Warner West End (1938); and the Hippodrome

has become a nightclub. These cinemas have since made

Leicester Square the site for many of Britain’s film

premieres and the centre of the British film industry.

Leicester SquareThomas Verity, J. & A.E. Bull 1884

James Knowles1874

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Andrew Mather andHarry Weedon1937

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Trafalgar Square

Laid down in 1820, the public space was not named

Trafalgar Square until 1830, twenty-five years after the

most decisive sea battle in British history. The proponent

architect was John Nash, who recognised the area as a

crucial axis between the east-west St. Paul’s–Buckingham

Palace road and the north-south Whitehall–Westminster

link. Nash designed the east side of the Square and over

the following century other architects and artists added to

it. Charles Barry was one such architect, who constructed

the north terrace in 1840 and, to prevent the gathering of

riotous crowds, added the red granite fountains in 1845

(which were remodelled with mermaids and dolphins in

1938). In each of the Square’s four corners are the plinths:

Sir Charles James Napier and Sir Henry Havelock, both

Generals of the Imperial era, are to the south; George IV

riding bareback and dressed as a Roman is located in the

north-east; and the fourth plinth, which has stood empty

for more than a century, houses a number of different

temporary exhibits. In 2002, a World Squares for All

project removed traffic from the north side of the Square,

to be replaced by a grand staircase linking the National

Gallery and pedestrianised north terrace to the Square.

William Wilkins1832–1838

James Gibbs1721–26

National Gallery

Founded with just thirty-eight pictures in1824, a permanent home for the NationalGallery was commissioned seven yearslater. Forming the north side of TrafalgarSquare, the grand building is divided intothirteen sections, six on each side of thecentral portico and its skyline is broken upby ‘pepper castors’ (small domed turrets).In 1867–76, E.M. Barry re-modelled theinteriors and added a new east wing. TheNational Gallery now has forty-six roomscovering the development of Europeanpainting from the mid-thirteenth centuryto the French Impressionists. The mostrecent addition was the Sainsbury Wing,completed in 1991 on the site of abombed-out furniture store.

St Martin-in-the-Fields

Once a stone chapel in the fields of theSaxon village of Charing, the land wasconfiscated by Henry VIII, who built a new church in 1542. The replacementchurch of 1721 is the oldest building inthe Square. The first to feature a steeplerising directly above a portico ofCorinthian columns, the Italian Baroquestyle has influenced church-designthroughout the world.

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Charing Cross

Known also as the ‘Eleanor Cross’, it is thelast of twelve crosses placed by KingEdward I in 1290 to mark each of theresting places of Queen Eleanor’s funeralcortege as it journeyed from Lincolnshireto Westminster Abbey. The cross was soonreplaced by a monument of Caen Stone,which was pulled down in 1647. WhenCharing Cross Station was being built in1863, a replica by E.M. Barry was set upoutside the Station, with eight crownedstatues of Queen Eleanor on the sides andeight kneeling angels below.

Northumberland Avenue & GreatScotland Yard

Northumberland House, the Earl ofNorthampton’s great Jacobean mansion,made way in 1874 for this quiet, tree-linedroad, very much like a boulevard in itswidth and grand surrounding buildings.Originally a street of vast hotels, thesewere converted for other purposes in thetwentieth century: the former Grand Hotel(1878–80) on the north-east corner; theVictoria Hotel, now NorthumberlandHouse (1882–85) on the south side, andthe neighbouring Metropole Hotel (1885).To the south is Great Scotland Yard,reputedly named after a 12th Centurypalace used by visiting Kings of Scotland.In 1829, 4 Whitehall Place became thefirst headquarters of the MetropolitanPolice, with a public entrance at the rearin Scotland Yard. The headquarters wererelocated in 1890 to the Embankment,and again in 1967 to Victoria Street, bothbearing the name of ‘New Scotland Yard’.

