This is one of those shortcuts you don’t mind taking even if it makes the journey twice as long. If you were walking round here 2,000 years ago then you’d be in the middle of Roman Londinium because this is where they built the basilica (court) and forum (market). Unfortunately the only trace of them now is an old pillar in the cellar of the hairdressers at 90 Gracechurch Street and they don’t let wanderers in off the street to see it (not even if you ask for a short back and sides first). I guess they must be fed up with people bothering them.
Photo: londondrum.comLord Mayor Dick Whittington
By the early 1400s the medieval market was doing so well that the former Lord Mayor of London Dick Whittington decided to buy the lease and gift it to the City. We just think of him as a panto character these days but in his retirement he was more like Bill Gates, ridiculously rich and doing lots of charity work.
Victorian market by Sir Horace Jones
Photo: londondrum.comRoll on another four hundred years and the Victorians decided that they didn’t like having all the sights and sounds and entrails of a messy meat market stinking up the city and hired Sir Horace Jones to build a replacement. So he packed all the butchers off to Smithfield, the fishmongers went to Billingsgate (he designed both of those as well) and turned Leadenhall into a picture-book palace of wrought iron and glass.
It still has a few food shops inside but it’s mostly boutiques, restaurants and a couple of pubs now, but it’s not the shops you’re here to see anyway – it’s the decorations. Because this is the London of glitter-covered Christmas cards. It’s all marzipan yellows, wrapping paper reds and stars stuck into the sky.
Photo: londondrum.comHarry Potter tours & The Leaky Cauldron Pub
If you hang around long enough then you’ll probably see a Harry Potter tour strolling past because this was the setting for Diagon Alley in Philosopher’s Stone.
Don’t tell anyone I told you this (because only wizards are supposed to know) but if you disappear behind that door at 42 Bull’s Head Passage then you’ll end up in The Leaky Cauldron pub… or more likely an empty shop, because it seems to be deserted today.
If you enjoy this then try Burlington Arcade (travel from Bank to Piccadilly Circus via tube) and Royal Exchange (you can walk it in 4 mins)
