{"category":{"slug":"architecture","name":"Architecture","blurb":"Buildings where the building is the reason to go: the inside-out, the Art Deco, the concrete, and the ones that make no sense at all until somebody explains them.","all":"All of Architecture","see_also":null,"reading":null},"filters":[{"id":"tower","label":"Towers","field":"types","group":"Kind","badge":true,"promote":true},{"id":"house","label":"Houses","field":"types","group":"Kind","badge":true,"promote":true},{"id":"oddity","label":"Oddities","field":"types","group":"Kind","badge":true,"promote":true},{"id":"transport","label":"Transport","field":"types","group":"Kind","badge":true},{"id":"industrial","label":"Industrial","field":"types","group":"Kind","badge":true},{"id":"georgian","label":"Georgian","field":"types","group":"Era","badge":true},{"id":"victorian","label":"Victorian & Edwardian","field":"types","group":"Era","badge":true},{"id":"deco","label":"Art Deco","field":"types","group":"Era","badge":true},{"id":"modernist","label":"Modern movement","field":"types","group":"Era","badge":true},{"id":"brutalist","label":"Concrete & brutalist","field":"types","group":"Era","badge":true},{"id":"contemporary","label":"Contemporary","field":"types","group":"Era","badge":true},{"id":"inside","label":"You can go inside","field":"types","group":"Good to know","badge":true},{"id":"free","label":"Free","field":"types","group":"Good to know","badge":true}],"venue_events":false,"river":{"line":[[51.43061,-0.51115],[51.42936,-0.51025],[51.42839,-0.50996],[51.42646,-0.50967],[51.42507,-0.50974],[51.42386,-0.50994],[51.42238,-0.51064],[51.42021,-0.51233],[51.4189,-0.51293],[51.4175,-0.51277],[51.41723,-0.51237],[51.41691,-0.51143],[51.41697,-0.51014],[51.4174,-0.50815],[51.4174,-0.50712],[51.41724,-0.50615],[51.41654,-0.50414],[51.41548,-0.50215],[51.41468,-0.50165],[51.41413,-0.50173],[51.41398,-0.50157],[51.41365,-0.50057],[51.41328,-0.50082],[51.41288,-0.50081],[51.41133,-0.50012],[51.4108,-0.50048],[51.41065,-0.50091],[51.41068,-0.50248],[51.4108,-0.50326],[51.41104,-0.50372],[51.4114,-0.50376],[51.41202,-0.5034],[51.41334,-0.50216],[51.41413,-0.50173],[51.41408,-0.49813],[51.41548,-0.50215],[51.41468,-0.50165],[51.41439,-0.50097],[51.41414,-0.49996],[51.41408,-0.49813],[51.41362,-0.49634],[51.41283,-0.4944],[51.41202,-0.49333],[51.41084,-0.49269],[51.40991,-0.49251],[51.40723,-0.49309],[51.40538,-0.49297],[51.40406,-0.49169],[51.40325,-0.49119],[51.40232,-0.49121],[51.40047,-0.49197],[51.39968,-0.49185],[51.39921,-0.49163],[51.39874,-0.4911],[51.39676,-0.48788],[51.39553,-0.48691],[51.39456,-0.48658],[51.39255,-0.48653],[51.39034,-0.48603],[51.38958,-0.48629],[51.39178,-0.48706],[51.39216,-0.48695],[51.39255,-0.48653],[51.38958,-0.48629],[51.38862,-0.48641],[51.38774,-0.48582],[51.38707,-0.48512],[51.38671,-0.48443],[51.38649,-0.48321],[51.38664,-0.48223],[51.38709,-0.48133],[51.3879,-0.48032],[51.38981,-0.47903],[51.39009,-0.47869],[51.39038,-0.47776],[51.39012,-0.4765],[51.38765,-0.47228],[51.38637,-0.47059],[51.38588,-0.47016],[51.38495,-0.46985],[51.38268,-0.47104],[51.38207,-0.47063],[51.38189,-0.46997],[51.38189,-0.46831],[51.38285,-0.46551],[51.38298,-0.4645],[51.38264,-0.46298],[51.38182,-0.46135],[51.38133,-0.46135],[51.38041,-0.46183],[51.38003,-0.46224],[51.37975,-0.46292],[51.37915,-0.4635],[51.37867,-0.4634],[51.37846,-0.46292],[51.37842,-0.46206],[51.37859,-0.46148],[51.37933,-0.46075],[51.38057,-0.45801],[51.38114,-0.45741],[51.38057,-0.45801],[51.38272,-0.4522],[51.38261,-0.45231],[51.38254,-0.45302],[51.38263,-0.45537],[51.38248,-0.4565],[51.38114,-0.45741],[51.38095,-0.45811],[51.38094,-0.45908],[51.38108,-0.45972],[51.38191,-0.4614],[51.382,-0.45911],[51.38248,-0.4565],[51.38258,-0.45608],[51.38324,-0.45497],[51.38314,-0.45334],[51.38272,-0.4522],[51.38271,-0.45186],[51.38328,-0.45094],[51.3841,-0.45032],[51.38488,-0.45022],[51.3856,-0.45058],[51.3868,-0.45198],[51.38724,-0.45214],[51.3876,-0.45196],[51.38788,-0.45119],[51.38795,-0.45021],[51.38779,-0.44962],[51.38708,-0.44832],[51.38674,-0.44656],[51.38684,-0.44532],[51.38721,-0.44415],[51.38755,-0.44378],[51.38785,-0.44361],[51.38897,-0.4436],[51.38969,-0.44296],[51.3898,-0.44268],[51.38972,-0.44175],[51.38948,-0.44121],[51.38785,-0.43909],[51.38668,-0.43813],[51.38565,-0.43779],[51.3847,-0.43692],[51.38441,-0.43631],[51.38424,-0.43504],[51.38429,-0.43419],[51.38461,-0.43304],[51.38543,-0.43218],[51.38739,-0.43123],[51.38788,-0.43055],[51.38833,-0.4292],[51.3884,-0.42657],[51.38867,-0.42579],[51.39044,-0.42312],[51.39202,-0.42124],[51.39313,-0.4202],[51.39408,-0.41892],[51.39512,-0.41791],[51.39662,-0.41733],[51.39965,-0.41392],[51.4012,-0.41244],[51.40412,-0.40834],[51.40481,-0.40716],[51.40518,-0.40564],[51.40528,-0.40585],[51.40506,-0.40679],[51.40481,-0.40716],[51.40537,-0.40658],[51.40579,-0.40528],[51.40533,-0.40556],[51.40528,-0.40585],[51.4053,-0.40513],[51.40579,-0.40392],[51.40624,-0.40168],[51.40794,-0.3972],[51.40965,-0.39126],[51.40912,-0.38555],[51.40801,-0.38121],[51.40783,-0.37945],[51.40789,-0.37812],[51.40826,-0.37639],[51.4086,-0.37317],[51.41113,-0.3665],[51.4108,-0.37075],[51.41009,-0.37347],[51.40829,-0.37615],[51.41166,-0.36442],[51.41191,-0.36312],[51.41204,-0.36126],[51.41204,-0.36001],[51.41188,-0.35907],[51.41075,-0.35538],[51.40981,-0.35513],[51.40761,-0.3507],[51.40701,-0.34996],[51.40603,-0.3482],[51.40588,-0.3471],[51.40398,-0.34381],[51.40341,-0.34143],[51.40309,-0.34066],[51.40174,-0.33897],[51.40031,-0.33793],[51.39949,-0.33709],[51.39592,-0.33229],[51.39409,-0.33081],[51.39231,-0.32869],[51.39177,-0.32769],[51.39162,-0.32708],[51.39143,-0.32569],[51.3915,-0.32461],[51.39259,-0.31986],[51.39332,-0.31829],[51.39706,-0.31295],[51.39757,-0.31242],[51.39848,-0.31191],[51.40015,-0.30952],[51.40125,-0.30899],[51.40282,-0.30869],[51.40423,-0.30871],[51.40579,-0.30901],[51.40917,-0.30907],[51.41259,-0.30842],[51.41462,-0.30844],[51.41727,-0.30755],[51.41887,-0.30665],[51.41937,-0.30675],[51.42049,-0.30653],[51.42126,-0.30595],[51.42305,-0.30673],[51.42463,-0.30799],[51.4257,-0.30926],[51.42676,-0.31108],[51.42988,-0.3182],[51.4314,-0.3241],[51.43091,-0.32341],[51.43094,-0.32236],[51.43091,-0.32341],[51.43315,-0.32719],[51.4311,-0.32281],[51.43133,-0.32311],[51.4311,-0.32281],[51.43196,-0.32595],[51.43375,-0.32781],[51.43641,-0.32846],[51.44003,-0.33068],[51.44103,-0.33082],[51.4417,-0.33056],[51.44319,-0.32908],[51.44368,-0.32816],[51.44573,-0.32108],[51.44603,-0.31947],[51.44643,-0.31554],[51.44786,-0.30921],[51.44839,-0.30743],[51.44947,-0.30544],[51.45044,-0.30433],[51.45103,-0.30383],[51.45264,-0.30325],[51.45439,-0.30388],[51.45681,-0.30608],[51.45816,-0.30806],[51.46031,-0.31392],[51.46223,-0.31719],[51.46215,-0.31622],[51.46156,-0.31613],[51.46176,-0.31724],[51.46276,-0.31799],[51.46416,-0.32003],[51.4649,-0.32072],[51.46556,-0.32094],[51.46598,-0.32163],[51.46613,-0.32168],[51.46754,-0.32171],[51.46769,-0.32156],[51.46874,-0.32177],[51.46936,-0.32164],[51.47019,-0.32124],[51.47075,-0.32045],[51.47099,-0.31941],[51.47105,-0.31847],[51.46539,-0.3208],[51.46703,-0.31996],[51.46856,-0.31971],[51.47085,-0.31878],[51.47159,-0.31733],[51.47249,-0.31422],[51.47357,-0.31127],[51.47479,-0.30833],[51.47542,-0.3072],[51.47666,-0.30567],[51.47841,-0.30438],[51.47995,-0.30275],[51.48158,-0.30046],[51.48288,-0.29912],[51.48516,-0.29556],[51.48579,-0.29398],[51.48641,-0.29165],[51.4868,-0.28907],[51.4871,-0.28865],[51.4874,-0.28979],[51.48729,-0.29173],[51.48712,-0.29252],[51.48593,-0.29615],[51.48553,-0.29688],[51.48439,-0.29781],[51.48406,-0.2977],[51.48345,-0.29815],[51.4871,-0.28865],[51.48681,-0.28613],[51.48633,-0.28412],[51.48572,-0.28272],[51.48519,-0.28234],[51.48494,-0.28194],[51.48382,-0.27917],[51.48222,-0.27716],[51.48119,-0.2763],[51.47874,-0.27514],[51.47695,-0.27407],[51.47472,-0.27209],[51.47322,-0.2701],[51.47177,-0.26712],[51.47131,-0.26555],[51.47088,-0.26297],[51.47086,-0.25971],[51.47126,-0.25729],[51.4722,-0.25479],[51.47313,-0.25336],[51.47475,-0.2519],[51.47723,-0.25071],[51.47889,-0.2504],[51.48106,-0.25047],[51.48251,-0.25024],[51.48402,-0.24943],[51.48525,-0.24814],[51.48703,-0.2447],[51.48842,-0.24265],[51.48924,-0.2405],[51.48958,-0.23871],[51.48968,-0.23741],[51.48965,-0.23474],[51.48946,-0.23337],[51.48898,-0.23198],[51.48811,-0.23028],[51.48676,-0.22845],[51.48565,-0.22729],[51.48487,-0.22681],[51.48177,-0.22564],[51.48095,-0.22579],[51.48016,-0.22562],[51.47756,-0.22563],[51.47608,-0.22522],[51.47457,-0.2241],[51.47233,-0.22176],[51.46923,-0.21781],[51.46782,-0.21537],[51.46703,-0.21338],[51.46645,-0.21164],[51.46478,-0.20533],[51.46415,-0.20102],[51.46402,-0.19887],[51.46409,-0.19748],[51.4639,-0.19519],[51.46399,-0.19319],[51.46432,-0.19017],[51.46511,-0.18739],[51.46606,-0.18505],[51.46745,-0.18298],[51.46918,-0.18153],[51.47105,-0.18038],[51.47272,-0.17963],[51.47342,-0.17902],[51.47621,-0.17808],[51.4768,-0.17765],[51.47759,-0.17776],[51.47998,-0.17523],[51.48068,-0.17394],[51.48137,-0.17218],[51.48219,-0.16801],[51.48264,-0.16424],[51.48283,-0.16348],[51.4831,-0.16018],[51.48453,-0.15002],[51.48462,-0.14624],[51.48434,-0.14352],[51.48386,-0.14039],[51.48386,-0.13756],[51.48468,-0.13286],[51.48596,-0.12936],[51.488,-0.12676],[51.49119,-0.12404],[51.49215,-0.12386],[51.49378,-0.12299],[51.49553,-0.12259],[51.50422,-0.12126],[51.5058,-0.12073],[51.50696,-0.11975],[51.50827,-0.11806],[51.50895,-0.11632],[51.5095,-0.11391],[51.5098,-0.11107],[51.50991,-0.10651],[51.50981,-0.10159],[51.50933,-0.09602],[51.50836,-0.09193],[51.50769,-0.08519],[51.50697,-0.08063],[51.505,-0.07333],[51.50388,-0.07072],[51.50245,-0.06579],[51.50193,-0.06273],[51.50167,-0.0602],[51.50195,-0.05785],[51.50239,-0.05598],[51.5028,-0.05487],[51.50658,-0.04815],[51.50793,-0.0455],[51.50837,-0.04393],[51.50859,-0.0421],[51.50862,-0.03962],[51.50849,-0.03824],[51.50808,-0.03609],[51.50759,-0.03417],[51.50691,-0.03239],[51.50644,-0.0315],[51.50542,-0.03036],[51.50406,-0.02966],[51.50269,-0.02937],[51.49841,-0.03002],[51.49467,-0.03014],[51.49303,-0.02982],[51.49163,-0.02901],[51.48943,-0.02729],[51.48748,-0.02469],[51.4868,-0.02344],[51.48539,-0.02002],[51.48477,-0.01765],[51.48452,-0.01337],[51.48474,-0.0106],[51.48516,-0.00826],[51.48581,-0.00575],[51.48661,-0.00389],[51.48768,-0.00219],[51.48831,-0.00148],[51.48932,-0.00078],[51.49091,-0.00045],[51.49266,-0.00083],[51.4967,-0.0036],[51.49834,-0.00453],[51.50012,-0.00509],[51.50146,-0.00504],[51.50324,-0.00433],[51.50494,-0.00277],[51.50587,-0.00132],[51.5065,0.00048],[51.50677,0.0027],[51.5067,0.00418],[51.50616,0.00597],[51.50551,0.0076],[51.50486,0.00882],[51.50408,0.00992],[51.49939,0.01534],[51.49881,0.01622],[51.49736,0.01919],[51.49652,0.02192],[51.49615,0.02401],[51.496,0.02686],[51.49609,0.02905],[51.49682,0.03494],[51.49683,0.03642],[51.4972,0.04015],[51.49737,0.04419],[51.49717,0.04951],[51.49643,0.05863],[51.49677,0.06619],[51.49748,0.07153],[51.49786,0.07319],[51.49838,0.07486],[51.49949,0.0771],[51.50049,0.07845],[51.50216,0.08027],[51.50474,0.08275],[51.50749,0.08495],[51.50969,0.08805],[51.51099,0.09095],[51.51155,0.094],[51.5119,0.09971],[51.51192,0.10088],[51.51164,0.10348],[51.5115,0.10662],[51.51156,0.10819],[51.51183,0.11023],[51.51283,0.11449],[51.51314,0.11659],[51.51358,0.11829],[51.51449,0.12077],[51.51515,0.12337],[51.51543,0.12527],[51.51553,0.12771],[51.51543,0.13053],[51.51521,0.1327],[51.51459,0.13593],[51.51377,0.13904],[51.51159,0.14454],[51.51037,0.14809],[51.50925,0.15326],[51.50887,0.1564],[51.50871,0.16006],[51.50845,0.16173],[51.50802,0.16359],[51.50693,0.16691],[51.5057,0.16966],[51.50365,0.17258],[51.50217,0.17413],[51.50115,0.17495],[51.4998,0.17572],[51.49704,0.17689],[51.49184,0.17835],[51.49045,0.17901],[51.48896,0.18002],[51.488,0.18083],[51.48697,0.18214],[51.48623,0.18333],[51.48539,0.18515],[51.48445,0.18818],[51.48415,0.19197],[51.48419,0.19556],[51.48439,0.19901],[51.4857,0.2077],[51.48588,0.21031],[51.48563,0.21382],[51.48491,0.21718],[51.48294,0.2221],[51.48133,0.22574],[51.48004,0.22775],[51.47685,0.23351],[51.47248,0.24078],[51.47019,0.2452],[51.46687,0.25275],[51.46342,0.26201],[51.46132,0.26627],[51.45982,0.26896],[51.45857,0.27206],[51.45807,0.27382],[51.45763,0.27602],[51.45747,0.28173],[51.45763,0.28353],[51.45797,0.28502],[51.45883,0.28754],[51.45995,0.28952],[51.46646,0.29875],[51.46925,0.30327],[51.46952,0.304],[51.46973,0.30509],[51.47002,0.30784],[51.47011,0.31338],[51.46976,0.31544],[51.46857,0.31895],[51.4677,0.32065],[51.46628,0.32247],[51.46273,0.32587],[51.45796,0.32944],[51.45305,0.33265],[51.45197,0.33413],[51.4505,0.33778],[51.44988,0.33997],[51.44923,0.34442],[51.44875,0.34887],[51.44835,0.35597]],"crossings":[[51.41387,-0.50124],[51.38887,-0.48638],[51.38094,-0.45909],[51.38731,-0.43127],[51.40523,-0.40673],[51.41018,-0.37313],[51.4037,-0.34262],[51.43076,-0.32163],[51.46208,-0.31748],[51.46054,-0.31432],[51.41117,-0.30869],[51.45743,-0.30699],[51.48697,-0.28752],[51.47306,-0.26977],[51.47283,-0.25382],[51.48822,-0.2305],[51.46694,-0.2131],[51.46589,-0.20954],[51.46499,-0.18783],[51.48123,-0.17253],[51.48235,-0.16667],[51.48454,-0.14966],[51.4876,-0.12727],[51.49453,-0.12282],[51.50085,-0.12178],[51.50642,-0.12021],[51.50868,-0.11701],[51.50987,-0.10431],[51.50955,-0.09853],[51.50887,-0.09406],[51.50793,-0.08763],[51.50557,-0.07544],[51.48489,-0.00976],[51.49659,0.06225]]},"places":[{"slug":"2-willow-road","name":"2 Willow Road","area":"Hampstead","address":"2 Willow Road, NW3 1TH","station":"Hampstead Heath","walk":4,"lat":51.557196,"lng":-0.169145,"hours":null,"hours_raw":"Mar-Oct: Th,Sa 11:00-16:30; Mar-Oct: Fr,Su-We off; Nov-Feb: Mo-Su off","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/london/2-willow-road","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["house","inside","modernist"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Goldfinger built himself a modern terrace in Hampstead and the neighbours never forgave him.","note":"Erno Goldfinger finished this row of three houses in 1939, keeping the middle one, and it is a modern building that behaves like a Georgian terrace: brick and concrete, the proportions of the street, a facade organised on a grid. The row it replaced was Victorian cottages, and the campaign against demolition was joined by Ian Fleming, who is said to have taken his revenge by giving a villain the architect's name. Inside is the argument: partitions that fold away, a spiral stair, built-in storage everywhere, and the art the Goldfingers collected - Bridget Riley, Max Ernst, Henry Moore - hung in the rooms they lived in rather than a gallery.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/2-willow-road.jpg?v=6bcdadfb","thumb":"/img/2-willow-road-480.jpg?v=8eddee65","width":1024,"height":681,"alt":"2 Willow Road is part of a terrace of three houses in Hampstead, London designed by architect Ern\u0151 Goldfinger and completed in 1939. It has been managed by the National Trust since 1995 and is open to the public","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Ashley Coates, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2_Willow_Road.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/2-willow-road","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/2-willow-road/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/2-willow-road/"}],"maps_q":"2 Willow Road, NW3 1TH, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Keats House","s":"keats-house","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":199},{"n":"Badiani Hampstead Heath","s":"badiani-hampstead-heath","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":248},{"n":"Redemption Roasters","s":"redemption-roasters","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":255}],"near_same":[{"s":"isokon-building","m":763},{"s":"roundhouse","m":1953},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":2107},{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":2155},{"s":"alexandra-road-estate","m":2199},{"s":"highpoint","m":2325}]},{"slug":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","name":"23 and 24 Leinster Gardens","area":"Bayswater","address":"23-24 Leinster Gardens, W2 3BH","station":"Queensway","walk":4,"lat":51.512447,"lng":-0.183335,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/154582599","types":["free","oddity","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Two houses in a Bayswater terrace with nothing behind them: painted windows, no rooms, no floors.","note":"The Metropolitan Railway was cut through here in the 1860s, and because its trains were steam trains they needed an open stretch to let off smoke. That meant demolishing two houses out of a smart stucco terrace and leaving a hole in it, which nobody would accept. So the fronts were rebuilt: five feet of facade, the same cornice and balustraded balconies as the neighbours, and windows painted grey-blue on the render because there is no room behind them to put glass in. From the pavement the terrace is unbroken. Stand back far enough and the two blank houses give themselves away. Transport for London still maintains them, and the trains still run in the open behind.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/23-and-24-leinster-gardens.jpg?v=92b4a6a0","thumb":"/img/23-and-24-leinster-gardens-480.jpg?v=8b72ff59","width":480,"height":640,"alt":"A photograph of 23 and 24 Leinster Gardens.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Hywel Williams, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:23-24_Leinster_Gardens,_the_%22fake_house%22_-_geograph.org.uk_-_49276.jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"23 and 24 Leinster Gardens, 23-24 Leinster Gardens, W2 3BH, London","in_area":{"slug":"bayswater-paddington","name":"Bayswater & Paddington"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Guillam The Whiteley","s":"guillam-the-whiteley","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":394},{"n":"New West End Synagogue","s":"new-west-end-synagogue","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":498},{"n":"Wagner's lodging, Orme Square","s":"richard-wagner","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":502}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","m":718},{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":1720},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":1848},{"s":"the-tower-house","m":1962},{"s":"trellick-tower","m":1969},{"s":"leighton-house-museum","m":2057}]},{"slug":"30-st-mary-axe","name":"30 St Mary Axe","area":"City of London","address":"30 St Mary Axe, EC3A 8EP","station":"Aldgate","walk":4,"lat":51.514475,"lng":-0.080333,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/4959489","types":["contemporary","tower"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The Gherkin: forty-one floors of curved glass, and only one pane of it is actually curved.","note":"Foster + Partners and Arup put it up between 2001 and 2004 on the site of the Baltic Exchange, which an IRA bomb had wrecked in 1992. The diagonal steel lattice around the outside is what holds it up: the frame is triangulated all the way round, so it is stiff enough without the bracing or the heavy core a tower this shape would normally need, and the floors can spiral. The famous detail is the glass. The whole thing reads as a curve, but every panel is flat except one - the lens at the very top, over the bar on the fortieth floor. At 180 metres it is not close to being London's tallest, and it is still the one everybody can draw.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/30-st-mary-axe.jpg?v=6c53f45e","thumb":"/img/30-st-mary-axe-480.jpg?v=0b1ab0e7","width":747,"height":1024,"alt":"30 St Mary Axe","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Aurelien Guichard from London, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:30_St_Mary_Axe_from_Leadenhall_Street.jpg","thumb_width":350},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"30 St Mary Axe, EC3A 8EP, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Bevis Marks Synagogue","s":"bevis-marks-synagogue","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":95},{"n":"Association Coffee","s":"association-coffee","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":127},{"n":"WatchHouse","s":"watchhouse-bishopsgate","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":137}],"near_same":[{"s":"lloyds-of-london","m":221},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":483},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":1110},{"s":"golden-lane-estate","m":1405},{"s":"tate-modern","m":1538},{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":1634}]},{"slug":"55-broadway","name":"55 Broadway","area":"Westminster","address":"55 Broadway, SW1H 0BD","station":"St James's Park","walk":1,"lat":51.499395,"lng":-0.133668,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/221891219","types":["deco","transport"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"London Underground's headquarters of 1929, with sculpture that got its carvers denounced.","note":"Charles Holden built it between 1927 and 1929 for the Underground group, on a cross-shaped plan over St James's Park station, and on completion it was the tallest office block in London. It won him the RIBA's London medal in 1931. The reason to stand and look is the sculpture. Eight reliefs of the four winds run round the pediment above the sixth floor, each carved by a different avant-garde sculptor of the day - Eric Gill and Henry Moore among them - and halfway along the north and east fronts are Jacob Epstein's pair, Day and Night. The nakedness of the Epsteins caused such a row in 1929 that the figure of the boy was shortened by an inch and a half to quiet it.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/55-broadway.jpg?v=6e15bc12","thumb":"/img/55-broadway-480.jpg?v=670625aa","width":1024,"height":955,"alt":"55 Broadway , designed by Charles Holden , built 1927\u201329. This is the headquarters of London Underground above St. James's Park Underground station","caption":"","credit":"Photo by PAUL FARMER, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:55_Broadway_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1142385.