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William Railton1842

Herbert Baker1935

Hubert Le Sueur1638

Nelson’s Column

The centrepiece of the Square is theworld’s tallest Corinthian column: 170ft of Devonshire granite, capped by thestatue of Lord Horatio Viscount Nelson,Britain’s most beloved naval hero andcommander at the battle of Trafalgar. Thelions at the Column’s base were added bySir Edwin Landseer and the reliefs by WFWWoodington were finished in 1867.

South Africa House

Once the site of The Golden Crosscoaching inn and Morley’s Hotel, the HighCommission of the Dominion of SouthAfrica opened in 1935, a large whiteconstruction with classical porticoesrelated to St. Martin’s church, butdistinguished by balconied windows andsmall motifs with exterior decorations ofAfrican animals.

Charles I Statue

The Charles I statue is the oldest inTrafalgar Square. Carved during his reign,it is the first statue of an English King onhorseback, designed to make thediminutive monarch look more imposing.Hidden during the Civil War, the statuewas re-erected on the site of the originalCharing Cross, the point by which alldistances to London are measured.

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Edward Middleton Barry1863

Various1876

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Originally isolated and defined by the Thames, the south

side of the river has developed in a very different way from

the affluent north bank. What began as green fields and

pleasure gardens transformed, in the eighteenth and

nineteenth centuries, into a sprawl of industry: factories,

wharves, railways, slums and ‘dark Satanic mills’. In 1951

the bomb-scarred area was chosen to host the Festival of

Britain and has since become home to art and culture

centres for the entire nation. In South Bank can now be

found a vibrant and growing community, as well as a

riverside walk, passing some of London’s latest

achievements in architecture.

South Bank

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London Eye

‘The perfect symmetry of a circle which –from a distance – seems to be transparent,embodies the passages of time.’An integration of architecture, engineeringand design, the sections of this 2,100 tonconstruction were transported down theThames and raised a massive 135 metreshigh. From that height, passengers in thethirty-two glass observation pods can viewup to 25 miles across London.

County Hall

The former home of the London CountyCouncil is a six-storey, symmetricalconstruction, faced with Portland Stone inthe Edwardian Baroque style. The twenty-five year construction outlasted itsarchitect, who died in 1929, with theNorth, South and Island Blocks addedthereafter (the last in 1974). The capital’sgovernment, known from 1965 as theGreater London Council, was abolished in 1986 and the Hall now houses DaliUniverse, the London Aquarium and two hotels.

Shell Building

To encourage big business to settle inSouth Bank, building restrictions were liftedin the 1950s, prompting the constructionof Shell’s twenty-six storey tower. 338 feetof steel frames and reinforced concretefaced with Portland Stone, it was London’shighest building at the time of opening,the tower is still used as Shell offices,while the other half of the Shell Centre, ashorter building located downstream, hasbecome a housing complex.

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Marks Barfield2000

Ralph Knott, E C Collins1911–1933

Howard Robertson, R Maynard Smith1953–1963

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Waterloo Bridge

Intended as the Strand Bridge, this graniteconstruction was bought by thegovernment, re-named after Wellington’srecent victory and opened in 1817.Underused and neglected, by 1923 thebridge was deemed beyond repair andclosed permanently. Work for areplacement began in 1939 but wasdelayed almost immediately by theoutbreak of World War II, thoughconstruction still continued despite beinghit by labour shortage and V2 rockets.With few men available for building work,most of the work was done with femalelabour and ‘The Ladies Bridge’ was openedin 1945.

Royal Festival Hall

Built on the site of the Red Lion Brewery,the Royal Festival Hall is the onlypermanent legacy of the 1951 Festival OfBritain. Designed in a ‘Modernist’ stylewith glazed screens and a green roof ofweather-exposed copper, it is the first post-war building to receive a Grade 1 listing.Inside, the auditorium high on the upperlevels is insulated from the sound of thenearby railway while beneath are placedgalleries, restaurants, shops, cafés andperformance areas. A 1965 redevelopmentdefines much of the current outwardappearance: the Portland Stone exteriorwas re-cased, the river frontage waspushed thirty yards forward, and a newriverside entrance was created. In 2001 aprogramme was commenced to renovateand upgrade the facilities, qualities andcapabilities of the Concert Hall as well asrestoring much of the original features ofthe ‘People’s Place’.

