Peruse the many books on the history of the City of London or take part in the walking tours that wind their way around the Square Mile and you’ll quickly come to the realisation that this ancient settlement is a fascinating place, full of the most unexpected wonders. I’ve spent many, many hours walking its back streets and alleyways and I still make new discoveries on nearly every visit – I came across the rather unassuming site of the London Stone for the first time just a few months ago, for example.
While visiting the Clockmakers’ Museum yesterday I also took a look at the small unnamed square that lies behind the Guildhall, sandwiched between Basinghall Street and Aldenmanbury. With the imposing bulk of the Guildhall on one side and the vaulted 1960s extension to the Chartered Insurance Institute on the other, this place shelters two remarkable statues. Neither of them have plaques attached, and an online search has proved fruitless, despite the fact that I uploaded photographs to make use of the new ‘Google image search’ facility. I’d love to know who sculpted them – they’re both quite beautiful, particularly the one of the couple clasping hands. It looks to date from the 1960s or 1970s but I could be wrong. Why the other one has a greedy looking Pacman at it’s summit is also a mystery…
Just across the square is another interesting find – the remnants of St Mary Aldenmanbury. One of Sir Christopher Wren’s many churches, it was destroyed in the Blitz of 1940. In a remarkable twist, most of the materials from the bomb site were shipped over to Fulton in Missouri, and the building was faithfully reconstructed to act as the chapel of Westminster College and to stand as a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill, who had made his ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at the college in 1946. Today only the broken stumps of the nave’s columns remain on the site…
About Pete Stean