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"55 Broadway, SW1H 0BD, London","in_area":{"slug":"westminster","name":"Westminster"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"54 Broadway","s":"54-broadway","c":"secrets","cn":"Secrets & Espionage","m":32},{"n":"Old Westminster","s":"old-westminster","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":65},{"n":"Royal London and the Guard Change","s":"royal-london-and-the-guard-change","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":65}],"near_same":[{"s":"lillington-gardens","m":914},{"s":"accumulator-tower","m":1573},{"s":"national-theatre","m":1650},{"s":"centre-point","m":1886},{"s":"freemasons-hall","m":1961},{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":2263}]},{"slug":"abbey-mills-pumping-station","name":"Abbey Mills Pumping Station","area":"Mill Meads","address":"Abbey Lane, Stratford, E15 2RN","station":"West Ham","walk":6,"lat":51.529417,"lng":-0.002137,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":"Not open except on Open House days; the Greenway path passes it at any hour.","runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/181838239","types":["free","industrial","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The cathedral of sewage: Bazalgette's pumping station in cruciform plan with Byzantine ironwork.","note":"Joseph Bazalgette built it in 1868 as part of the sewer system that ended cholera in London, and there was no engineering reason for it to look like this. The plan is a Greek cross, the ironwork is Byzantine and Moorish, the columns are painted and gilded, and two Venetian-Gothic chimneys stood over it until they were taken down in the war in case they guided bombers to the Thames. Victorian public engineering was routinely given this treatment - the works were a civic achievement and were meant to be seen as one. It is the best surviving argument that infrastructure used to be architecture, and it opens only on the water company's own days.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/abbey-mills-pumping-station.jpg?v=cefee65c","thumb":"/img/abbey-mills-pumping-station-480.jpg?v=db931796","width":1024,"height":683,"alt":"Abbey Mills Pumping Station","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Simon from London, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Abbey_Mills_Pumping_Station_(51551458944).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"science/abbey-mills-pumping-station","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/abbey-mills-pumping-station/"}],"maps_q":"Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Abbey Lane, Stratford, E15 2RN, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"House Mill, Three Mills","s":"house-mill-three-mills","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":453},{"n":"ABBA Voyage","s":"abba-voyage","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":870},{"n":"Gandhi's room at Kingsley Hall","s":"gandhi-at-kingsley-hall","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":910}],"near_same":[{"s":"balfron-tower","m":1821},{"s":"30-st-mary-axe","m":5659},{"s":"lloyds-of-london","m":5848},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":6140},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":6432},{"s":"golden-lane-estate","m":6544}]},{"slug":"accumulator-tower","name":"Accumulator Tower","area":"Pimlico","address":"Churchill Gardens Road, SW1V","station":"Pimlico","walk":6,"lat":51.485865,"lng":-0.140335,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Accumulator Tower Churchill Gardens","Churchill Gardens accumulator tower Pimlico"],"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","industrial","modernist","tower"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A 136-foot glass cylinder built to hold hot water piped under the Thames from Battersea Power Station.","note":"Churchill Gardens had the first district heating system in Britain, and it was heated by somebody else's waste: hot water came across from Battersea Power Station through an existing tunnel under the river, and this is where it was kept. Powell and Moya built the tower between 1947 and 1950 for Westminster City Council, with Kennedy and Donkin as engineers.\n\nIt is 136 feet high and stands on a plinth of rough granite setts: site-welded steel plates, insulated, inside an independent welded steel frame glazed from top to bottom with rough-cast panels in anodised aluminium, eighteen tiers of them. They could have clad it. Historic England's phrase is that the tower was designed as an architectural form, its round translucent shape set deliberately against the rectilinear solid blocks of flats around it, and Ian Nairn thought the machines and the fine-drawn glass and steel cage around them a perfect match.\n\nIt won a Festival of Britain Merit Award in 1951, together with the four blocks it stands among.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Accumulator Tower, Churchill Gardens Road, SW1V, London","in_area":{"slug":"pimlico","name":"Pimlico"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Vivekananda's house, St George's Drive","s":"swami-vivekananda","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":417},{"n":"Kenyatta's house, Cambridge Street","s":"jomo-kenyatta","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":487},{"n":"Tate Britain Tour","s":"tate-britain-tour","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":504}],"near_same":[{"s":"lillington-gardens","m":680},{"s":"battersea-power-station","m":1130},{"s":"55-broadway","m":1573},{"s":"michelin-house","m":2106},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":2737},{"s":"national-theatre","m":2976}]},{"slug":"alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios","name":"Alexandra Palace: the BBC's first studios","area":"Muswell Hill","address":"Alexandra Palace Way, N22 7AY","station":"Alexandra Palace","walk":10,"lat":51.594263,"lng":-0.130869,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.alexandrapalace.com/whats-on/","hours_short":"Studio tours on occasional dates; the palace, park and terrace are open daily","hours_checked":"2026-09-05","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.alexandrapalace.com/our-history/bbc-at-the-palace/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/4768526","types":["free","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The People's Palace of 1873, burned down sixteen days after it opened and rebuilt in two years, still seven acres of glass and brick on its hill above north London.","note":"It opened on 24 May 1873 as a northern answer to the Crystal Palace, and on 9 June it burned to the ground; John Johnson rebuilt it in two years and it reopened on 1 May 1875 with a Great Hall for twelve thousand people, one of the largest organs Henry Willis ever built, a theatre, a concert room, a palm court and a racecourse below. It has never quite paid its way and never quite gone under: a charitable trust has run it for Londoners since 1900, the BBC put television on from its east wing in 1936, another fire took the Great Hall in 1980, and the theatre, dark for eighty years with its Victorian stage machinery intact, reopened in 2018 with its decay left showing. The terrace looks over the whole of London to the Downs, there is an ice rink inside, and the park drops away beneath the transmitter mast that still carries the name.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios.jpg?v=634d98d2","thumb":"/img/alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios-480.jpg?v=fd993883","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Alexandra Palace and park taken from a drone in sunset","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Jack Rose, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:APalace_1.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"science/alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios/"}],"maps_q":"Alexandra Palace: the BBC's first studios, Alexandra Palace Way, N22 7AY, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Alexandra Palace Fireworks & Drone Festival","s":"alexandra-palace-fireworks-drone-festival","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":53},{"n":"Oliver Tambo's house, Alexandra Park Road","s":"oliver-tambo","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":850},{"n":"Doppio Coffee","s":"doppio-coffee","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":1140}],"near_same":[{"s":"arnos-grove-station","m":2477},{"s":"the-salisbury-harringay","m":2558},{"s":"highpoint","m":2571},{"s":"southgate-station","m":4236},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":4855},{"s":"2-willow-road","m":4897}]},{"slug":"alexandra-road-estate","name":"Alexandra Road Estate","area":"South Hampstead","address":"Rowley Way, NW8 0SN","station":"South Hampstead","walk":5,"lat":51.539433,"lng":-0.183139,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/53727605","types":["brutalist","free","house"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Two curving concrete terraces stepped like a street, and the first post-war council estate to be protected.","note":"Neave Brown designed it in 1968 for Camden's own architects' department, and it was built between 1972 and 1978: 520 flats in long stepped terraces of white, site-cast, board-marked concrete, with a school, a community centre and a youth club built in. It is not a tower and not a slab. The section is the point - every flat has its own front door on a deck and its own outdoor space, and the whole thing is arranged as a street you can walk down rather than a block you enter. It cost far more than budgeted, a public inquiry followed, and Neave Brown never built in Britain again. In 1993 it became the first post-war council estate in the country to be protected.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/alexandra-road-estate.jpg?v=7dee9c54","thumb":"/img/alexandra-road-estate-480.jpg?v=e7e74d45","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Rowley Way, Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate, Camden, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Oxyman, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rowley_Way_Camden.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Alexandra Road Estate, Rowley Way, NW8 0SN, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Melanie Klein's house, Clifton Hill","s":"melanie-klein","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":242},{"n":"Ben Uri Gallery, The London Jewish Museum of Art","s":"ben-uri-gallery-the-london-jewish-museum-of-art","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":260},{"n":"Kokoschka's flat, Eyre Court","s":"oskar-kokoschka","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":695}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-gorilla-house-london-zoo","m":2002},{"s":"isokon-building","m":2015},{"s":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","m":2137},{"s":"roundhouse","m":2196},{"s":"2-willow-road","m":2199},{"s":"trellick-tower","m":2337}]},{"slug":"arnos-grove-station","name":"Arnos Grove station","area":"Arnos Grove","address":"Bowes Road, N11 1AN","station":"Arnos Grove","walk":1,"lat":51.616492,"lng":-0.133285,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/166387795","types":["free","inside","modernist","transport"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A brick drum on a flat slab: the station that showed what the Underground could look like.","note":"Charles Holden opened it on 19 September 1932 at the end of the new Piccadilly line extension, and it is the best of the group he built along it. The plan is as simple as it sounds: a low single-storey block with a circular ticket hall of brick and glass rising out of it, capped by a flat concrete roof that appears to float. Holden had toured northern Europe with Frank Pick of the Underground looking at new buildings, and the debt to Gunnar Asplund's library in Stockholm is obvious once you know. What makes it worth the journey out is that it still works exactly as designed, with the original ticket hall, passimeter and light fittings, and it is free to walk into.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/arnos-grove-station.jpg?v=d9795afb","thumb":"/img/arnos-grove-station-480.jpg?v=7fc6d900","width":1024,"height":685,"alt":"The old Passimeter has a good exhibition about underground architecture and Charles Holden","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Chris Sampson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ARNOS_GROVE-03_240710_CPS_(4837089899).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Arnos Grove station, Bowes Road, N11 1AN, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Oliver Tambo's house, Alexandra Park Road","s":"oliver-tambo","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":2163},{"n":"Alexandra Palace","s":"alexandra-palace","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":2477},{"n":"Alexandra Palace Fireworks & Drone Festival","s":"alexandra-palace-fireworks-drone-festival","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":2488}],"near_same":[{"s":"southgate-station","m":1800},{"s":"alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios","m":2477},{"s":"the-salisbury-harringay","m":4474},{"s":"highpoint","m":4800},{"s":"2-willow-road","m":7043},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":7299}]},{"slug":"balfron-tower","name":"Balfron Tower","area":"Poplar","address":"St Leonard's Road, E14 0UY","station":"Langdon Park","walk":5,"lat":51.513574,"lng":-0.008806,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/135465165","types":["brutalist","tower"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Goldfinger's first tower, and the one he moved into for two months to see what he had done.","note":"Erno Goldfinger designed it in 1963 for the London County Council and it was finished in 1967, the prototype for Trellick five years later: the same slim service tower of lifts and chutes, joined to the flats by bridges every third floor, standing over the Brownfield Estate beside the approach to the Blackwall Tunnel. What sets it apart is what he did next. Goldfinger and his wife moved into flat 130 for two months in 1968, held drinks parties for the neighbours and asked them what did not work. It has been protected since 1996 and refurbished for private sale, which is its own argument about what happened to social housing.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/balfron-tower.jpg?v=31032694","thumb":"/img/balfron-tower-480.jpg?v=d2fea573","width":679,"height":1024,"alt":"Erno Goldfinger brutalist architecture","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Graeme Maclean, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balfron_tower.jpg","thumb_width":318},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Balfron Tower, St Leonard's Road, E14 0UY, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"ARC","s":"arc","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":1028},{"n":"FOLD","s":"fold","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":1072},{"n":"Notes","s":"notes-canary-wharf","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":1075}],"near_same":[{"s":"abbey-mills-pumping-station","m":1821},{"s":"30-st-mary-axe","m":4950},{"s":"lloyds-of-london","m":5094},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":5424},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":5925},{"s":"golden-lane-estate","m":6118}]},{"slug":"barbican-centre","name":"Barbican Centre","area":"Barbican Estate","address":"Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS","station":"Barbican","walk":4,"lat":51.519867,"lng":-0.093841,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.barbican.org.uk/","instagram":"barbicancentre","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/34038687","types":["brutalist","free","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Thirty-five acres of concrete, water and planting, built on ground the Blitz had cleared.","note":"Chamberlin, Powell and Bon began work in 1955 on a bombed site where almost nothing was left standing, and the estate took until 1976 to finish and the arts centre until 1982. It is one idea carried out completely: a raised deck for people with the traffic underneath, towers and long blocks arranged around lakes and gardens, and every surface of concrete hammered by hand with a pick to expose the granite aggregate - a job that took years and is the reason the walls have that rough, quarried look. Nobody agrees on the way-finding. Follow the yellow line on the floor, get lost anyway, and come out on a terrace above a lake with a conservatory of palm trees behind you.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-barbican-centre-3.jpg?v=e0754fa3","thumb":"/img/own-barbican-centre-3-480.jpg?v=8d3a2e35","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The lakeside terrace in winter: rows of white benches on brick paving, round brick planters with fountains at the water's edge, a long terrace block on stilts across the lake, and a church tower among the towers of the City behind.","caption":"The Lakeside Terrace, St Giles Cripplegate's tower at the far end."},"figures":[{"src":"/img/own-barbican-centre-2.jpg?v=caea59a7","thumb":"/img/own-barbican-centre-2-480.jpg?v=768387a9","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The Barbican's lake seen from under a concrete walkway: a long block of flats with rows of balconies curving round the green water, a waterfall spilling from a raised platform, benches on the brick terrace and glass towers beyond.","caption":"The lake from the high walk."},{"src":"/img/own-barbican-centre-4.jpg?v=f6ca5ba0","thumb":"/img/own-barbican-centre-4-480.jpg?v=f385342f","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Stepping stones of brick crossing the green lake to a platform where someone sits at a small table, tall reeds along the bank, a long terrace block on stilts with balconies of plants beyond, and the dark brick school building on the right."},{"src":"/img/own-barbican-centre-5.jpg?v=bebe408c","thumb":"/img/own-barbican-centre-5-480.jpg?v=172d4431","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"Looking down on the lake: a round brick platform at the edge of a weir in front, a brick walkway leading out to planted islands of reeds and shrubs under iron domes, and the terrace blocks with their curved balconies around the water."},{"src":"/img/own-barbican-centre-6.jpg?v=ce4bc128","thumb":"/img/own-barbican-centre-6-480.jpg?v=8a24f5fe","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The lake from under the high walk: planted islands and reeds in green water, a brick terrace with benches, a long block of flats with rows of balconies enclosing the far side, and glass towers rising behind it."}],"from":"museums/barbican-centre","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"concrete-and-clay-archiving-the-barbican","name":"Concrete and Clay: Archiving the Barbican","href":"/museums/barbican-centre/concrete-and-clay-archiving-the-barbican/","verdict":"The Barbican's own archive on the mezzanine, with the 1:22 model at the centre.","runs":{"to":"2027-01-01"},"types":["exhibition","free","history"],"clue":["Exhibition","History"]},{"slug":"concert-theatre","name":"Concert Theatre","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/concert-theatre/","verdict":"The strand for concerts that refuse to sit still: opera, dance and staged music across the season.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2027-06-24"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"composer-in-focus-caroline-shaw","name":"Composer in Focus: Caroline Shaw","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/composer-in-focus-caroline-shaw/","verdict":"Six evenings with the composer who won a Pulitzer at thirty for a piece written for eight voices.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-01","to":"2027-06-15"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"yuko-mohri-in-concert","name":"Yuko Mohri: In Concert","href":"/museums/barbican-centre/yuko-mohri-in-concert/","verdict":"Umbrellas, feather dusters and apples, moved by magnets and humidity, along the Curve.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-01","to":"2027-01-24"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"company-in-residence-scottish-ensemble","name":"Company in Residence: Scottish Ensemble","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/company-in-residence-scottish-ensemble/","verdict":"Britain's only professional string orchestra, in residence for the season.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-02","to":"2027-06-15"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"black-british-book-festival","name":"Black British Book Festival","href":"/museums/barbican-centre/black-british-book-festival/","verdict":"Europe's largest celebration of Black literature: one Sunday at the Barbican with more than eighty authors.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-04","to":"2026-10-04","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["books","family","festival","music","talk"],"clue":["Festival","Books & writers"]},{"slug":"robert-ryman-the-real-thing","name":"Robert Ryman: The Real Thing","href":"/museums/barbican-centre/robert-ryman-the-real-thing/","verdict":"Sixty white paintings, and the case that you had to be in the room with them.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-08","to":"2027-02-28"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"season-opening-mahler-2-and-fujikura","name":"Season Opening: Mahler 2 and Fujikura","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/season-opening-mahler-2-and-fujikura/","verdict":"The Resurrection Symphony opens the LSO's season, with a Fujikura premiere before it.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-18","to":"2026-10-18"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"half-six-fix","name":"Half Six Fix","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/half-six-fix/","verdict":"One hour, one symphony, half past six: the LSO's answer to a concert that ends too late.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-21","to":"2027-05-12"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"mahler-2-and-fujikura","name":"Mahler 2 and Fujikura","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/mahler-2-and-fujikura/","verdict":"The second night of the LSO's Resurrection Symphony.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-22","to":"2026-10-22"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"always-already-there","name":"Always, Already There","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/always-already-there/","verdict":"A weekend for the experimental composers the experimental canon left out.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-23","to":"2026-10-25"},"types":["classical","festival","music"],"clue":["Festival","Classical"]},{"slug":"darbar-festival-2026","name":"Darbar Festival 2026","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/darbar-festival-2026/","verdict":"Nine days of Indian classical music, including a violin and veena duel that starts at 00:00.