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The Royal Courts of Justice is quite a sight once you step inside the entrance hall. It's almost like a cathedral with its stained glass windows, strong stone architecture and huge oil paintings of long dead judges staring down at you from the walls. It's almost worth committing a crime to see it.
There's hardly anyone around this morning and the sounds I can hear are all deep echoes of distant bangs and doors slamming shut... things going on in other parts of the building... it's a bit like being inside a church where every whisper you make is amplified back at you by the bricks.
I'm pretty scruffy sitting here with my fingerless gloves and I get stared at by a mum strolling past. I can tell by the look on her face that she thinks I'm a criminal because she's nudging her kids away... lord knows what she thinks I've done. You can relax lady because I'm just here for the guided tour, honest!; I've still got half an hour to go before the tour starts so I try and find the cafe. It's only a pokey little place but it's worth seeking out for the route -- you have to walk through the big double doors at the back into what looks like a crypt, through a thicket of thickly carved columns holding up a low vaulted roof. It would be a great place to have some tombs but of course it's empty. As is the cafe. As is everywhere, in fact. This place is like a ghost town today.
Eventually I'm ordered to take a seat by the security scanners and our group consists of me, two chatty Americans and a couple with their kids. Our guide marches us off to one of the courtrooms and sits us down and that's where I am right now, secretly writing this while I'm pretending to listen.
We're thirty minutes into it now and it's very heavy going. It's not much of a tour, it's more like a lecture. We haven't even made it out of the courtroom yet because she's still plodding through the history of the building, the court process and function of the judiciary. The court room is very nice though. It's all wood-panelled walls and bookcases filled with leather-bound legal tomes, with a hanging chandelier and big ticking clock. It's a bit like walking onto the set of Rumple of the Bailey.
It turns out that they don't handle bank jobs, murders or any of the exciting crimes because this is a civil court -- it's all libel, asylum and deportation cases, plus a few bankruptcies and high profile divorces. So I've learnt something at least -- I've learnt that it's safe to walk around the corridors without getting jumped on by a mass murderer.
I do like the guide but this speech is going on and on and on and on. When is the actual tour going to start? I'm guessing that when people come on a tour of the Royal Courts of Justice then what they really want to do is go on a tour of the building. Not sit here listening to how the court system works.
Eighty minutes later we finally get to have a walk around. Eighty minutes! So be advised: you have to sit through nearly an hour-and-a-half of monologue before you get to see the building.
The actual 'tour' bit of the tour only lasted for thirty minutes and consisted of some corridors, a moderately impressive painted room and then up to the balcony to see a collection of mannequins wearing judges wigs and robes. Then it was straight back down to the main hall again.
And that was basically it. The only courtroom that we saw was the same one we were trapped inside whilst listening to the lecture.
If you take my advice then you'll forget all about the tour and just have a walk around yourself because a large part of the building is open to the public anyway.
If you go up to the front desk you can pick up a little leaflet that will let you do a self-guided tour. Doing it that way is much better because you can spend a nice hour walking around at your own leisure, taking your time to see all of the stuff, without having to wade through eighty minutes of school lessons.
If you enjoy the tour then maybe you'd like to come back and watch a real-life court case. Note: If you'd rather walk around yourself for free, without a guide, then you can simply turn up Monday to Friday and pass through security. A leaflet is usually available on the reception desk which suggests a good walking route around the building.