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Brian Avery & Associates1999

J W Jacomb-Hood, A W Szlumper 1901–22

Hubert Bennet, Jack Whittle1963–1968

bfi London IMAX Cinema

Out of Waterloo Road’s sunken ‘bullring’roundabout rises the giant glass drum ofthe IMAX, home to the biggest cinemascreen in the country (20m by 26m) andcomplemented by the world’s mostsophisticated sound and projection system.The exterior walls of the building project amajor work of art by Howard Hodgkin, litat night with a variety of colours.

Waterloo Station

The original terminus of 1848 was aconfused collection of eighteen platforms,ten platform numbers and four stations,entirely beyond commuter comprehension.In 1900, work began on a new red-brickand Portland Stone station with twenty-one platforms, a grand booking hall andthe ‘Victory Arch’ entrance (named afterWorld War I, with sculptures andmemorials around a massive fanlight).Receiving fifty bomb hits during the Blitz,the Station remained operationalnonetheless. In 1992, the glass walls ofthe Eurostar International Terminal wereadded.

Hayward Gallery

Named after London County Councilleader Isaac Hayward, the gallery was considered a classic example of 1960s‘brutalist’ architecture: reinforced concretefollowing strong horizontal lines with littleskylight pyramids on top. Crowning thegallery is the neon tower, originally anexhibit, this ‘kinetic sculpture’ changescolour in response to the direction, speedand strength of the wind.

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Oxo Tower Wharf

Built as a power station, the Wharf wasacquired by a Meat Extract Companywhich, in the 1930s, built a tower thatspelt out their product in stained glasswindows, designed to circumvent strictlaws about exterior advertising. An emptyshell by the 1970s, plans to replace thebuilding with a massive hotel andskyscraper, sparked a community protestthat eventually prevailed. The derelictwharf was refurbished, creating exhibitionspace, shops, restaurants and housing,earning the 1997 Building of the YearAward for Urban Regeneration.

National Theatre

In 1976, after a century of planning andfourteen years in the Old Vic, the RoyalNational Theatre opened: a Modernistdesign of reinforced concrete andhorizontal lines augmented by the massivefly-towers of the theatres. In 1997 workbegan to develop and renovate theNational Theatre, complementing Lasdun’sdesign. The main entrance, box office,bookshop and foyer performance areaswere completely rebuilt and a new exteriorperformance space, “Theatre Square’, was added.

National Film Theatre

The popularity of the Festival of Britain’s‘Télekinema’ led to the NFT opening in1957, built beneath Waterloo Bridge’ssouthern arches. With a second cinemaadded in 1970, the NFT is now one of theworld's leading cinematheques, and hoststhe annual London Film Festival.

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Giles Gilbert Scott;Rendel, 1937–1945

Robert Matthew, Leslie Martin1948–1951

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Oxo Tower: A W Moore;1928Oxo Tower Wharf:Liftschutz Davidson1995

Denys Lasdun1976

Leslie Martin, Hubert Bennett1956–1958

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T.E. Collcutt1884–1889

1772Rebuilt: Samuel Beazley1834

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Following an outbreak of cholera in 1853, engineer

Joseph Bazalgette was charged with designing a sanitary

sewage system beneath London. From 1856 to 1859 he

oversaw construction of eighty-two miles of new sewers.

To accommodate his special ‘interceptor sewers’ on either

side of the river, Bazalgette built the three Embankments

from 1868–1874: Chelsea and Victoria in the north, Albert

in the south. These embankments reclaimed over fifty-two

acres of land from the Thames and, on the north side,

gardens were laid out on the reclaimed areas south of the

Strand. The first electrically illuminated street in London,

the Victoria Embankment has also been decorated by

monuments such as the Golden Eagle of the RAF Memorial

and the gargantuan granite obelisk of Heliopolis.