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-24","to":"2026-11-01"},"types":["concert","festival","folk_world","music"],"clue":["Gig","Folk & world"]},{"slug":"edmund-finnis-and-bruckners-ninth","name":"Edmund Finnis and Bruckner's Ninth","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/edmund-finnis-and-bruckners-ninth/","verdict":"Sheku Kanneh-Mason in a new cello concerto, then Bruckner's unfinished last symphony.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-25","to":"2026-10-25"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"steve-reich-at-90-with-colin-currie","name":"Steve Reich at 90 with Colin Currie","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/steve-reich-at-90-with-colin-currie/","verdict":"A year of Reich for his ninetieth, with the percussionist who has become his standard-bearer.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-28","to":"2027-05-09"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"tchaikovskys-fifth-with-a-hannah-kendall-premiere","name":"Tchaikovsky's Fifth with a Hannah Kendall premiere","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/tchaikovskys-fifth-with-a-hannah-kendall-premiere/","verdict":"A new Hannah Kendall piece between Liadov's fairy tales and Tchaikovsky's Fifth.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-29","to":"2026-10-29"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"thomas-ades-conducts-sibelius-and-norgard","name":"Thomas Ades conducts Sibelius and Norgard","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/thomas-ades-conducts-sibelius-and-norgard/","verdict":"Ades conducts his own Creation piece with Chamayou, and Sibelius's Fifth.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-05","to":"2026-11-05"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"ades-saariaho-and-sibeliuss-seventh","name":"Ades, Saariaho and Sibelius's Seventh","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/ades-saariaho-and-sibeliuss-seventh/","verdict":"The Seventh Symphony in one unbroken movement, with Saariaho's Oltra mar before it.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-08","to":"2026-11-08"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]},{"slug":"coltrane-100-joe-lovano-melissa-aldana-nduduzo-makhathini-linda-may-han-oh-and-jeff-watts","name":"Coltrane 100: Joe Lovano, Melissa Aldana, Nduduzo Makhathini, Linda May Han Oh and Jeff Watts","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/coltrane-100-joe-lovano-melissa-aldana-nduduzo-makhathini-linda-may-han-oh-and-jeff-watts/","verdict":"Two tenors, a South African pianist and Coltrane's own rhythm-section logic, for the centenary.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-13","to":"2026-11-13"},"types":["concert","jazz","music"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"asha-puthli-the-cosmic-voyager","name":"Asha Puthli: The Cosmic Voyager","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/asha-puthli-the-cosmic-voyager/","verdict":"The voice Ornette Coleman chose for Science Fiction, in a rare concert of her own.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-14","to":"2026-11-14"},"types":["concert","jazz","music"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"jazz-on-screen-miles-davis-on-the-late-show","name":"Jazz on Screen: Miles Davis on The Late Show","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/jazz-on-screen-miles-davis-on-the-late-show/","verdict":"Miles Davis as BBC Two's arts programme filmed him, dug out of the archive.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-14","to":"2026-11-14"},"types":["film","jazz","music"],"clue":["Film","Jazz"]},{"slug":"anouar-brahem-after-the-last-sky","name":"Anouar Brahem: After the Last Sky","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/anouar-brahem-after-the-last-sky/","verdict":"The Tunisian oud player's first project in eight years, named from a line of Mahmoud Darwish.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-15","to":"2026-11-15"},"types":["concert","folk_world","jazz","music"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"jazz-on-screen-coltrane-and-the-cinema","name":"Jazz on Screen: Coltrane and the Cinema","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/jazz-on-screen-coltrane-and-the-cinema/","verdict":"Three films that use Coltrane rather than explain him, ending on Spike Lee.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-15","to":"2026-11-15"},"types":["film","jazz","music"],"clue":["Film","Jazz"]},{"slug":"ryman-in-rhythm-sarathy-korwar","name":"Ryman in Rhythm: Sarathy Korwar","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/ryman-in-rhythm-sarathy-korwar/","verdict":"A percussionist improvising in the gallery, in front of paintings made the same way.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-18","to":"2026-11-18"},"types":["concert","jazz","music"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"soweto-kinch-trilogy","name":"Soweto Kinch: Trilogy","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/soweto-kinch-trilogy/","verdict":"Three works written with the LSO since 2019, played in one evening.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-19","to":"2026-11-19"},"types":["concert","jazz","music"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"church-of-sound-british-jazz-songbook","name":"Church of Sound: British Jazz Songbook","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/church-of-sound-british-jazz-songbook/","verdict":"The Clapton church-hall series turns ten and takes the main hall for the night.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-20","to":"2026-11-20"},"types":["concert","jazz","music"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"haruki-murakamis-jazz-at-peter-cat","name":"Haruki Murakami's Jazz at Peter Cat","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/haruki-murakamis-jazz-at-peter-cat/","verdict":"The bar Murakami ran before he was a novelist, rebuilt as a night of Japanese jazz.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-21","to":"2026-11-21"},"types":["books","concert","jazz","music"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"jazz-on-screen-blues-like-showers-of-rain-and-jazz-is-our-religion","name":"Jazz on Screen: Blues Like Showers of Rain and Jazz Is Our Religion","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/jazz-on-screen-blues-like-showers-of-rain-and-jazz-is-our-religion/","verdict":"Two documentaries on the roots of the blues and the life of the jazz musician.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-21","to":"2026-11-21"},"types":["film","jazz","music"],"clue":["Film","Jazz"]},{"slug":"take-five-showcase-david-kayode-and-marlon-the-pannist","name":"Take Five Showcase: David Kayode and Marlon the Pannist","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/take-five-showcase-david-kayode-and-marlon-the-pannist/","verdict":"A Yoruba-rooted saxophonist and a steel pan player, in the Pit.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-21","to":"2026-11-21"},"types":["concert","jazz","music"],"clue":["Gig","Jazz"]},{"slug":"jazz-on-screen-ascenseur-pour-lechafaud","name":"Jazz on Screen: Ascenseur pour l'echafaud","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/jazz-on-screen-ascenseur-pour-lechafaud/","verdict":"Louis Malle's first film, with the score Miles Davis improvised to the picture.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-22","to":"2026-11-22"},"types":["film","jazz","music"],"clue":["Film","Jazz"]},{"slug":"the-joy","name":"The Joy","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/the-joy/","verdict":"Five voices from KwaZulu-Natal and almost no instruments.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-22","to":"2026-11-22"},"types":["concert","folk_world","music"],"clue":["Gig","Folk & world"]},{"slug":"beethoven-200","name":"Beethoven 200","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/beethoven-200/","verdict":"Two of the world's great orchestras and all five piano concertos, for two hundred years since Beethoven died.","runs":{"from":"2027-02-27","to":"2027-06-24"},"types":["concert","music","classical"],"clue":["Concert","Classical"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/barbican-centre/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/barbican-centre/"},{"name":"Performance venues","href":"/venues/barbican-centre/"}],"maps_q":"Barbican Centre, Silk Street, EC2Y 8DS, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Lakeside Terrace","s":"lakeside-terrace","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":34},{"n":"Barbican Conservatory","s":"barbican-conservatory","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":120},{"n":"St Giles-without-Cripplegate","s":"st-giles-without-cripplegate","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":130}],"near_same":[{"s":"golden-lane-estate","m":327},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":829},{"s":"daily-express-building","m":1033},{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":1094},{"s":"lloyds-of-london","m":1101},{"s":"30-st-mary-axe","m":1110}]},{"slug":"battersea-power-station","name":"Battersea Power Station","area":"Nine Elms","address":"Circus Road West, SW11 8AT","station":"Battersea Power Station","walk":3,"lat":51.481775,"lng":-0.144552,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://batterseapowerstation.co.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/4965216","types":["deco","free","industrial","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Four white chimneys on one of the largest brick buildings in the world, dark for forty years.","note":"Two power stations, built to look like one. The A station went up between 1929 and 1935 and the B station beside it, to almost the same design, was finished in 1955, which is how the four chimneys arrived. Leonard Pearce engineered it; the architects were J. Theo Halliday and Giles Gilbert Scott, who was also doing Bankside and the red telephone box, and who was brought in to make an enormous industrial shed acceptable to look at. It worked: a 1939 poll of the Architectural Review's panel put it second among modern buildings, and people called it a temple of power. Halliday's A station control room is Art Deco down to the dials. It stopped generating in 1983, stood empty for thirty-one years, and reopened in 2022.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/battersea-power-station.jpg?v=545a0660","thumb":"/img/battersea-power-station-480.jpg?v=85c0b179","width":1024,"height":682,"alt":"Battersea Power Station, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Aurelien Guichard from London, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battersea_Power_Station,_London-22May2010.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Battersea Power Station, Circus Road West, SW11 8AT, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Lift 109","s":"lift-109","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":4},{"n":"% Arabica","s":"arabica-battersea-power-station","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":33},{"n":"Bounce","s":"bounce","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":48}],"near_same":[{"s":"accumulator-tower","m":1130},{"s":"lillington-gardens","m":1689},{"s":"michelin-house","m":2079},{"s":"55-broadway","m":2457},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":2723},{"s":"national-theatre","m":3515}]},{"slug":"bt-tower","name":"BT Tower","area":"Fitzrovia","address":"60 Cleveland Street, W1T 4JZ","station":"Goodge Street","walk":4,"lat":51.521442,"lng":-0.138804,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["BT Tower Cleveland Street","Post Office Tower London Fitzrovia"],"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/5022282","types":["modernist","tower"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A cylinder made round because the aerials needed it, with the gear that turned its restaurant still sitting under floor 34.","note":"Proposed in 1954 and built between 1961 and 1965 by the Ministry of Public Building and Works - Eric Bedford as chief architect, G. R. Yeats the senior architect in charge, S. G. Silhan on the structure and J. J. Taylor on the services, with Kenneth Holloway for the Post Office. The shaft is 582 feet of reinforced concrete with a 40-foot mast above it, about 620 feet in all, standing on a raft foundation twenty feet deep. It is round for a reason rather than a style: microwave dishes have to point in every direction, and a cylinder gives them the least wind to fight.\n\nIt reads as three buildings stacked on each other, and the list entry says the design meant it to. The lower sixteen floors - ventilation, batteries and refrigeration below, racks of radio equipment above - sit behind a triple curtain wall of stainless steel glazed with Antisun. Above them the aerial floors are open galleries, left exposed so that dishes could be shifted and replaced; they had to be mounted between 365 and 475 feet up to clear the ground and the buildings around. Most have gone now. Then the top: a cantilevered drum about 22 feet across with walls a foot thick, flaring to 35 feet at its base where they are two, carrying six staggered levels.\n\nThose were the public floors - an observation deck on three of them, a cocktail bar, a kitchen, and on floor 34 a restaurant 65 feet across that turned once every 25 minutes. The public have not been up since 1980 and the rooms have been refitted, so none of the original finishes survive. The rotation gear does: it is still there under floor 34. And at the bottom, in the basement, the pyramid the whole tower stands on is exposed, and is part of what is protected.\n\nBT sold it to MCR Hotels in February 2024 for \u00a3275 million. Plans lodged in September 2026 would turn levels seven to twenty-three into some four hundred hotel rooms, four to a floor around the core, and open the 35th floor to the public again; the work is announced to begin in 2029 with an opening targeted for 2033. Until then it is a building to look at rather than go up, which is what it has been for most of its life.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"BT Tower, 60 Cleveland Street, W1T 4JZ, London","in_area":{"slug":"fitzrovia","name":"Fitzrovia"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Yunus Emre Institute London","s":"yunus-emre-institute-london","c":"international-culture","cn":"International Culture","m":176},{"n":"Fitzroy Square","s":"fitzroy-square","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":191},{"n":"Equiano's house, Riding House Street","s":"olaudah-equiano","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":214}],"near_same":[{"s":"centre-point","m":857},{"s":"st-pancras","m":1313},{"s":"carreras-cigarette-factory","m":1342},{"s":"freemasons-hall","m":1426},{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":1554},{"s":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","m":1727}]},{"slug":"carreras-cigarette-factory","name":"Carreras Cigarette Factory","area":"Camden","address":"Hampstead Road, Mornington Crescent, NW1 7QY","station":"Mornington Crescent","walk":2,"lat":51.5335,"lng":-0.1398,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["deco","industrial"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Five hundred and fifty feet of Egyptian temple on Hampstead Road, with two black cats at the door.","note":"The Carreras Tobacco Company built the Arcadia Works between 1926 and 1928, four years after Howard Carter opened Tutankhamun's tomb and the whole of Europe went Egyptian. M. E. and O. H. Collins, with A. G. Porri, gave it a colonnade of papyrus capitals, a solar disc to Ra over the entrance and two enormous bronze cats flanking the door - the company's trademark was a black cat. A 1961 conversion to offices stripped every bit of it off. The restoration of the late 1990s put the colour, the disc and replica cats back, so what stands on Hampstead Road now is a 1920s Egyptian fantasy rebuilt from photographs.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/carreras-cigarette-factory.jpg?v=fd95f079","thumb":"/img/carreras-cigarette-factory-480.jpg?v=d3a7bcb1","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Greater London House, former Carreras Cigarette Factory","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greater_London_House,_former_Carreras_Cigarette_Factory_03.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Carreras Cigarette Factory, Hampstead Road, Mornington Crescent, NW1 7QY, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"KOKO","s":"koko","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":178},{"n":"George Padmore's flat, Cranleigh Street","s":"george-padmore","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":356},{"n":"Rimbaud and Verlaine, Royal College Street","s":"rimbaud-and-verlaine-royal-college-street","c":"literary","cn":"Literary London","m":418}],"near_same":[{"s":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","m":949},{"s":"st-pancras","m":1067},{"s":"the-gorilla-house-london-zoo","m":1075},{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":1182},{"s":"bt-tower","m":1342},{"s":"roundhouse","m":1372}]},{"slug":"centre-point","name":"Centre Point","area":"St Giles","address":"101-103 New Oxford Street, WC1A 1DB","station":"Tottenham Court Road","walk":1,"lat":51.516185,"lng":-0.129736,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/41117907","types":["brutalist","tower"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A precast concrete lattice of 1966 that stood completely empty for nine years.","note":"George Marsh of Richard Seifert's office designed it and it went up between 1963 and 1966 - 117 metres, thirty-four floors, one of London's first skyscrapers - on a deal with the council that involved re-routing St Giles High Street underneath it. The facade is its argument: a lattice of precast concrete pieces, each one a shallow chevron, stacked into a screen that changes as you move round it. Then nothing happened. The tower stood empty from completion until 1975 while its value rose, which made it the emblem of everything people disliked about post-war property development, and housing activists occupied it in 1974. It was protected in 1995 and turned into flats in 2015.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/centre-point.jpg?v=c0955947","thumb":"/img/centre-point-480.jpg?v=7bbba464","width":617,"height":1024,"alt":"Centre Point , London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Photograph by Mike Peel ( www.mikepeel.net )., CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Centre_Point,_London_2a.jpg","thumb_width":289},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Centre Point, 101-103 New Oxford Street, WC1A 1DB, London","in_area":{"slug":"covent-garden","name":"Covent Garden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Arcade Food Hall","s":"arcade-food-hall","c":"food-markets","cn":"Food Markets","m":16},{"n":"Death, Debauchery and Doctors in Soho","s":"death-debauchery-and-doctors-in-soho","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":58},{"n":"Rock'n'Roll London: the Pub Walk","s":"rocknroll-london-the-pub-walk","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":58}],"near_same":[{"s":"freemasons-hall","m":625},{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":854},{"s":"bt-tower","m":857},{"s":"national-theatre","m":1490},{"s":"st-pancras","m":1550},{"s":"daily-express-building","m":1660}]},{"slug":"charlton-house","name":"Charlton House","area":"Charlton","address":"Charlton Road, SE7 8RE","station":"Charlton","walk":10,"lat":51.480684,"lng":0.037144,"hours":[[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.5],[9.5,15.0],null],"hours_raw":"Mo-Fr 09:30-15:30; Sa 09:30-15:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.greenwichheritage.org/visit/visit-charlton-house-and-gardens/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-08","hours_extra":"The gardens are open 10:00 to 16:00; closed on Sundays.","runs":null,"website":"https://www.greenwichheritage.org/visit/visit-charlton-house-and-gardens/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/162578773","types":["free","house","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"London's one complete Jacobean mansion, built in 1607 for the tutor of James I's heir, with the most exuberant plasterwork in the style, and free to walk into.","note":"Sir Adam Newton, tutor and then secretary to Henry, Prince of Wales, built it between 1607 and 1612, probably to designs by John Thorpe, and the prince for whom it was half intended died of typhoid at eighteen in the year it was finished, leaving the throne to his brother Charles. It is red brick with stone dressings on an H-plan, and the inside is the point: oak staircases, panelled rooms, chimneypieces carved to the ceiling and plaster ceilings that Pevsner called the most exuberant decoration of any Jacobean interior, with the Prince of Wales's feathers and the King's monogram worked in wherever there was room. In the garden are a summer house attributed to Inigo Jones and a mulberry tree reputedly planted in 1608, when James I was urging the country to grow silk. The Maryon-Wilson family had the house for two centuries, the council bought it in 1925, and it is a library, caf\u00e9 and community centre run by the Royal Greenwich Heritage Trust, which lets anyone in to look.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/charlton-house.jpg?v=8b43ca53","thumb":"/img/charlton-house-480.jpg?v=466f1a52","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"en:Charlton House , London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Bencherlite, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charlton_House,_London.JPG","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Charlton House, Charlton Road, SE7 8RE, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Charlton Lido","s":"charlton-lido","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":616},{"n":"Thames Barrier","s":"thames-barrier","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":1569},{"n":"The Paragon, Blackheath","s":"the-paragon-blackheath","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":2005}],"near_same":[{"s":"severndroog-castle","m":2227},{"s":"eltham-palace","m":3813},{"s":"balfron-tower","m":6471},{"s":"peckham-library","m":7407},{"s":"horniman-museum-and-gardens","m":8074},{"s":"abbey-mills-pumping-station","m":8239}]},{"slug":"crystal-palace-subway","name":"Crystal Palace Subway","area":"Crystal Palace","address":"Crystal Palace Parade, SE19 1LG","station":"Gipsy Hill","walk":7,"lat":51.422054,"lng":-0.077225,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Opens a few times a year, free, on timed tickets booked through Crystal Palace Park, whose What's On carries the dates.","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Crystal Palace Subway Crystal Palace Parade","Crystal Palace Subway interior"],"runs":null,"website":"https://www.crystalpalacepark.org.uk/whats-on","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/2978897656","types":["oddity","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A fan-vaulted brick undercroft built for first-class passengers walking to a palace that burned down.","note":"The high-level station opened on 1 August 1865 to carry visitors to the Crystal Palace, and Edward Middleton Barry gave it a subway to take them under the Parade and into the grounds without meeting the road. It is the only part still standing: a vaulted chamber of red and cream brick, the ribs fanning out from octagonal columns, closer to a Byzantine crypt than to anything a railway would build today.\n\nThe palace burned in 1936 and the station closed in 1954, leaving an underpass to nowhere under a car park - though in between it had been an air raid shelter, and later a room people held illegal raves in. Volunteers cleared it, it is protected at the second-highest grade, and the first phase of a proper restoration was finished in 2025: a new roof over the east courtyard, and the walls, floor, steps and entrances repaired. The way in is at the top of the steps and ramp off Crystal Palace Parade, by the bus station - two flights of stairs down, and uneven floors at the bottom.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/crystal-palace-subway.jpg?v=f748b6e1","thumb":"/img/crystal-palace-subway-480.jpg?v=8645832f","width":1024,"height":640,"alt":"A photograph of Crystal Palace Subway.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Peter Cooper, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crystal_Palace_Subway_at_Open_House_London_2018.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Crystal Palace Subway, Crystal Palace Parade, SE19 1LG, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Crystal Palace Terraces","s":"crystal-palace-terraces","c":"monuments","cn":"Monuments & Ruins","m":109},{"n":"Pissarro's house, Westow Hill","s":"camille-pissarro","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":275},{"n":"Four Boroughs","s":"four-boroughs","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":310}],"near_same":[{"s":"horniman-museum-and-gardens","m":2485},{"s":"peckham-library","m":5833},{"s":"battersea-power-station","m":8115},{"s":"lillington-gardens","m":8785},{"s":"accumulator-tower","m":8996},{"s":"eltham-palace","m":9127}]},{"slug":"daily-express-building","name":"Daily Express Building","area":"Fleet Street","address":"120 Fleet Street, EC4A 2BE","station":"City Thameslink","walk":2,"lat":51.514392,"lng":-0.105907,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/32893368","types":["deco"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Black glass and chrome on Fleet Street, with a lobby that has to be seen to be believed.","note":"Ellis and Clarke designed it in 1932 for the Daily Express, and the front is a sheet of black vitrolite and clear glass with rounded corners and chromium strips - Streamline Moderne, and startling on a street of stone. Behind the skin is a stacked reinforced-concrete portal frame by Sir Owen Williams, the engineer, which is half the reason for the building's protected status. The lobby by Robert Atkinson is the part people talk about: plaster reliefs by Eric Aumonier, silver and gilt everywhere, an oval staircase and a silvered pendant lamp, all of it done for a newspaper. The presses left Fleet Street in the 1980s; the building was restored in 2000 and the lobby is visible from the pavement.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/daily-express-building.jpg?v=716d7a22","thumb":"/img/daily-express-building-480.jpg?v=668f187f","width":685,"height":1024,"alt":"A view of the Streamline Moderne architecture of the (former) Daily Express building on Fleet Street \u2014 London. The image was taken with a Canon EOS D30 with a Sigma 70-300mm lens","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Russ London -- ( Russ London ), CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Express_Building.jpg","thumb_width":321},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Daily Express Building, 120 Fleet Street, EC4A 2BE, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"St Bride's Fleet Street","s":"st-brides-fleet-street","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":73},{"n":"Rosslyn Coffee","s":"rosslyn-ludgate-circus","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":84},{"n":"Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese","s":"ye-olde-cheshire-cheese","c":"pubs","cn":"Pubs","m":88}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":293},{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":853},{"s":"tate-modern","m":950},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":1033},{"s":"freemasons-hall","m":1037},{"s":"golden-lane-estate","m":1126}]},{"slug":"debenham-house","name":"Debenham House","area":"Holland Park","address":"8 Addison Road, W14 8DL","station":"Kensington (Olympia)","walk":7,"lat":51.502449,"lng":-0.208743,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/508004041","types":["house","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A house in Holland Park glazed all over in peacock blue and green, like a bathroom turned outward.","note":"Halsey Ricardo designed it in 1905 for Ernest Debenham of the department store, and it is the fullest surviving statement of an idea Ricardo argued for all his life: that in a city as sooty as London, buildings should be faced in glazed material so the rain can wash them. So the outside is Royal Doulton Carrara ware and green and blue Burmantofts brick, an Italianate villa in colours no London street had seen, which is why it is known as the Peacock House. Inside it turns Arts and Crafts, with work by William De Morgan and Walter Crane. It is a private house and opens rarely, but the outside is the point and it is free to stand and look at.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/debenham-house.jpg?v=addfdbc8","thumb":"/img/debenham-house-480.jpg?v=1357a94d","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Debenham House","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Matt Brown from London, England, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Debenham_House_(35482927182).jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Debenham House, 8 Addison Road, W14 8DL, London","in_area":{"slug":"notting-hill-holland-park","name":"Notting Hill & Holland Park"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Weizmann's house, Addison Road","s":"chaim-weizmann","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":235},{"n":"Kyoto Garden, Holland Park","s":"kyoto-garden-holland-park","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":379},{"n":"Jinnah's house, Russell Road","s":"muhammad-ali-jinnah","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":420}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-tower-house","m":483},{"s":"leighton-house-museum","m":579},{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":693},{"s":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","m":1522},{"s":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","m":2080},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":2361}]},{"slug":"eltham-palace","name":"Eltham Palace","area":"Eltham","address":"Court Yard, SE9 5QE","station":"Mottingham","walk":10,"lat":51.447086,"lng":0.048177,"hours":null,"hours_raw":"Apr-Oct Mo-Su 10:00-17:00; Nov-Feb Sa-Su 10:00-16:00; Mar We-Su 10:00-16:00; SH \"Various\"","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/eltham-palace-and-gardens","instagram":null,"attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/17110975","types":["deco","house","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A 1930s Art Deco house grafted onto the great hall of a medieval royal palace.","note":"Stephen and Virginia Courtauld took a lease on the ruins of Eltham Palace in 1933, restored Edward IV's fifteenth-century great hall, and built themselves a house next to it that could not be less medieval: a triangular entrance hall lit from a glazed dome, blackbean veneer and marquetry by Rolf Engstromer, a bathroom lined in onyx and gold mosaic, underfloor heating, a centralised vacuum system and a loudspeaker system piping music through the rooms. Their pet lemur, Mah-Jongg, had a heated sleeping quarters with a bamboo mural. The two halves are joined and both are open, which makes it the best place in London to see five hundred years skipped in one doorway.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/eltham-palace.jpg?v=fbd790d1","thumb":"/img/eltham-palace-480.jpg?v=06d2c142","width":1024,"height":558,"alt":"A photograph of Eltham Palace.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Tom Parnell from Dunfermline, Scotland, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eltham_Palace_(25098625346).jpg","thumb_width":480,"alt_generic":true},"figures":null,"from":"museums/eltham-palace","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/eltham-palace/"}],"maps_q":"Eltham Palace, Court Yard, SE9 5QE, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"The Rusty Bucket","s":"the-rusty-bucket","c":"beer","cn":"Beer","m":457},{"n":"Oxleas Wood","s":"oxleas-wood","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":2809},{"n":"Charlton Lido","s":"charlton-lido","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":3197}],"near_same":[{"s":"severndroog-castle","m":2323},{"s":"charlton-house","m":3813},{"s":"horniman-museum-and-gardens","m":7633},{"s":"peckham-library","m":8683},{"s":"balfron-tower","m":9002},{"s":"crystal-palace-subway","m":9127}]},{"slug":"finsbury-health-centre","name":"Finsbury Health Centre","area":"Clerkenwell","address":"Pine Street, EC1R 0JH","station":"Farringdon","walk":8,"lat":51.524871,"lng":-0.108811,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Finsbury Health Centre Pine Street","Finsbury Health Centre Lubetkin Tecton"],"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/45560456","types":["modernist"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Lubetkin's health centre of 1938, built by a borough that decided the poor should be treated in a building as good as this.","note":"Berthold Lubetkin and the Tecton group built it between 1935 and 1938 for the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury, which was one of the poorest in London and commissioned one of the best buildings in it. Reinforced concrete, faced in faience tiles and glass brick, on an H-shaped plan whose two wings splay outwards so that their walls are not parallel and the corridors inside them taper.\n\nThe front is the argument. A canted entrance block of deeply recessed glazed brick runs the width of a convex facade, divided by slim tile-faced piers under a plain tiled entablature that doubles as the parapet of a roof-terrace planter. You come in up a straight ceremonial ramp - a ramp, in 1938, to a clinic - through fully glazed bronze doors framed in marble and glass blocks. The name is painted across the first-floor parapet in trompe l'oeil shadowed lettering, and the list entry is explicit that this is not decoration but an important part of the design statement.\n\nInside, the principal space is a waiting hall across the whole centre block, on piloti. It is still a health centre, so the inside belongs to its patients; the outside is what there is to see, and it has been Grade I since 1972.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Finsbury Health Centre, Pine Street, EC1R 0JH, London","in_area":{"slug":"farringdon-clerkenwell","name":"Farringdon & Clerkenwell"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Exmouth Market","s":"exmouth-market","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":99},{"n":"Caravan","s":"caravan-exmouth-market","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":110},{"n":"Bourne & Hollingsworth Buildings","s":"bourne-hollingsworth-buildings","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":125}],"near_same":[{"s":"golden-lane-estate","m":920},{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":1053},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":1175},{"s":"daily-express-building","m":1182},{"s":"st-pancras","m":1281},{"s":"freemasons-hall","m":1366}]},{"slug":"freemasons-hall","name":"Freemasons' Hall","area":"Holborn","address":"60 Great Queen Street, WC2B 5AZ","station":"Holborn","walk":3,"lat":51.515129,"lng":-0.120854,"hours":[null,[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],[10.0,17.0],null],"hours_raw":"Tu-Sa 10:00-17:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://museumfreemasonry.org.uk/visit-us/","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-07","hours_extra":"Closed on Mondays and public holidays. The Grand Temple is on the daily tours when the building is not in use.","runs":null,"website":"https://museumfreemasonry.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/28416499","types":["deco","free","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A vast Art Deco temple behind a Covent Garden street door, built as a war memorial.","note":"The third Masonic hall on this site, built between 1927 and 1933 by Henry Victor Ashley and F. Winton Newman, and not built as an office: it is a memorial to the 3,225 freemasons killed in the First World War, and the scale follows from that. The Grand Temple at the centre seats seventeen hundred under a mosaic ceiling, behind bronze doors weighing more than a tonne each that a child could push open on their bearings. Everything else - the vestibules, the staircases, the light fittings - is Art Deco of a quality London has almost nowhere else, which is why film crews are in it constantly. Parts are open free every day the museum is.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/freemasons-hall.jpg?v=19cf62d9","thumb":"/img/freemasons-hall-480.jpg?v=1ed4f086","width":682,"height":1024,"alt":"Freemasons\u2019 Hall , headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England , located in Great Queen Street . Note Camden benches","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Eluveitie, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Freemasons%27_Hall,_London.JPG","thumb_width":319},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Freemasons' Hall, 60 Great Queen Street, WC2B 5AZ, London","in_area":{"slug":"covent-garden","name":"Covent Garden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Library and Museum of Freemasonry","s":"library-and-museum-of-freemasonry","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":31},{"n":"Stephen Jones Millinery","s":"stephen-jones-millinery","c":"classic-british-shops","cn":"Classic British Shops","m":70},{"n":"Drury Lane","s":"drury-lane","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":119}],"near_same":[{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":318},{"s":"centre-point","m":625},{"s":"daily-express-building","m":1037},{"s":"national-theatre","m":1042},{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":1235},{"s":"finsbury-health-centre","m":1366}]},{"slug":"golden-lane-estate","name":"Golden Lane Estate","area":"City of London","address":"Golden Lane, EC1Y 0RN","station":"Barbican","walk":4,"lat":51.522466,"lng":-0.096075,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/201851998","types":["free","house","modernist"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The council estate that won Chamberlin, Powell and Bon the Barbican: 1950s flats around courts, a yellow tower with a curled roof, and a swimming pool, still lived in.","note":"By 1950 the Blitz had left the City of London with five hundred residents, and the Corporation held a competition in 1951 to build council housing for the people who worked in it, on a bombed site north of Cripplegate. Three young lecturers at Kingston School of Art entered separately and agreed that whichever won would take the others into partnership; Geoffry Powell's scheme won, Chamberlin, Powell and Bon built Golden Lane between 1953 and 1962, and it was the job that got them the Barbican next door. It is the gentler of the two: a village of low blocks around courtyards, a sixteen-storey tower with a curved canopy on its roof and a yellow front, a swimming pool, a bowling green and a community centre, colour in the panels and light into every flat from two sides. It has been protected since 1997, its residents are fierce about it, and anyone can walk through to see how good the postwar promise could look.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/golden-lane-estate.jpg?v=ad5d6f51","thumb":"/img/golden-lane-estate-480.jpg?v=4de31a36","width":480,"height":640,"alt":"Gold Block Golden Lane estate from Fann Street","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Steve F, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gold_Block_-_geograph.org.uk_-_681894.jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Golden Lane Estate, Golden Lane, EC1Y 0RN, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Whitecross Street Market","s":"whitecross-street-market","c":"food-markets","cn":"Food Markets","m":226},{"n":"The Charterhouse","s":"the-charterhouse","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":279},{"n":"Disastrous London","s":"disastrous-london","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":309}],"near_same":[{"s":"barbican-centre","m":327},{"s":"finsbury-health-centre","m":920},{"s":"daily-express-building","m":1126},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":1156},{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":1261},{"s":"30-st-mary-axe","m":1405}]},{"slug":"highpoint","name":"Highpoint","area":"Highgate","address":"North Road, N6 4BA","station":"Highgate","walk":6,"lat":51.574703,"lng":-0.150727,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/514629992","types":["house","modernist"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Two white slabs on the hill at Highgate, and the building Le Corbusier came to look at.","note":"Berthold Lubetkin designed Highpoint I in 1935 for Sigmund Gestetner, the office-equipment manufacturer, with the structure engineered by Ove Arup: sixty-four flats in a double cross plan, in reinforced concrete, white, flat-roofed and unlike anything else in England at the time. Le Corbusier visited that year and called it a revolution. Highpoint II followed in 1938 next door, and Lubetkin - by then arguing with the planners, who wanted something more traditional - answered them by propping the entrance canopy on two plaster casts of caryatids from the Erechtheion in Athens. It is a joke and it is load-bearing.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/highpoint.jpg?v=cea0df0c","thumb":"/img/highpoint-480.jpg?v=7d280a2b","width":800,"height":533,"alt":"View of Berthold Lubetkin's Highpoint I from the gardens","caption":"","credit":"Photo by SilvaBarral, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Highpoint_I_1.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":[{"src":"/img/highpoint-caryatid.jpg?v=4e0bc630","thumb":"/img/highpoint-caryatid-480.jpg?v=5b0d9471","width":681,"height":1024,"thumb_width":319,"alt":"One of the plaster caryatids under the entrance canopy of Highpoint II, the concrete soffit resting on the basket on her head, the second caryatid behind her","caption":"Lubetkin's answer to the planners: a cast of an Erechtheion caryatid, holding up the canopy.","credit":"Photo by Julian Osley, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Caryatids,_Highpoint_2,_Highgate-geograph-2997602-by-Julian-Osley.jpg"}],"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Highpoint, North Road, N6 4BA, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Margot Bakery","s":"margot-bakery","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":406},{"n":"India House, Highgate","s":"india-house-highgate","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":830},{"n":"Highgate Cemetery","s":"highgate-cemetery","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":922}],"near_same":[{"s":"2-willow-road","m":2325},{"s":"alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios","m":2571},{"s":"isokon-building","m":2649},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":2731},{"s":"roundhouse","m":3498},{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":3568}]},{"slug":"hoover-building","name":"Hoover Building","area":"Perivale","address":"Western Avenue, Perivale, UB6 8DW","station":"Perivale","walk":5,"lat":51.53375,"lng":-0.3196,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["deco","industrial"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The great Art Deco factory of the A40: white faience, coloured tile and a sunburst over the door.","note":"Wallis, Gilbert and Partners built it for the Hoover Company and it opened in 1933 as their British headquarters, factory and repairs centre - one of a run of Art Deco factories the firm put along the new arterial roads out of London, designed to be read at speed from a car. The front is white faience with green and red tiling, a stepped and glazed centrepiece and Egyptian touches in the columns. Historic England's citation calls it possibly the most significant arterial road factory of its date, and one of the most attractive. Tesco bought the site in 1989 and built a supermarket behind it; the front block was converted into flats, so the outside is the visit.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/hoover-building.jpg?v=e3c26947","thumb":"/img/hoover-building-480.jpg?v=292a3c8d","width":1024,"height":667,"alt":"The front of the art-deco Hoover Building in Perivale, London Borough of Ealing","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Ethan Doyle White, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Front_of_the_Hoover_Building_in_Perivale.