Victoria Embankment Embankment Gardens

With topsoil taken from Barking Creek,these twenty acres of quiet greenerycontain memorials and statues of famousBritons including Robert Burns, ArthurSullivan, John Stuart Mill and the ImperialCamel Corps. At the west end of theGardens is the York Water Gate. Built in1626 by Balthasar Gerbier, it featurescolumns, lions and a pediment on thesouth side with simpler Tuscan pilasters on the north. Once part of the Duke ofBuckingham’s riverside mansion(demolished in 1676), it gave direct accessto the river from the Duke’s gardens andnow acts an entrance to EmbankmentGardens.

Cleopatra's Needle

Sixty feet high, this 180 ton graniteobelisk stood for a thousand years inAlexandria, royal city of Queen Cleopatra.The monolith was given to Britain in 1819,though it was 1877 before anyoneattempted to transport it. Encased in aniron cylinder and towed from theMediterranean, the obelisk was nearly lost in a storm off the Bay of Biscay, inwhich six men lost their lives to ensure it eventually reached British shores safely in January 1878. The Needle wasinstalled on the Victoria Embankment thesame year with time capsule items,historical plaques and two sphinxes byGeorge Vulliamy.

The Savoy

The Savoy Palace was built in 1246 byCount Peter of Savoy and became theresidence of Earls of Lancaster until 1381when it was destroyed by the Peasant’sRevolt. In 1881 the site was developed byRichard D’Oyly Carte, theatrical impresarioof the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas (alsoknown as the ‘Savoy Operas’). Carte builtthe Savoy Theatre and then a hoteldesigned to rival the best in the world,featuring full electrical lighting and amultitude of bathrooms. Facing the riverare nine storeys of artificial stone andhorizontal windows while the forecourt isthe only street in Britain where trafficdrives on the right, a measure introducedso passengers in horse-drawn hansom cabswould avoid stepping off into puddles.

The Lyceum Theatre

The original Lyceum was a concert andexhibition venue (Madame Tussaud’swaxworks debuted here in 1802) beforehosting the Drury Lane theatre companyin 1809. When the Lyceum was burntdown in 1830, it was rebuilt facingWellington Street (where the porticoremains today) and enjoyed great successunder the management of the actor Henry Irving. The theatre was bought bythe London County Council in 1939, whichintended to demolish the building for aroad improvement. The outbreak of warspared the Lyceum and in 1951, it wasconverted, first into a Mecca Ballroomthen a nightclub. This too closed in the1980s and the building lay empty until itwas extensively restored and converted in1996 to be re-opened as a theatre.

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Alexander McKenzie1864–1870

Built for PharaohThothmes III1467 BC

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Until the fourteenth century, Westminster Abbey’s ‘convent

garden’ was a mixture of orchard, meadow and arable land

for the monks. Taken by Henry VIII in 1536, the estate

came into the hands of Earls of Bedford who developed

the land, first into their family home (1613), then into a

classical piazza (1633) designed to rival the architecture of

Europe. Built as a residential area, the nobility were soon

driven westward to the private squares while Covent

Garden drew traders, ambience and nightlife. The small

fruit and vegetable market grew exponentially bigger after

the City markets had been destroyed in the Great Fire of

1666, and by the eighteenth century it was dominating

the Square. With London overpopulated by the nineteenth

century and nearby Hungerford Market demolished to

make way for Charing Cross Station in 1850, Covent

Garden grew so large that traders overflowed as far as

Seven Dials to the north. Road improvements eased the

situation, but by the twentieth century the food market

could no longer remain at Covent Garden and was

relocated to Nine Elms in 1973. Plans to demolish the

entire site were successfully overturned by local residents

and the Square was instead renovated and restored in

1978. Covent Garden is now a shopping centre and,

pedestrianised to a large extent, has become popular for

niche businesses, as well as tourists, shoppers and street

entertainers.