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Hoover Building, Western Avenue, Perivale, UB6 8DW, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Ealing Beaver Project Safari","s":"ealing-beaver-project-safari","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":1802},{"n":"Shri Sanatan Hindu Mandir","s":"shri-sanatan-hindu-mandir","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":1835},{"n":"Ealing Farmers' Market","s":"ealing-farmers-market","c":"farmers-markets","cn":"Farmers' Markets","m":2159}],"near_same":[{"s":"sudbury-town-station","m":1918},{"s":"trellick-tower","m":7979},{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":8248},{"s":"debenham-house","m":8423},{"s":"the-tower-house","m":8895},{"s":"leighton-house-museum","m":8959}]},{"slug":"horniman-museum-and-gardens","name":"Horniman Museum and Gardens","area":"Forest Hill","address":"Animal Walk, Forest Hill, SE23 3BX","station":"Forest Hill","walk":9,"lat":51.442194,"lng":-0.061687,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.horniman.ac.uk/","instagram":"hornimanmuseumgardens","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/5095245","types":["free","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A tea trader's museum of 1901, with a clock tower like nothing else and a walrus inside.","note":"Frederick Horniman made a fortune in tea, filled his house with what he brought back, and in 1901 gave the lot to the public in a purpose-built museum by Charles Harrison Townsend. Townsend is the reason to come: the front is a broad arch under a huge mosaic panel, and the clock tower beside it is a stripped, rounded shape that belongs to no style anyone can name - Arts and Crafts pushed towards Art Nouveau and away from every Victorian convention. He designed the Whitechapel Gallery on the same principles. Inside are the musical instruments, the aquarium and the over-stuffed walrus, and the gardens behind have one of the best views in south London.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/horniman-museum-and-gardens.jpg?v=3bf768dd","thumb":"/img/horniman-museum-and-gardens-480.jpg?v=ff704fc9","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"A photograph of Horniman Museum and Gardens.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by No Swan So Fine, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horniman_Museum_tower,_2015.jpg","thumb_width":480,"alt_generic":true},"figures":null,"from":"museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"the-hornimans-permanent-galleries","name":"The Horniman's permanent galleries","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/the-hornimans-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"A World Gallery, a room of instruments you can hear, and an aquarium, above a hill with a view.","runs":null,"types":["exhibition","family","free","history","nature"],"clue":["Exhibition","History"]},{"slug":"voyage-to-the-deep-underwater-adventures","name":"Voyage to the Deep: Underwater Adventures","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/voyage-to-the-deep-underwater-adventures/","verdict":"Take the Nautilus through a kelp forest and meet the giant squid.","runs":{"to":"2026-11-01"},"types":["exhibition","family","immersive","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"british-wildlife-photography-awards","name":"British Wildlife Photography Awards","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/british-wildlife-photography-awards/","verdict":"A toad underwater won it; the rest of Britain's wildlife follows, free.","runs":{"from":"2026-07-17","to":"2027-02-21"},"types":["exhibition","free","photography","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]},{"slug":"octonauts-adventure-at-the-horniman","name":"Octonauts: Adventure at the Horniman","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/octonauts-adventure-at-the-horniman/","verdict":"A free trail round the museum for anyone under about seven.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2026-11-01"},"types":["family","free"],"clue":[]},{"slug":"voyage-to-the-deep","name":"Voyage to the Deep","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/voyage-to-the-deep/","verdict":"A Jules Verne submarine you can climb into, in a Forest Hill museum.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-09","to":"2026-11-01"},"types":["exhibition","family","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"crossing-borders","name":"Crossing Borders","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/crossing-borders/","verdict":"A free day of kite-making, bandura and Honduran dance, led by refugees and people seeking sanctuary.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-19","to":"2026-09-19"},"types":["family","folk_world","free","music"],"clue":["Folk & world"]},{"slug":"threads-of-colour-natural-dyeing-with-mariana-leyva","name":"Threads of Colour: natural dyeing with Mariana Leyva","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/threads-of-colour-natural-dyeing-with-mariana-leyva/","verdict":"An afternoon dyeing cloth with plants grown in the museum's own dye garden.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-26","to":"2026-09-26"},"types":["family","workshop"],"clue":["Make something"]},{"slug":"octonauts-storytelling-and-craft","name":"Octonauts storytelling and craft","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/octonauts-storytelling-and-craft/","verdict":"Half-term stories and making, four sessions a day.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-27","to":"2026-10-28"},"types":["family","workshop"],"clue":["Make something"]},{"slug":"day-of-the-dead-family-festival","name":"Day of the Dead Family Festival","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/day-of-the-dead-family-festival/","verdict":"Marigold paths, giant calaveras and mariachi through the Horniman for D\u00eda de Muertos.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-31","to":"2026-10-31"},"types":["family","festival","folk_world","food_available","music","seasonal"],"clue":["Festival","Folk & world"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/horniman-museum-and-gardens/"}],"maps_q":"Horniman Museum and Gardens, Animal Walk, Forest Hill, SE23 3BX, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Eric's","s":"erics-bakery","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":1738},{"n":"The Ivy House","s":"the-ivy-house","c":"beer","cn":"Beer","m":1899},{"n":"House of Dreams Museum","s":"house-of-dreams-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":2318}],"near_same":[{"s":"crystal-palace-subway","m":2485},{"s":"peckham-library","m":3607},{"s":"battersea-power-station","m":7233},{"s":"lillington-gardens","m":7506},{"s":"eltham-palace","m":7633},{"s":"tate-modern","m":7709}]},{"slug":"isokon-building","name":"Isokon Building","area":"Belsize Park","address":"Lawn Road, NW3 2XD","station":"Belsize Park","walk":3,"lat":51.551942,"lng":-0.162044,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/7841628525","types":["free","house","inside","modernist"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Concrete flats of 1934 with tiny kitchens, built as an experiment in how little you need.","note":"Wells Coates, a Canadian engineer, designed the Lawn Road Flats for Molly and Jack Pritchard and they opened on 9 July 1934: reinforced concrete, decks along the front, and thirty-two minimum-sized flats on the Existenzminimum principle, with kitchens barely big enough to stand in because there was a communal kitchen downstairs. What it attracted was extraordinary. Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy of the Bauhaus all lived here after leaving Germany; so did Agatha Christie, from 1941 to 1947. So, in flat 7 in the mid-1930s, did Arnold Deutsch, the NKVD officer who recruited Kim Philby and the rest of the Cambridge Five. The garage at the end is now a small free gallery about the building.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/isokon-building.jpg?v=868ef1c2","thumb":"/img/isokon-building-480.jpg?v=15419628","width":1024,"height":641,"alt":"Isokon Flats, Lawn Road","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Jim Osley, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isokon_Flats,_Lawn_Road_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2670870.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"The World in London","href":"/world/isokon-building/"}],"maps_q":"Isokon Building, Lawn Road, NW3 2XD, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Mondrian's studio, Parkhill Road","s":"piet-mondrian","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":260},{"n":"Chiang Yee's house, Parkhill Road","s":"chiang-yee","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":310},{"n":"Redemption Roasters","s":"redemption-roasters","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":507}],"near_same":[{"s":"2-willow-road","m":763},{"s":"roundhouse","m":1191},{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":1393},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":1504},{"s":"the-gorilla-house-london-zoo","m":1791},{"s":"alexandra-road-estate","m":2015}]},{"slug":"leighton-house-museum","name":"Leighton House Museum","area":"Holland Park","address":"12 Holland Park Road, W14 8LZ","station":"Kensington (Olympia)","walk":6,"lat":51.498613,"lng":-0.203077,"hours":[[10.0,17.5],null,[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5]],"hours_raw":"We-Mo 10:00-17:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.rbkc.gov.uk/museums","instagram":null,"attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/115594423","types":["house","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A painter's studio-house in Holland Park with a domed Arab Hall of Damascus tiles.","note":"Frederic Leighton built it from 1866 with George Aitchison and kept adding for thirty years, and it was never meant to be a home in the ordinary sense - there is one modest bedroom and an enormous north-lit studio, because the house was a machine for painting in and for being seen in. The Arab Hall was added in 1877 to hold the sixteenth and seventeenth-century tiles Leighton had brought back from Damascus, and it is a domed room with a fountain in the floor, gilt mosaic by Walter Crane and a wooden screen from Cairo. The rest is deep colour and dark wood. It is the most complete Victorian artist's house anywhere in Britain.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/leighton-house-museum.jpg?v=d11b4c8e","thumb":"/img/leighton-house-museum-480.jpg?v=19a86a66","width":1024,"height":576,"alt":"The Arab Hall at Leighton House: Damascus tiles, a fountain in the floor and a gilded dome","caption":"The Arab Hall, lined with tiles Leighton brought from Damascus.","credit":"Photo by Mark Percy, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leighton_House,_The_Arab_Hall_-_geograph.org.uk_-_8094244.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/leighton-house-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"magic-and-mess-the-artists-studio-revealed","name":"Magic and Mess: The Artist's Studio Revealed","href":"/museums/leighton-house-museum/magic-and-mess-the-artists-studio-revealed/","verdict":"Fifty-six pictures of painters' studios, C\u00e9zanne and Matisse among them, shown inside the grandest studio in London.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-31","to":"2027-03-21"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/leighton-house-museum/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/leighton-house-museum/"}],"maps_q":"Leighton House Museum, 12 Holland Park Road, W14 8LZ, London","in_area":{"slug":"notting-hill-holland-park","name":"Notting Hill & Holland Park"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Cetshwayo's house, Melbury Road","s":"cetshwayo","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":93},{"n":"Design Museum","s":"design-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":245},{"n":"Ugo Foscolo's house, Edwardes Square","s":"ugo-foscolo","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":295}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-tower-house","m":135},{"s":"debenham-house","m":579},{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":1154},{"s":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","m":1382},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":1888},{"s":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","m":2057}]},{"slug":"lillington-gardens","name":"Lillington Gardens","area":"Pimlico","address":"Vauxhall Bridge Road, SW1V","station":"Pimlico","walk":3,"lat":51.491273,"lng":-0.13574,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Lillington Gardens Tachbrook Street","Lillington Gardens estate Pimlico"],"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","modernist"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The first low-rise high-density council estate ever built, in red brick chosen to match the Victorian church it surrounds.","note":"John Darbourne won the competition to rebuild Lillington Street in 1961, formed a partnership with Geoffrey Darke to do it, and between 1964 and 1970 they put up something that had not been built before. Everyone else answering the housing numbers was going up; Lillington went along and across instead - flats and maisonettes stacked in scissor plans, reached by broad walkways planted with troughs, over in-situ concrete beams left exposed and load-bearing brick crosswalls.\n\nThe brick is the part people notice and the reason is next door. The estate wraps around St James the Less, G. E. Street's church of 1861, and Darbourne and Darke took their cue from its striking Victorian red - multi-red hand-made facings, laid with raked joints so the wall reads as texture rather than surface. A 1960s estate and an 1860s church are the same colour because one of them was asked to be.\n\nIt worked, and the trade said so. The Architects' Journal in 1970: the blocks are more reminiscent of a college campus than of municipal tenements. The Times in 1972: an elegant and exciting environment for young and old. It took a Housing Design Award, a Ministry award, an RIBA Award and an RIBA commendation, and it set the style of council housing from the mid-1960s until the early 1980s.\n\nOne part is worth knowing about specifically. Charlwood House carries a hostel for eighty older people threaded through blocks of ordinary flats, because the competition brief reflected new thinking that the elderly should be housed inside a development rather than beside it, and near the people they already knew. Darbourne and Darke were among the first to build to that idea, and what they gave it was lavish for the date.","note_links":[{"phrase":"St James the Less","name":"St James the Less","href":"/sacred/st-james-the-less/"}],"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Lillington Gardens, Vauxhall Bridge Road, SW1V, London","in_area":{"slug":"pimlico","name":"Pimlico"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"St James the Less","s":"st-james-the-less","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":66},{"n":"CASK Pub and Kitchen","s":"cask-pub-and-kitchen","c":"beer","cn":"Beer","m":111},{"n":"Pride of Pimlico","s":"pride-of-pimlico","c":"pubs","cn":"Pubs","m":146}],"near_same":[{"s":"accumulator-tower","m":680},{"s":"55-broadway","m":914},{"s":"battersea-power-station","m":1689},{"s":"michelin-house","m":2274},{"s":"national-theatre","m":2310},{"s":"centre-point","m":2801}]},{"slug":"lloyds-of-london","name":"Lloyd's of London","area":"City of London","address":"1 Lime Street, EC3M 7HA","station":"Monument","walk":5,"lat":51.512964,"lng":-0.082426,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/23988892","types":["contemporary","tower"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The building turned inside out: lifts, ducts and lavatories bolted to the outside so the inside can be changed.","note":"Lloyd's ran a competition in 1978 and gave it to Richard Rogers, who had just finished the Pompidou Centre in Paris and did the same thing again here: everything a building normally hides - the lifts, the staircases, the pipework, the lavatory pods - is hung on the outside, so the floors within can be reorganised without touching the structure. It was finished in 1986, and in 2011, at twenty-five years old, it became the youngest building ever given the highest grade of historic protection in England. The oddest thing in it is on the eleventh floor: a dining room designed by Robert Adam in 1763 for the Earl of Shelburne, taken apart and carried into the middle of a machine, where it still is.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/lloyds-of-london.jpg?v=57a39465","thumb":"/img/lloyds-of-london-480.jpg?v=e4fe06be","width":683,"height":1024,"alt":"Lloyd's building","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Lloyd's of London, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lloyd%27s_building.jpg","thumb_width":320},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Lloyd's of London, 1 Lime Street, EC3M 7HA, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Site of East India House","s":"site-of-east-india-house","c":"politics","cn":"Power & Politics","m":21},{"n":"Aux Merveilleux de Fred Leadenhall","s":"aux-merveilleux-de-fred-leadenhall","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":80},{"n":"Pollock's Toy Museum Leadenhall Market","s":"pollocks-toy-museum-leadenhall-market","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":83}],"near_same":[{"s":"30-st-mary-axe","m":221},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":338},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":1101},{"s":"tate-modern","m":1326},{"s":"golden-lane-estate","m":1417},{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":1471}]},{"slug":"michelin-house","name":"Michelin House","area":"Chelsea","address":"81 Fulham Road, SW3 6RD","station":"South Kensington","walk":4,"lat":51.493072,"lng":-0.16847,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/11833610","types":["deco","free","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A tyre depot of 1911 with Bibendum in stained glass and the walls tiled like a swimming bath.","note":"Michelin's first permanent building in Britain, opened on 20 January 1911 and designed not by an architect but by Fran\u00e7ois Espinasse, an engineer from the company's construction department at Clermont-Ferrand, who got it up in five months. It is Art Nouveau tipping into Art Deco, and the decoration is all advertising: three large stained-glass windows of Bibendum, the Michelin Man, taken from the firm's own posters, and tiled panels of early motor races around the walls. Tyres were fitted on the ground floor and the tiling is there because the place had to be hosed down. Terence Conran and Paul Hamlyn converted it in 1987; it is now a restaurant and shops, and you can walk in and look up.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/michelin-house.jpg?v=124edefe","thumb":"/img/michelin-house-480.jpg?v=4fd8b21c","width":640,"height":439,"alt":"Michelin Building South Kensington I first saw this building in the mid '70s I was taken aback at how ostentatious it was. It dates from 1911 and you can find out more here ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelin_House","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Cockney Laurie, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michelin_Building_South_Kensington_-_geograph.org.uk_-_542884.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Michelin House, 81 Fulham Road, SW3 6RD, London","in_area":{"slug":"chelsea","name":"Chelsea"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Guizot's house, Pelham Crescent","s":"francois-guizot","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":203},{"n":"Frederick Douglass's lodging, Whitehead's Grove","s":"frederick-douglass","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":256},{"n":"Bart\u00f3k's house, Sydney Place","s":"bela-bartok","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":258}],"near_same":[{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":644},{"s":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","m":2012},{"s":"battersea-power-station","m":2079},{"s":"accumulator-tower","m":2106},{"s":"lillington-gardens","m":2274},{"s":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","m":2387}]},{"slug":"national-theatre","name":"National Theatre","area":"South Bank","address":"South Bank, SE1 9PX","station":"Waterloo","walk":6,"lat":51.507028,"lng":-0.114005,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"relation/2023676","types":["brutalist","free","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Lasdun's stacked concrete terraces, hated on sight and now hard to imagine the river without.","note":"Denys Lasdun's building opened in 1976, thirteen years after Laurence Olivier founded the company at the Old Vic. He designed it as geology rather than architecture - horizontal strata of board-marked concrete, the grain of the shuttering left in the surface, with terraces layered outward so that the foyers spill towards the river and the fly towers rise behind. Opinion was split from the start: even Nikolaus Pevsner, no enemy of modern architecture, found the concrete overbearing, and the future Charles III later compared it to a nuclear power station. The foyers are free and open all day, which is the best way to understand it: the inside is one continuous public room on many levels.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/national-theatre.jpg?v=3403ec8e","thumb":"/img/national-theatre-480.jpg?v=7edb969c","width":1024,"height":682,"alt":"National Theatre","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Aurelien Guichard from London, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:National_Theatre,_London.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"electra-persona","name":"Electra/Persona","href":"/venues/national-theatre/electra-persona/","verdict":"Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss in the Lyttelton, in one evening made of two things.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-08","to":"2026-10-10"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"the-story","name":"The Story","href":"/venues/national-theatre/the-story/","verdict":"A newsroom thriller about a reporter who invents her sources, with Letitia Wright.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-08","to":"2026-10-24"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"catarina-and-the-beauty-of-killing-fascists","name":"Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists","href":"/venues/national-theatre/catarina-and-the-beauty-of-killing-fascists/","verdict":"A Portuguese play about a family that murders a fascist every year, for one week only.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-19","to":"2026-09-26"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"some-woman","name":"Some Woman","href":"/venues/national-theatre/some-woman/","verdict":"Anne-Marie Duff as a woman who will not be quiet.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-07","to":"2026-11-21"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"cloud-9","name":"Cloud 9","href":"/venues/national-theatre/cloud-9/","verdict":"Caryl Churchill's 1979 play about empire and sex, where the actors swap age, race and gender between the acts.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-02","to":"2027-01-13"},"types":["theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]},{"slug":"the-jungle-book","name":"The Jungle Book","href":"/venues/national-theatre/the-jungle-book/","verdict":"Kipling on the Olivier stage for the winter.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-13","to":"2027-02-06"},"types":["family","theatre"],"clue":["Theatre"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Performance venues","href":"/venues/national-theatre/"}],"maps_q":"National Theatre, South Bank, SE1 9PX, London","in_area":{"slug":"south-bank","name":"South Bank"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"BFI Southbank","s":"bfi-southbank","c":"cinemas","cn":"Cinemas","m":89},{"n":"South Bank","s":"south-bank-riverside","c":"see-first","cn":"30 Things to See First","m":107},{"n":"South Bank Book Market","s":"south-bank-book-market","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":129}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":999},{"s":"tate-modern","m":1012},{"s":"freemasons-hall","m":1042},{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":1211},{"s":"daily-express-building","m":1256},{"s":"centre-point","m":1490}]},{"slug":"natural-history-museum","name":"Natural History Museum","area":"South Kensington","address":"Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD","station":"South Kensington","walk":4,"lat":51.496455,"lng":-0.176022,"hours":[[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5],[10.0,17.5]],"hours_raw":"10:00-17:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.nhm.ac.uk/","instagram":"natural_history_museum","attrs":[],"osm":"way/24436446","types":["free","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Waterhouse's terracotta cathedral, with the animals modelled into the walls and columns.","note":"Alfred Waterhouse won the job in 1864 and the museum opened in 1881, and he made a decision that no other Victorian institution matched: the entire building, inside and out, is faced in terracotta, which is cheap, moulded rather than carved, and washes clean in London's air. Then he had the animals modelled into it. Living species are on the west side and extinct ones on the east, so the columns and arches carry monkeys, pterosaurs and fish, all of them made by Gibbs and Canning of Tamworth. The central hall is a Romanesque nave with a whale in it. It is the clearest case in London of a building that argues its own subject.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-natural-history-museum.jpg?v=57ab5f21","thumb":"/img/own-natural-history-museum-480.jpg?v=2aba25a6","width":768,"height":1024,"thumb_width":360,"alt":"The Natural History Museum's terracotta towers against an orange sunset","caption":"Waterhouse's terracotta, at sunset."},"figures":null,"from":"museums/natural-history-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"the-natural-history-museums-permanent-galleries","name":"The Natural History Museum's permanent galleries","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/the-natural-history-museums-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"A blue whale overhead, a roaring T. rex, and an earthquake you can stand in.","runs":null,"types":["exhibition","family","free","nature","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"visions-of-nature","name":"Visions of Nature","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/visions-of-nature/","verdict":"A mixed-reality headset trip a hundred years into a hopeful future.","runs":null,"types":["family","immersive","science"],"clue":["Immersive","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"jurassic-oceans-monsters-of-the-deep","name":"Jurassic Oceans: Monsters of the Deep","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/jurassic-oceans-monsters-of-the-deep/","verdict":"Pliosaurs, ichthyosaurs and the mosasaur, and you get to touch a fossil poo.","runs":{"from":"2026-05-22","to":"2027-01-03"},"types":["exhibition","family","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Science & nature"]},{"slug":"wildlife-photographer-of-the-year","name":"Wildlife Photographer of the Year","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/wildlife-photographer-of-the-year/","verdict":"A hundred new photographs of the natural world, in a darkened, contemplative hang.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-16","to":"2027-07-11","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["exhibition","photography","science"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/natural-history-museum/"},{"name":"30 Things to See First","href":"/see-first/natural-history-museum/"},{"name":"Science & Engineering","href":"/science/natural-history-museum/"}],"maps_q":"Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 5BD, London","in_area":{"slug":"south-kensington","name":"South Kensington"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Science Museum","s":"science-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":105},{"n":"The Clockmakers' Museum","s":"the-clockmakers-museum","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":105},{"n":"Institut fran\u00e7ais du Royaume-Uni","s":"institut-francais-du-royaume-uni","c":"international-culture","cn":"International Culture","m":217}],"near_same":[{"s":"michelin-house","m":644},{"s":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","m":1391},{"s":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","m":1848},{"s":"leighton-house-museum","m":1888},{"s":"the-tower-house","m":1916},{"s":"debenham-house","m":2361}]},{"slug":"peckham-library","name":"Peckham Library","area":"Peckham","address":"122 Peckham Hill Street, SE15 5JR","station":"Peckham Rye","walk":6,"lat":51.474282,"lng":-0.06932,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Library hours; the building is free to walk into.","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.southwark.gov.uk/libraries","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/19798157","types":["contemporary","free","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"An upside-down L on stilts in bright green copper, and the Stirling Prize winner of 2000.","note":"Alsop and Stormer put the library at the top instead of the bottom. The building is an inverted L: a tall thin leg of stairs and lifts, and the reading floors cantilevered out above a covered public square, held up on splayed steel columns that look far too thin for the job. The skin is pre-patinated copper, a green nobody expected, with the word LIBRARY in orange across the top and coloured glass down one side. Inside, three plywood pods shaped like nothing in particular hold the children's library, an African and Caribbean literature collection and a meeting room. It won the Stirling Prize in 2000 and it is still a working branch library.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/peckham-library.jpg?v=628a0aa1","thumb":"/img/peckham-library-480.jpg?v=675805c2","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Peckham library exterior 1","caption":"","credit":"Photo by No machine-readable author provided. Mcginnly assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peckham_library_exterior_1.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Peckham Library, 122 Peckham Hill Street, SE15 5JR, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Peckham Platform","s":"peckham-platform","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":48},{"n":"Old Spike Roastery","s":"old-spike-peckham","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":314},{"n":"Ukkei Brew Bar","s":"ukkei-brew-bar","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":378}],"near_same":[{"s":"horniman-museum-and-gardens","m":3607},{"s":"tate-modern","m":4232},{"s":"lloyds-of-london","m":4458},{"s":"30-st-mary-axe","m":4551},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":4587},{"s":"national-theatre","m":4778}]},{"slug":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","name":"Penguin Pool, London Zoo","area":"Regent's Park","address":"London Zoo, Regent's Park, NW1 4RY","station":"Camden Town","walk":12,"lat":51.534,"lng":-0.1535,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.londonzoo.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["modernist","oddity"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Two concrete ramps crossing in mid-air over an empty pool: the most famous modern building in Britain with nothing to do.","note":"Berthold Lubetkin and the Tecton Group designed it in 1934 with Ove Arup as engineer, and the whole thing is one idea: an elliptical pool with two interlocking spiral ramps crossing above it, cantilevered so that they appear to be held up by nothing. Historic England calls it a key symbol of British and international Modern Movement architecture. It worked better as architecture than as an enclosure - concrete is hard on penguins' feet and the pool was too shallow for them to dive - so the birds were moved to Penguin Beach in 2004 and it has stood empty since. It is protected at the highest grade, which means the zoo can neither use it nor remove it.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/penguin-pool-london-zoo.jpg?v=9eadc451","thumb":"/img/penguin-pool-london-zoo-480.jpg?v=1dcdf3d4","width":1024,"height":629,"alt":"A photograph of Penguin Pool, London Zoo.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by kitmasterbloke, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_1934_Penguin_Pool_at_London_Zoo.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Penguin Pool, London Zoo, London Zoo, Regent's Park, NW1 4RY, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"London Zoo","s":"london-zoo","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":188},{"n":"The Regent's Park","s":"the-regents-park","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":472},{"n":"Cecil Sharp House","s":"cecil-sharp-house","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":545}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-gorilla-house-london-zoo","m":289},{"s":"carreras-cigarette-factory","m":949},{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":1019},{"s":"roundhouse","m":1033},{"s":"bt-tower","m":1727},{"s":"st-pancras","m":1990}]},{"slug":"roundhouse","name":"Roundhouse","area":"Chalk Farm","address":"Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8EH","station":"Chalk Farm","walk":2,"lat":51.543248,"lng":-0.151974,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":"Open for performances, and for the occasional daytime tour.","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.roundhouse.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/1110282368","types":["industrial","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A railway engine shed of 1847 built round a turntable, obsolete in ten years and useful ever since.","note":"The London and North Western Railway put it up in 1846-47 as a roundhouse: a circular shed with a turntable in the middle and twenty-four bays radiating off it, so that a locomotive could be run in, spun and sent back out. Within a decade locomotives were too long to fit and it was finished as a railway building. Gilbey's the gin distillers then used it as a bonded warehouse for fifty years, and it fell empty before the war. In 1964 the playwright Arnold Wesker took it on for Centre 42 and it became the room the sixties happened in - the launch of International Times in 1966, one of only two British appearances by the Doors in 1968. The iron columns and the conical roof are all original.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/roundhouse.jpg?v=07ffa827","thumb":"/img/roundhouse-480.jpg?v=44ade82a","width":640,"height":480,"alt":"A photograph of Roundhouse.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Oxyman, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Roundhouse,_Camden_-_geograph.org.uk_-_541283.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"saint-etienne","name":"Saint Etienne","href":"/venues/roundhouse/saint-etienne/","verdict":"The band who spent thirty years writing pop songs about London.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-18","to":"2026-09-18"},"types":["concert","music","pop"],"clue":["Gig","Pop"]},{"slug":"nu-genea-live-band","name":"Nu Genea Live Band","href":"/venues/roundhouse/nu-genea-live-band/","verdict":"Neapolitan disco with a full band, which is how it was always meant to sound.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-19","to":"2026-09-19"},"types":["concert","folk_world","music"],"clue":["Gig","Folk & world"]},{"slug":"good-kid-last-dinosaurs","name":"Good Kid + Last Dinosaurs","href":"/venues/roundhouse/good-kid-last-dinosaurs/","verdict":"Toronto indie rock that built its audience entirely online.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-26","to":"2026-09-26"},"types":["concert","music","rock_indie"],"clue":["Gig","Rock & indie"]},{"slug":"fatoumata-diawara-thanda-choir","name":"Fatoumata Diawara + Thanda Choir","href":"/venues/roundhouse/fatoumata-diawara-thanda-choir/","verdict":"A Malian singer who turns hard subjects into songs people dance to.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-18","to":"2026-11-18"},"types":["concert","folk_world","music"],"clue":["Gig","Folk & world"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Performance venues","href":"/venues/roundhouse/"}],"maps_q":"Roundhouse, Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8EH, London","in_area":{"slug":"camden","name":"Camden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Camden Market","s":"camden-market","c":"food-markets","cn":"Food Markets","m":344},{"n":"The Engineer","s":"the-engineer-primrose-hill","c":"pubs","cn":"Pubs","m":368},{"n":"Ambedkar's lodging, King Henry's Road","s":"b-r-ambedkar","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":372}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":246},{"s":"the-gorilla-house-london-zoo","m":769},{"s":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","m":1033},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":1178},{"s":"isokon-building","m":1191},{"s":"carreras-cigarette-factory","m":1372}]},{"slug":"royal-exchange","name":"Royal Exchange","area":"City of London","address":"Royal Exchange, Cornhill, EC3V 3LR","station":"Bank","walk":2,"lat":51.513655,"lng":-0.087196,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.theroyalexchange.co.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/367646970","types":["free","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The third exchange on the site, with a golden grasshopper on the roof and a courtyard you can walk into.","note":"Thomas Gresham built the first one at his own expense and Elizabeth I opened it on 23 January 1571, giving it the royal title and a licence to sell drink; the stone, slate, wainscot and glass came from Antwerp, whose exchange it was modelled on. That building burned in the Great Fire and its replacement burned in 1838. The present one is by Sir William Tite, opened by Queen Victoria in 1844, with a Corinthian portico, a pediment carved by Richard Westmacott the younger and - unusually for the date - concrete in its construction. Lloyd's sat in it for close to a century and a half and Reuters was founded at No. 1. The gilded grasshopper on the weathervane is Gresham's family crest, and it has survived all three buildings. The covered courtyard inside is now shops and a bar, and is free to walk through.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/own-royal-exchange.jpg?v=3a0cba99","thumb":"/img/own-royal-exchange-480.jpg?v=cd0b3b73","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"Bank junction: the Royal Exchange's tall columned portico and carved pediment, with the equestrian statue of Wellington in front, the Bank of England's stone wall on the left and the glass towers of 22 Bishopsgate rising behind, on a bright afternoon with cyclists crossing.","caption":"From Bank junction, the Bank of England on the left and 22 Bishopsgate behind."},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Classic British Shops","href":"/classic-british-shops/royal-exchange/"}],"maps_q":"Royal Exchange, Cornhill, EC3V 3LR, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Fortnum & Mason Royal Exchange","s":"fortnum-mason-royal-exchange","c":"classic-british-shops","cn":"Classic British Shops","m":13},{"n":"Rosslyn Coffee","s":"rosslyn-bank","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":41},{"n":"Bank of England Museum","s":"bank-of-england-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":68}],"near_same":[{"s":"lloyds-of-london","m":338},{"s":"30-st-mary-axe","m":483},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":829},{"s":"tate-modern","m":1115},{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":1151},{"s":"golden-lane-estate","m":1156}]},{"slug":"severndroog-castle","name":"Severndroog Castle","area":"Shooters Hill","address":"Castle Wood, Shooters Hill, SE18 3RT","station":"Eltham","walk":17,"lat":51.466624,"lng":0.060054,"hours":[null,null,null,null,null,null,[10.0,15.5]],"hours_raw":"Su 10:00-15:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.severndroogcastle.org.uk/","hours_short":"Tower and viewing platform Sundays; tea room Thursday to Sunday","hours_checked":"2026-09-04","hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.severndroogcastle.org.uk/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/32825099","types":["georgian","oddity"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A triangular gothic tower on Shooter's Hill, put up by a widow for a naval victory in India.","note":"Lady James built it in 1784 in memory of her husband Sir William James, who had taken the fort of Suvarnadurg on the coast of Maharashtra in 1755; the tower carries an anglicised version of the fort's name. Richard Jupp designed it as an equilateral triangle with a hexagonal turret at each corner, gothic and only two rooms wide, which is a strange shape for a strange purpose. It stands on one of the highest points in London, and on a clear day the platform at the top looks over several counties. It fell derelict, was restored by a local trust and now opens on set days with tea in the room below.","note_links":null,"regular":[{"what":"Producers' Market","when":"First Sunday of the month, 10:00 to 15:00","price":"Free","url":"https://severndroogcastle.org.uk/whats-on/all-events/","note":"Stalls from small Greenwich businesses in the grounds - cheese, bread, gourmet sausages, vegetables - alongside local artists and makers. Nothing to book, and the tower opens at the same time."}],"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/severndroog-castle.jpg?v=bf127d47","thumb":"/img/severndroog-castle-480.jpg?v=a7d4228a","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"Severndroog Castle, Oxleas Wood, London","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Veghead, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Severndroog.jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":"monuments/severndroog-castle","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"comedy-at-the-castle-in-the-woods","name":"Comedy at the Castle in the Woods","href":"/monuments/severndroog-castle/comedy-at-the-castle-in-the-woods/","verdict":"Four comedians in the courtyard of a Georgian folly, in a wood on Shooters Hill.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-17","to":"2026-09-17"},"types":["adults","comedy","food_available"],"clue":["Comedy"]},{"slug":"poetry-and-spoken-word-open-mic-with-greenwich-libraries","name":"Poetry and Spoken Word Open Mic with Greenwich Libraries","href":"/monuments/severndroog-castle/poetry-and-spoken-word-open-mic-with-greenwich-libraries/","verdict":"Eltham Library's monthly open mic, moved for one night into the castle's first-floor room.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-25","to":"2026-09-25"},"types":["books","free"],"clue":["Books & writers"]},{"slug":"after-dark-on-the-severndroog-viewing-platform","name":"After Dark on the Severndroog Viewing Platform","href":"/monuments/severndroog-castle/after-dark-on-the-severndroog-viewing-platform/","verdict":"The widest view in London, opened at night, in twenty-minute slots for ten people at a time.","runs":{"from":"2026-11-07","to":"2026-11-07"},"types":["heights","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Monuments & Ruins","href":"/monuments/severndroog-castle/"}],"maps_q":"Severndroog Castle, Castle Wood, Shooters Hill, SE18 3RT, London","bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Oxleas Wood","s":"oxleas-wood","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":1198},{"n":"Charlton Lido","s":"charlton-lido","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":1752},{"n":"The Rusty Bucket","s":"the-rusty-bucket","c":"beer","cn":"Beer","m":1887}],"near_same":[{"s":"charlton-house","m":2227},{"s":"eltham-palace","m":2323},{"s":"balfron-tower","m":8434},{"s":"horniman-museum-and-gardens","m":8862},{"s":"peckham-library","m":9001},{"s":"abbey-mills-pumping-station","m":9095}]},{"slug":"sir-john-soanes-museum","name":"Sir John Soane's Museum","area":"Holborn","address":"13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3BP","station":"Holborn","walk":2,"lat":51.517075,"lng":-0.117469,"hours":[null,[10.0,16.5],[10.0,16.5],[10.0,16.5],[10.0,16.5],[10.0,16.5],null],"hours_raw":"Tu-Sa 10:00-16:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.soane.org/","instagram":"soanemuseum","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/61453261","types":["free","georgian","house","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"An architect's own house, left exactly as he arranged it, with mirrors and light shafts everywhere.","note":"Soane rebuilt three houses on the north side of Lincoln's Inn Fields between 1792 and 1824 as a place to live, to teach and to keep the things he had bought, and an Act of Parliament in 1833 required that nothing be moved after his death. Almost nothing has been. What makes it an architectural pilgrimage rather than a collection is what he did with daylight: coloured glass, concealed shafts, domes over rooms with no visible windows, and mirrors set at angles to double a space that is only a few feet across. The Picture Room's walls open outward on hinges to reveal more paintings behind them. Book ahead for the candlelit evenings if you can get one.