Covent Garden Covent Garden Piazza

Inspired by Italian public spaces, InigoJones, the most gifted architect of theEnglish Renaissance, designed the CoventGarden piazza to be unadorned, open tothe public with large arcades betweenhouses to shelter passers-by. Thisintroduced classical architecture to Londonand the idea of an open square as apublic meeting space. In 1828–30, theMarket Building was built by CharlesFowler: Graeco-Roman grey granite andyellow brick with sandstone and paintedstucco dressings. The north and southfronts of the Market have a long colonnadeof Doric columns with a square pavilion ateither end and a Venetian archway in thecentre. The iron and glass roofs wereadded by William Cubitt from 1874–89.

St. Paul’s Church

St Paul’s was London’s first Classicalchurch: an Etruscan temple, brick-builtwith Portland Stone facings. Majorrestoration was carried out in 1795 whenan accidental fire destroyed everything butthe walls, portico and south-west wing.The door to the east-facing portico is afalse one, due to the Bishop of Londoninsisting that the altar (originally placed inthe west) be moved to the eastern end (astraditional), forcing the main entrance toshift to the opposite side of the church.This has proved beneficial as the porticoserves as a shelter and meeting place,while the western churchyard remains oneof London’s secretive gardens, a place oftranquillity ten yards from one of London’sbusiest public spaces.

Bow Magistrates Court

In 1740, the first magistrates’ office wasestablished in ‘Thieving Alley’. When John Fielding took over fourteen yearslater, he formed the Bow Street Runners: apermanent force of eight detectives whopoliced the district with great effectiveness.In 1829, the Runners were replaced by theMetropolitan Police and the centralpolicing role was moved from Bow Streetto Great Scotland Yard, Whitehall. TheMagistrates Court remained as theprincipal court for Westminster and was re-built, with adjoining police station, in 1881.

Royal Opera House

Funded by the success of The BeggarsOpera, John Rich’s theatre opened in BowStreet in 1732, one of only two Londontheatrical companies. Destroyed by fire in1808, a neo-classical replacement, paidfor by increased ticket prices, opened in1809 prompting two months of riotousaudience protest. The theatre was burntdown again in 1856 and its successor, agiant Corinthian six-column portico,survives today together with theneighbouring Floral Hall, added in 1860.Re-named the Royal Opera House in1892, it became a furniture store duringthe First World War and a Mecca DanceHall during the Second. Post-war, it wasoccupied by the Sadler’s Wells BalletCompany (The Royal Ballet from 1956)and Covent Garden Opera Company (TheRoyal Opera from 1968). Lottery fundingallowed the Royal Opera House to re-openin 1999, substantially modernised andwith Barry’s auditorium restored.

Inigo Jones1633–1637

Inigo Jones1631–1638

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John Taylor1879–1881

Robert Smirke1808–1809Rebuilt: E.M Barry 1857–1858

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More Walking Guides

If you have enjoyed this guide then please visitwww.southbanklondon.com to discover the other titles in the series:

Walk This Way – Riverside LondonFrom Tate Britain to the Design Museum

Walk This Way – Millennium BridgeFrom St Paul’s Cathedral to Bankside and Borough

Walk This Way – South BankFrom the London Eye to the Imperial War Museum

Walk This Way – A Young Person’s GuideA discovery of the Thames, especially written for young people

AcknowledgementsThe Walk This Way series has been researched andpublished by South Bank Employers’ Group, a partnershipof the major organisations in South Bank, Waterloo andBlackfriars with a commitment to improving the experienceof the area for visitors, employees and residents.

This guide has been made possible thanks to fundingfrom the Waterloo Project Board and Cross RiverPartnership, which are supported by the LondonDevelopment Agency, Transport for London, Westminsterand Lambeth Councils

For further information about Walk This Way or the South Bank, please see www.southbanklondon.com

South Bank Employers’ Group103 Waterloo RoadSE1 8ULT: 020 7202 6900E: mail@southbanklondon.com

Photography: Peter Durant/ arcblue.comGraphic design: Mannion DesignMap design: ML Design