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/sir-john-soanes-museum.jpg?v=4d6d2a14","thumb":"/img/sir-john-soanes-museum-480.jpg?v=157bf66f","width":590,"height":1024,"alt":"Sir John Soane Museum","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sir_John_Soane_Museum_(13952611347).jpg","thumb_width":276},"figures":null,"from":"museums/sir-john-soanes-museum","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"sir-john-soanes-museum-highlights-tour","name":"Sir John Soane's Museum Highlights Tour","href":"/museums/sir-john-soanes-museum/sir-john-soanes-museum-highlights-tour/","verdict":"An hour through Soane's house as he left it in 1837, with the sarcophagus and the Hogarths.","runs":null,"types":["art","history","tour"],"clue":["Guided tour","Art & design"]},{"slug":"madelon-vriesendorp-mind-games","name":"Madelon Vriesendorp: Mind Games","href":"/museums/sir-john-soanes-museum/madelon-vriesendorp-mind-games/","verdict":"Fifty works by the Soane Medal winner who paints skyscrapers in bed together.","runs":{"from":"2026-07-15","to":"2026-09-20"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/sir-john-soanes-museum/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/sir-john-soanes-museum/"}],"maps_q":"Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3BP, London","in_area":{"slug":"holborn","name":"Holborn"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Scarfes Bar","s":"scarfes-bar","c":"cocktails","cn":"Cocktails","m":71},{"n":"Redemption Roasters","s":"redemption-lincolns-inn-fields","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":99},{"n":"Lincoln's Inn Fields","s":"lincolns-inn-fields","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":109}],"near_same":[{"s":"freemasons-hall","m":318},{"s":"daily-express-building","m":853},{"s":"centre-point","m":854},{"s":"finsbury-health-centre","m":1053},{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":1101},{"s":"national-theatre","m":1211}]},{"slug":"southgate-station","name":"Southgate station","area":"Southgate","address":"Station Parade, Southgate, N14 5BH","station":"Southgate","walk":1,"lat":51.632318,"lng":-0.127786,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"node/5182424566","types":["free","inside","modernist","transport"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Holden's flying saucer of 1933: a circular ticket hall whose flat roof seems to rest on nothing but a ring of windows, with a Tesla coil on top.","note":"Charles Holden opened it on 13 March 1933 on the Piccadilly line's last push to Cockfosters, and it is the strangest of the stations he built along it: a drum of brick, concrete and glass with a wider flat roof floating above a band of clerestory windows, held up, invisibly, by a single column in the middle of the ticket hall, and finished with an illuminated finial like something out of a mad scientist's laboratory. He designed the curved parade of shops and the bus station around it as one composition, and it survives almost whole: the escalators keep their bronze uplighters and the bronze panelling runs through the building. Protected at the higher historic grade. On the day it opened, local residents were given a free return to Piccadilly Circus.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/southgate-station.jpg?v=4d4e0ae0","thumb":"/img/southgate-station-480.jpg?v=8b3f190c","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Southgate tube station building","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Sunil060902, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southgate_station_building2.JPG","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Southgate station, Station Parade, Southgate, N14 5BH, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Trent Park","s":"trent-park","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":3092},{"n":"Trent Park House of Secrets","s":"trent-park-house-of-secrets","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":3122},{"n":"Enfield Museum","s":"enfield-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":3840}],"near_same":[{"s":"arnos-grove-station","m":1800},{"s":"alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios","m":4236},{"s":"the-salisbury-harringay","m":5906},{"s":"highpoint","m":6599},{"s":"2-willow-road","m":8828},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":9083}]},{"slug":"st-pancras","name":"St Pancras Station","area":"St Pancras","address":"Euston Road, NW1 2AR","station":"King's Cross St Pancras","walk":2,"lat":51.529877,"lng":-0.125502,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://stpancras.com/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/15694166","types":["free","inside","transport","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"George Gilbert Scott's Gothic palace across the front of a railway station, saved ten days before the bulldozers.","note":"The Midland Railway held a competition for a hotel to front its new terminus and George Gilbert Scott won it. What went up on the Euston Road is a red-brick Gothic revival palace with a clock tower at one end and a spire at the other, granite shafts around the windows and a staircase that climbs three storeys in an open well under a painted vault. It runs the whole width of the station, so the shed behind it cannot be seen from the road at all - two buildings by two men who were not collaborating, one hiding the other.\n\nThe hotel closed in 1935 and the building spent fifty years as railway offices, damp and half empty, until British Rail applied to knock it down in the 1960s. John Betjeman and the Victorian Society fought the application and it was protected at the highest grade with ten days to spare, which is the reason the Gothic revival has a monument in London at all. It has been a hotel again since 2011, and the staircase is on the tour.","note_links":[{"phrase":"the shed behind it cannot be seen from the road at all","name":"St Pancras train shed","href":"/science/st-pancras-train-shed/"},{"phrase":"a hotel again since 2011","name":"St Pancras Renaissance Hotel","href":"/harry-potter/st-pancras-renaissance-hotel/"}],"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/st-pancras.jpg?v=efd985eb","thumb":"/img/st-pancras-480.jpg?v=7f1fdb82","width":1024,"height":863,"alt":"St Pancras station and the former Midland Grand Hotel from the Euston Road","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Colin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Pancras_Railway_Station_2012-06-23.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":[{"src":"/img/own-st-pancras-shed.jpg?v=ff1db7b1","thumb":"/img/own-st-pancras-shed-480.jpg?v=2770d2ea","width":1024,"height":768,"thumb_width":480,"alt":"The Barlow train shed at St Pancras: two Eurostar trains at the platforms under the single span of iron and glass","caption":"William Barlow's train shed of 1868, a single span of 240 feet and the widest roof in the world when it opened."}],"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"St Pancras Station, Euston Road, NW1 2AR, London","in_area":{"slug":"kings-cross-st-pancras","name":"King's Cross & St Pancras"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Aux Merveilleux de Fred St Pancras","s":"aux-merveilleux-de-fred-st-pancras","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":58},{"n":"Origin Coffee","s":"origin-euston-road","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":109},{"n":"British Library","s":"british-library","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":153}],"near_same":[{"s":"carreras-cigarette-factory","m":1067},{"s":"finsbury-health-centre","m":1281},{"s":"bt-tower","m":1313},{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":1528},{"s":"centre-point","m":1550},{"s":"freemasons-hall","m":1671}]},{"slug":"strawberry-hill","name":"Strawberry Hill House","area":"Twickenham","address":"268 Waldegrave Road, TW1 4ST","station":"Strawberry Hill","walk":4,"lat":51.438194,"lng":-0.334814,"hours":[[11.0,16.0],[11.0,16.0],[11.0,16.0],null,null,null,[11.0,16.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Su 11:00-16:00; Th off; Fr off; Sa off","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/","instagram":"strawbhillhouse","attrs":[],"osm":"way/207444024","types":["georgian","house","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Horace Walpole's white gothic villa, the house that started the whole gothic revival.","note":"Walpole bought a coachman's cottage at Twickenham in 1747 and spent the next thirty years turning it into a castle, working with a committee of friends rather than an architect and taking details wholesale from medieval tombs and cathedral screens - a chimneypiece from a tomb in Canterbury, a ceiling from Henry VII's chapel. It is all plaster, papier-mache and paint pretending to be stone, and that is the joke and the point. The Gallery is the room people come for: fan vaulting in papier-mache, gilded, under crimson damask. He wrote The Castle of Otranto here after a nightmare, and invented the gothic novel in the house he had invented gothic revival in.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/strawberry-hill.jpg?v=2e2102ee","thumb":"/img/strawberry-hill-480.jpg?v=0aa83197","width":1024,"height":598,"alt":"Horace Walpole's Twickenham house, Strawberry Hill, gleaming white in spring sunshine, soon after restoration","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Chiswick Chap, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Strawberry_Hill_House_from_garden_in_2012_after_restoration.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/strawberry-hill","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"strawberry-hill-house-flower-festival","name":"Strawberry Hill House Flower Festival","href":"/museums/strawberry-hill/strawberry-hill-house-flower-festival/","verdict":"Thirty florists fill Walpole's Gothic villa with British-grown flowers, for four days.","runs":{"from":"2026-09-10","to":"2026-09-13","repeats":"yearly"},"types":["art","festival","nature"],"clue":["Festival","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/strawberry-hill/"},{"name":"Literary London","href":"/literary/strawberry-hill/"}],"maps_q":"Strawberry Hill House, 268 Waldegrave Road, TW1 4ST, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Pope's Grotto","s":"popes-grotto","c":"literary","cn":"Literary London","m":492},{"n":"Twickenham Farmers' Market","s":"twickenham-farmers-market","c":"farmers-markets","cn":"Farmers' Markets","m":961},{"n":"Church Street, Twickenham","s":"church-street-twickenham","c":"beautiful-streets","cn":"Beautiful Streets","m":1101}],"near_same":[{"s":"hoover-building","m":10677},{"s":"debenham-house","m":11282},{"s":"leighton-house-museum","m":11331},{"s":"the-tower-house","m":11407},{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":11798},{"s":"sudbury-town-station","m":12594}]},{"slug":"sudbury-town-station","name":"Sudbury Town station","area":"Sudbury","address":"Station Approach, Wembley, HA0 2LA","station":"Sudbury Town","walk":1,"lat":51.550825,"lng":-0.315639,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/229108527","types":["free","inside","modernist","transport"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A brick box with a concrete lid: Holden's rebuilding of 1931 that set the pattern for every Underground station of the thirties.","note":"The District Railway's country halt of 1903 was pulled down in 1930 and Charles Holden, fresh from a tour of the new architecture of Holland, Germany and Scandinavia with Frank Pick, replaced it with the first station of a kind he would repeat along the Piccadilly line: a tall block of a ticket hall in plain brick, lit by panels of window high in the walls and capped by a flat slab of concrete, with low wings for the shops and the offices. He called it a brick box with a concrete lid. Everything about it was new for a railway, the daylight, the lack of ornament, the lettering in Johnston's alphabet, and it is protected at the higher historic grade with much of its first fitting-out still in place.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/sudbury-town-station.jpg?v=c7f1b051","thumb":"/img/sudbury-town-station-480.jpg?v=69aaf05d","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Sudbury Town tube station main entrance on eastbound side","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Sunil060902, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sudbury_Town_stn_main_entrance.JPG","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Sudbury Town station, Station Approach, Wembley, HA0 2LA, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Shri Sanatan Hindu Mandir","s":"shri-sanatan-hindu-mandir","c":"sacred","cn":"Sacred London","m":1473},{"n":"Ealing Beaver Project Safari","s":"ealing-beaver-project-safari","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":1778},{"n":"Old Speech Room Gallery and Museum, Harrow School","s":"old-speech-room-gallery-and-museum-harrow-school","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":2756}],"near_same":[{"s":"hoover-building","m":1918},{"s":"trellick-tower","m":8201},{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":8834},{"s":"debenham-house","m":9144},{"s":"alexandra-road-estate","m":9249},{"s":"the-tower-house","m":9627}]},{"slug":"tate-modern","name":"Tate Modern","area":"Bankside","address":"Bankside, SE1 9TG","station":"London Blackfriars","walk":5,"lat":51.507429,"lng":-0.099386,"hours":[[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,18.0],[10.0,21.0],[10.0,21.0],[10.0,18.0]],"hours_raw":"Su-Th 10:00-18:00; Fr-Sa 10:00-21:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":"https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern","instagram":"tate","attrs":["stepfree"],"osm":"way/24642569","types":["contemporary","free","industrial","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Giles Gilbert Scott's power station, hollowed out and left as raw as they dared.","note":"Bankside Power Station was built in two stages between 1947 and 1963 by Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed Battersea and the red telephone box, and it was deliberately given a single chimney lower than the dome of St Paul's across the water. It shut in 1981. Herzog and de Meuron won the competition to convert it in 1995 by proposing to do less than anyone else: keep the shell, keep the turbine hall as one enormous empty room, and add a horizontal glass beam of light along the roof. The Blavatnik Building of 2016 is theirs too, a twisted brick pyramid at the back with a free viewing level on the tenth floor.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/tate-modern.jpg?v=cadbf674","thumb":"/img/tate-modern-480.jpg?v=f017f793","width":1024,"height":768,"alt":"Tate Modern from across the Thames: the long brick power station and its single chimney","caption":"The power station from the north bank.","credit":"Photo by Acabashi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tate_Modern_-_Bankside_Power_Station.jpg","thumb_width":480},"figures":null,"from":"museums/tate-modern","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"whats_on":[{"slug":"gathering-ground","name":"Gathering Ground","href":"/museums/tate-modern/gathering-ground/","verdict":"Nine artists on the ecological crisis, free, in a former power station.","runs":{"to":"2027-03-07"},"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"tate-moderns-permanent-galleries","name":"Tate Modern's permanent galleries","href":"/art/tate-modern/tate-moderns-permanent-galleries/","verdict":"Matisse, Picasso and Rothko for free, in a power station the size of a cathedral.","runs":null,"types":["art","exhibition","free"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"julio-le-parc-light-colour-action","name":"Julio Le Parc: Light. Colour. Action.","href":"/museums/tate-modern/julio-le-parc-light-colour-action/","verdict":"Seven decades of kinetic light works that only finish when you walk into them.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-08","to":"2027-05-03"},"types":["art","exhibition","immersive"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"frida-the-making-of-an-icon","name":"Frida: The Making of an Icon","href":"/museums/tate-modern/frida-the-making-of-an-icon/","verdict":"Thirty Kahlo paintings, her clothes and jewellery, and the two hundred objects that made her a brand.","runs":{"from":"2026-06-25","to":"2027-01-03"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"ana-mendieta","name":"Ana Mendieta","href":"/museums/tate-modern/ana-mendieta/","verdict":"The Silueta series and newly restored films, in the first UK retrospective for over a decade.","runs":{"from":"2026-07-14","to":"2027-01-17"},"types":["art","exhibition","photography"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]},{"slug":"light-and-magic-the-birth-of-art-photography","name":"Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography","href":"/museums/tate-modern/light-and-magic-the-birth-of-art-photography/","verdict":"Two hundred rare prints by eighty pictorialists, from Seoul to Cape Town.","runs":{"from":"2026-10-14","to":"2027-02-21"},"types":["art","exhibition","photography"],"clue":["Exhibition","Photography"]},{"slug":"monet-painting-time","name":"Monet: Painting Time","href":"/museums/tate-modern/monet-painting-time/","verdict":"Tate Modern's first Monet show, from the Gare Saint-Lazare to the water lilies.","runs":{"from":"2027-02-25","to":"2027-06-27"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"ink","name":"Ink","href":"/museums/tate-modern/ink/","verdict":"Eighty ink paintings from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan that modernised a tradition.","runs":{"from":"2027-04-22","to":"2027-08-30"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"baya","name":"Baya","href":"/museums/tate-modern/baya/","verdict":"The Algerian painter who impressed Picasso and Breton, in her first UK solo show.","runs":{"from":"2027-06-10","to":"2027-10-17"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"nalini-malani","name":"Nalini Malani","href":"/museums/tate-modern/nalini-malani/","verdict":"Nearly two hundred works across six decades from the Mumbai artist of Partition.","runs":{"from":"2027-07-01","to":"2028-01-09"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"lynda-benglis","name":"Lynda Benglis","href":"/museums/tate-modern/lynda-benglis/","verdict":"The latex pours and Day-Glo floors that rewrote what sculpture could be.","runs":{"from":"2027-09-30","to":"2028-03-05"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]},{"slug":"edvard-munch","name":"Edvard Munch","href":"/museums/tate-modern/edvard-munch/","verdict":"The Frieze of Life and Munch's soul paintings, seen through film.","runs":{"from":"2027-11-11","to":"2028-04-23"},"types":["art","exhibition"],"clue":["Exhibition","Art & design"]}],"also_in":[{"name":"Museums","href":"/museums/tate-modern/"},{"name":"Art","href":"/art/tate-modern/"},{"name":"30 Things to See First","href":"/see-first/tate-modern/"}],"maps_q":"Tate Modern, Bankside, SE1 9TG, London","in_area":{"slug":"southwark","name":"Southwark & Bankside"},"bank":0,"near_all":[{"n":"Bankside Gallery","s":"bankside-gallery","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":148},{"n":"Shakespeare's Globe guided tour","s":"shakespeares-globe-guided-tour","c":"whats-on","cn":"What\u2019s On","m":168},{"n":"Shakespeare's Globe","s":"shakespeares-globe","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":176}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-blackfriar","m":693},{"s":"daily-express-building","m":950},{"s":"national-theatre","m":1012},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":1115},{"s":"lloyds-of-london","m":1326},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":1435}]},{"slug":"assembly-house-kentish-town","name":"The Assembly House","area":"Kentish Town","address":"292 Kentish Town Road, NW5 2TG","station":"Kentish Town","walk":2,"lat":51.550997,"lng":-0.140343,"hours":[[12.0,23.0],[12.0,23.0],[12.0,23.0],[12.0,23.0],[12.0,24.0],[12.0,24.0],[12.0,22.5]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Th 12:00-23:00; Fr-Sa 12:00-00:00; Su 12:00-22:30","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://www.greeneking.co.uk/pubs/greater-london/assembly-house","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-18","hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Assembly House Kentish Town Road","Assembly House public house Kentish Town"],"runs":null,"website":"https://www.greeneking.co.uk/pubs/greater-london/assembly-house","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/973132221","types":["free","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A French chateau on Kentish Town Road, and a rare full list of everybody who made it.","note":"Thorpe & Furniss of Camden built it in 1898 in the French chateau manner, with a tall tower on the corner where the streets meet. That was the standard move for a late-Victorian pub on a junction; this one commits to it harder than most.\n\nWhat is unusual is the record rather than the building. Most Victorian work reaches us with an architect's name attached and nothing else, and the trades vanish. Here they are all named: the wrought iron by Jones & Willis, the glass by W. James of Kentish Town, the plasterwork by the Plastic Decoration Company, the joinery by W. A. Antill & Co. That is how a building of this kind was actually produced - an architect and four or five specialist firms, each with a workshop and a reputation to keep - and it is almost never written down.\n\nAll four are still visible. The end lobbies keep French embossed and brilliant-cut mirrors, wrought-iron screens lettered AH and mosaic floors; most of the frontage glass is original embossed and cut work; and inside there are mahogany fittings, a Jacobean-style moulded plaster ceiling, and a lantern with a stained-glass clerestory over what was the billiard room. The ground floor has since been opened into one room, so the fittings have outlived the plan they were made for.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"pubs/assembly-house-kentish-town","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Pubs","href":"/pubs/assembly-house-kentish-town/"}],"maps_q":"The Assembly House, 292 Kentish Town Road, NW5 2TG, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"The Pineapple","s":"the-pineapple-kentish-town","c":"pubs","cn":"Pubs","m":225},{"n":"Rose & Crown","s":"rose-crown","c":"beer","cn":"Beer","m":518},{"n":"Nkrumah's house, Burghley Road","s":"kwame-nkrumah","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":539}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":1088},{"s":"roundhouse","m":1178},{"s":"isokon-building","m":1504},{"s":"the-gorilla-house-london-zoo","m":1887},{"s":"carreras-cigarette-factory","m":1945},{"s":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","m":2097}]},{"slug":"the-blackfriar","name":"The Blackfriar","area":"Blackfriars","address":"174 Queen Victoria Street, EC4V 4EG","station":"Blackfriars","walk":1,"lat":51.512152,"lng":-0.103656,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/166320158","types":["free","inside","oddity","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"The only complete Arts and Crafts interior in a London pub, on a wedge of ground where a friary stood.","note":"The shell is an ordinary wedge-shaped building of about 1875, squeezed by the railway and the road into a triangle. What makes it is the fitting-out of around 1905 by Herbert Fuller-Clark, working with the sculptors Frederick Callcott and Henry Poole, who filled it with coloured marble, mosaic, alabaster and bronze.\n\nThe scheme is Arts and Crafts done as sculpture rather than as joinery: friezes of fat, cheerful Dominican monks - the black friars whose house stood here until the Dissolution - going about monastic business in bronze relief, under mottoes cut into the marble. Finery is Foolery. Haste is Slow. Industry is All. The barrel-vaulted grotto at the back, added a few years later, is lined in mosaic and lit by alabaster, and is the best of it.\n\nIt was very nearly demolished in the 1960s and was saved by a campaign with John Betjeman in it, which is the usual way a London building of this kind survives.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/the-blackfriar.jpg?v=d62d7728","thumb":"/img/the-blackfriar-480.jpg?v=3c5160b4","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"The Black Friar on its narrow wedge-shaped corner site: a tall building in stone and copper-green with a gilt clock high on the angle, a painted statue of a fat friar in a niche below it, mosaic and lettering along the ground floor, and people at the tables outside under a blue sky.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by It's No Game, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Black_Friar_(16634557733).jpg","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":"pubs/the-blackfriar","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Pubs","href":"/pubs/the-blackfriar/"}],"maps_q":"The Blackfriar, 174 Queen Victoria Street, EC4V 4EG, London","in_area":{"slug":"the-city","name":"The City"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"T S Eliot and The Waste Land","s":"t-s-eliot-and-the-waste-land","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":63},{"n":"The Along the Thames Pub Walk","s":"the-along-the-thames-pub-walk","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":63},{"n":"Alchemy","s":"alchemy","c":"coffee","cn":"Coffee","m":158}],"near_same":[{"s":"daily-express-building","m":293},{"s":"tate-modern","m":693},{"s":"national-theatre","m":999},{"s":"barbican-centre","m":1094},{"s":"sir-john-soanes-museum","m":1101},{"s":"royal-exchange","m":1151}]},{"slug":"the-cosmic-house","name":"The Cosmic House","area":"Notting Hill","address":"19 Lansdowne Walk, W11 3AH","station":"Holland Park","walk":3,"lat":51.508634,"lng":-0.207425,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":"https://www.thecosmichouse.org/visit","hours_short":"By timed ticket only. Tickets go on sale at noon on the third Friday of each month for the month after, four per booking.","hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Cosmic House Lansdowne Walk","Charles Jencks Cosmic House Notting Hill"],"runs":null,"website":"https://www.thecosmichouse.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/785816280","types":["contemporary","house","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Charles Jencks rebuilt his own 1840s terrace house as a diagram of the year, and it is Grade I for it.","note":"From the street it is an 1840s terrace house and almost nothing gives it away - except the front door, where the double doorknobs and applied mouldings make a face, and the fanlight above it hides the initials of the family inside. Charles Jencks remodelled the house between 1979 and 1985 with the Terry Farrell Partnership, and Historic England listed it at the top grade in 2018, which for a building of the 1980s is close to unheard of.\n\nThe organising idea is time. At the centre is the Solar Stair: fifty-two steps for the weeks of the year, each riser divided into seven for the days, zodiac discs set into the step ends, and orbs on its three handrails for the paths of the sun, earth and moon. At the bottom is a Black Hole mosaic by Eduardo Paolozzi. The ground-floor rooms radiate off it in order - Winter at the front, Spring behind, Summer the dining room, Indian Summer the kitchen, Autumn the pantry - so that walking round the stair walks you through a year.\n\nThe detail does not let up. The entrance hall is an ellipse Jencks called the cosmic oval, under a frieze by William Stok of Imhotep, Pythagoras, Hadrian, Erasmus, Donne, Borromini, Jefferson and Hannah Arendt in conversation with each other. Michael Graves designed the Winter and Spring fireplaces. The library's shelves are built as a village of little houses, one per period of architecture from Egyptian to Post-Modern, so the shelf itself tells you where to look. Piers Gough designed the jacuzzi as an inverted dome after Borromini. On the garden front, the four stepped openings are a family: two dormers for the children, one conservatory for the mother, one for the father.\n\nIt is a museum now, run by the foundation in Jencks's name, and it is small - fifteen people at a time - so the booking is the hard part rather than the visit.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"The Cosmic House, 19 Lansdowne Walk, W11 3AH, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Michael Hoppen Gallery","s":"michael-hoppen-gallery","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":153},{"n":"Notting Hill and Portobello Market","s":"notting-hill-and-portobello-market","c":"tours","cn":"Guided Tours","m":210},{"n":"Piano Nobile","s":"piano-nobile","c":"art","cn":"Art","m":258}],"near_same":[{"s":"debenham-house","m":693},{"s":"the-tower-house","m":1021},{"s":"leighton-house-museum","m":1154},{"s":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","m":1377},{"s":"trellick-tower","m":1672},{"s":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","m":1720}]},{"slug":"the-gorilla-house-london-zoo","name":"The Gorilla House, London Zoo","area":"Regent's Park","address":"London Zoo, Outer Circle, NW1 4RY","station":"Chalk Farm","walk":11,"lat":51.536515,"lng":-0.15457,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Gorilla House London Zoo Lubetkin","Round House London Zoo Tecton"],"runs":null,"website":"https://www.londonzoo.org/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/42937569","types":["modernist"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Lubetkin's first building in Britain: a concrete drum, half of it open, with a screen that revolved to shut the winter out.","note":"Berthold Lubetkin and Tecton built it in 1932-33 with Ove Arup, their first significant commission and their first for the Zoological Society, and Historic England calls it a seminal Modern Movement building in Britain - the first time the highly technical, quasi-scientific Tecton method was applied to a real brief.\n\nThe plan is a drum and everything follows from it. Half the circle was an open cage; the other half a permanent one lit by a clerestory; the entrance and exit wings sweep away from the rim as part of the composition rather than stuck on it. Four inches of reinforced concrete, steel bars, sliding glass inner windows.\n\nThe clever part was the winter. An insulated screen, stored through the summer inside the permanent half of the drum, revolved out to close the open cage, giving the public a sheltered place to stand and letting glass windows rise in the dividing wall so that air conditioning could hold Congo conditions inside. The screen pivots on ball bearings in a solid steel column and is carried at its outer edge on rollers running in a steel channel round the top.\n\nIt has not held gorillas for a long time and is called the Round House now, with smaller animals in it. The building is what you go to look at.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"The Gorilla House, London Zoo, London Zoo, Outer Circle, NW1 4RY, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"London Zoo","s":"london-zoo","c":"science","cn":"Science & Engineering","m":142},{"n":"Sam's Cafe","s":"sams-cafe","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":406},{"n":"Cecil Sharp House","s":"cecil-sharp-house","c":"venues","cn":"Performance venues","m":406}],"near_same":[{"s":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","m":289},{"s":"roundhouse","m":769},{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":798},{"s":"carreras-cigarette-factory","m":1075},{"s":"isokon-building","m":1791},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":1887}]},{"slug":"the-horse-hospital-camden","name":"The Horse Hospital, Camden","area":"Camden Town","address":"Stables Market, Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8AH","station":"Chalk Farm","walk":5,"lat":51.54264,"lng":-0.14855,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Horse Hospital Stables Market Camden","Camden Stables Market horse ramp"],"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":null,"types":["free","industrial","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Twelve horse stalls with their mangers still in place, on the upper floor of a Victorian stable block now full of market stalls.","note":"Camden Goods Depot ran on horses, and this is where they were kept. Two ranges, the western of 1882-3 and the eastern of 1897, in yellow stock brick with red brick bands and dentilled cornices, built along a sloping site against the retaining wall of the depot. The first phase held ninety-two horses over two floors and the second another forty. The wide ground-floor openings between cast-iron pilasters suggest it was designed for carts as much as for stabling.\n\nGo upstairs. The western half of the first floor still has twelve stalls with their iron doorposts, timber boxes below the grilles and rails, and in some of them the mangers, hay racks and the remains of the wooden ventilation shafts. The brick-paved floors survive on both levels, on cast-iron columns with bell capitals carrying brick jack arches.\n\nThe name is wrong and worth knowing about. Those stalls were for resting tired or lame horses, and Historic England's judgement is that the place was unlikely to have been used for veterinary purposes at all - the name stuck because of what the stalls were for, not what was done in them.\n\nOutside, the horse ramp still curves round the west end to reach the upper floor, and the roadway on top of the 1854 retaining wall is laid with stone setts kerbed with sleeper blocks from the first years of the railway.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"The Horse Hospital, Camden, Stables Market, Chalk Farm Road, NW1 8AH, London","in_area":{"slug":"camden","name":"Camden"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Camden Market","s":"camden-market","c":"food-markets","cn":"Food Markets","m":98},{"n":"Lantana Camden","s":"lantana-camden","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":212},{"n":"The Engineer","s":"the-engineer-primrose-hill","c":"pubs","cn":"Pubs","m":330}],"near_same":[{"s":"roundhouse","m":246},{"s":"the-gorilla-house-london-zoo","m":798},{"s":"penguin-pool-london-zoo","m":1019},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":1088},{"s":"carreras-cigarette-factory","m":1182},{"s":"isokon-building","m":1393}]},{"slug":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","name":"The Orangery, Kensington Palace","area":"Kensington","address":"Kensington Gardens, W8 4PX","station":"Queensway","walk":5,"lat":51.506606,"lng":-0.187784,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Orangery Kensington Palace","Kensington Palace Orangery Wren building"],"runs":null,"website":"https://www.hrp.org.uk/kensington-palace/visit/the-orangery/","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/58697388","types":["free","inside"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A thirteen-bay greenhouse of 1704 that Queen Anne used for parties, now the only part of the palace you can walk into without a ticket.","note":"Built in 1704 and given by Historic England to Wren, in red and amber brick: a single storey of thirteen bays, symmetrical, with the three centre bays brought forward under a split segmental pediment. The whole thing was made to over-winter orange trees and to be a room Queen Anne could entertain in, which is why a garden building got a front like this.\n\nHistoric England's verdict on what is behind it is two words - fine interior - and the room is the reason to bother: one long white-panelled volume under a high ceiling, with the light coming in down the whole south side.\n\nIt is a restaurant now, which is the only way in and is also what keeps it open: you can walk in off Kensington Gardens for breakfast, lunch or tea without a palace ticket.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"The Orangery, Kensington Palace, Kensington Gardens, W8 4PX, London","in_area":{"slug":"hyde-park-kensington-gardens","name":"Hyde Park & Kensington Gardens"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Diana statue, the Sunken Garden","s":"diana-statue-the-sunken-garden","c":"royal","cn":"Royal London","m":127},{"n":"Kensington Palace","s":"kensington-palace","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":169},{"n":"Queen Victoria statue, Kensington Palace","s":"queen-victoria-statue-kensington-palace","c":"royal","cn":"Royal London","m":182}],"near_same":[{"s":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","m":718},{"s":"the-tower-house","m":1304},{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":1377},{"s":"leighton-house-museum","m":1382},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":1391},{"s":"debenham-house","m":1522}]},{"slug":"the-salisbury-harringay","name":"The Salisbury Hotel","area":"Harringay","address":"1 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, N4 1JX","station":"Harringay Green Lanes","walk":7,"lat":51.582237,"lng":-0.09929,"hours":[[16.0,23.0],[16.0,23.0],[16.0,23.0],[16.0,23.0],[16.0,null],[14.0,null],[14.0,22.0]],"hours_raw":"Mo-Th 16:00-23:00; Fr 16:00+; Sa 14:00+; Su 14:00-22:00","hours_source":"web","hours_url":"https://thesalisburyhotelpub.co.uk","hours_short":null,"hours_checked":"2026-09-18","hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Salisbury Hotel Green Lanes","Salisbury Hotel Harringay"],"runs":null,"website":"https://thesalisburyhotelpub.co.uk","instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/223934463","types":["free","inside","victorian"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"A speculative builder's showpiece: the man who laid out these streets also made the pub and most of what is in it.","note":"John Cathles Hill was a builder-developer, and this building is what that meant in 1898. He put up much of this part of north London - the streets, the terraces, the parade the pub stands in - and many of the fittings inside came out of his own workshops. It was not designed for a client and bought in. It is the showpiece of the estate, made by the firm that made the estate.\n\nThe style is French Renaissance and the whole point of it is display: shaped gables, ogee-domed cupolas, a central tower under a wrought-iron crown, and two polished-granite columns of a size you would expect on a bank, carrying half-octagonal turrets above the entrance. The lobbies are tiled and floored in mosaic behind wrought-iron screens. Inside, a compartmented ceiling sits on cast-iron columns; upstairs there is a first-floor concert room with a fibrous-plaster ceiling by the Mural Decoration Company and engraved glass by Cakebread & Robey.\n\nHe did it twice. The Queens at Crouch End is the other, and Historic England calls the pair of them the pinnacle of late-Victorian pub design. What is unusual is not the ambition - plenty of Victorian pubs are showy - but that the ambition and the execution belonged to one firm, which is why nothing here looks ordered from a catalogue.","note_links":[{"phrase":"The Queens at Crouch End","name":"The Queens","href":"/pubs/the-queens-crouch-end/"}],"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":"pubs/the-salisbury-harringay","country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"also_in":[{"name":"Pubs","href":"/pubs/the-salisbury-harringay/"}],"maps_q":"The Salisbury Hotel, 1 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, N4 1JX, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Abra\u00e7o","s":"abraco-harringay","c":"breakfast","cn":"Breakfast & Brunch","m":412},{"n":"Museum of Homelessness","s":"museum-of-homelessness","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":1308},{"n":"New Beacon Books","s":"new-beacon-books","c":"literary","cn":"Literary London","m":1718}],"near_same":[{"s":"alexandra-palace-the-bbcs-first-studios","m":2558},{"s":"highpoint","m":3651},{"s":"arnos-grove-station","m":4474},{"s":"assembly-house-kentish-town","m":4485},{"s":"isokon-building","m":5491},{"s":"the-horse-hospital-camden","m":5566}]},{"slug":"the-tower-house","name":"The Tower House","area":"Holland Park","address":"29 Melbury Road, W14 8LT","station":"Kensington (Olympia)","walk":6,"lat":51.499834,"lng":-0.203168,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"photo_search":["Tower House Melbury Road Burges","Tower House Kensington William Burges"],"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/128301915","types":["house"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"William Burges built himself a small Gothic castle off Holland Park, and left the inside to the imagination of everyone who has never been in.","note":"Burges built it for himself between 1875 and 1881, in red brick under a slated roof, and being his own client he did exactly as he pleased. The composition is deliberately asymmetrical: a wing advanced to the left with its gable to the road, another set back at right angles to the right, and between them a round tower under a conical turret. The windows are mullioned and transomed with leaded lights and stained glass, the tower's are lancets, and the chimneys are tall out of all proportion.\n\nHistoric England's entry for it runs to eight lines and ends with two words: important interiors. That is all the register says, and they are not open, which is the whole difficulty with this house - it is one of the most extravagant interiors in London and almost nobody has seen it.\n\nSo it is a building to stand outside and look at, on a road built for artists where several of them put up houses to be looked at.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":null,"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"The Tower House, 29 Melbury Road, W14 8LT, London","in_area":{"slug":"notting-hill-holland-park","name":"Notting Hill & Holland Park"},"bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Cetshwayo's house, Melbury Road","s":"cetshwayo","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":93},{"n":"Design Museum","s":"design-museum","c":"museums","cn":"Museums","m":207},{"n":"Kyoto Garden, Holland Park","s":"kyoto-garden-holland-park","c":"outdoors","cn":"Outdoors & Nature","m":254}],"near_same":[{"s":"leighton-house-museum","m":135},{"s":"debenham-house","m":483},{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":1021},{"s":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","m":1304},{"s":"natural-history-museum","m":1916},{"s":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","m":1962}]},{"slug":"trellick-tower","name":"Trellick Tower","area":"Kensal Town","address":"Golborne Road, W10 5PD","station":"Westbourne Park","walk":5,"lat":51.523625,"lng":-0.205411,"hours":null,"hours_raw":null,"hours_source":null,"hours_url":null,"hours_short":null,"hours_checked":null,"hours_extra":null,"runs":null,"website":null,"instagram":null,"attrs":[],"osm":"way/57721739","types":["brutalist","tower"],"deep":null,"scope":null,"scope_icon":null,"route":null,"venue_group":null,"geo":null,"geo_zone":null,"verdict":"Goldfinger's thirty-one storeys, with the lifts in a separate tower joined every third floor.","note":"Erno Goldfinger designed it for the Greater London Council and it opened in 1972, a second and taller go at his Balfron Tower in Poplar. The idea is legible from the street: everything noisy - lifts, rubbish chutes, boiler house - is put in a slim separate tower and joined to the flats by bridges at every third storey, so that only one floor in three has a corridor and most flats run through the building and get light from both sides. It went through a bad two decades and became shorthand for everything wrong with tower blocks; it is now protected at the second-highest grade, the flats are sought after, and the profile is on tea towels.","note_links":null,"reading":null,"figure":{"src":"/img/trellick-tower.jpg?v=399fd631","thumb":"/img/trellick-tower-480.jpg?v=d583ab72","width":768,"height":1024,"alt":"A photograph of Trellick Tower.","caption":"","credit":"Photo by Edwardx, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons","credit_url":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Trellick_Tower_02.JPG","thumb_width":360},"figures":null,"from":null,"country":null,"country_name":null,"also":null,"years":null,"plaque":null,"rank":null,"maps_q":"Trellick Tower, Golborne Road, W10 5PD, London","bank":1,"near_all":[{"n":"Lisboa Patisserie","s":"lisboa-patisserie","c":"desserts","cn":"Desserts & Gelato","m":201},{"n":"Layla bakery","s":"layla-bakery","c":"bakeries","cn":"Bakeries","m":414},{"n":"W. H. Hudson's house, St Luke's Road","s":"w-h-hudson","c":"world","cn":"The World in London","m":470}],"near_same":[{"s":"the-cosmic-house","m":1672},{"s":"23-and-24-leinster-gardens","m":1969},{"s":"the-orangery-kensington-palace","m":2251},{"s":"alexandra-road-estate","m":2337},{"s":"debenham-house","m":2365},{"s":"the-tower-house","m":2649}]}]}