![\"Photobook](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Photobook-Cafe.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nLondon is a palimpsest city, each era inscribed over the last but never quite erased. Know where to look and you’ll find strata of hidden worlds: a Roman amphitheatre beneath the Guildhall’s foundations, a Victorian operating theatre secreted in a church attic, globe-makers in Stoke Newington pursuing their craft.<\/p>\n
This is a city where magicians still peddle their secrets in Clerkenwell, where cigar merchants have occupied the same premises since the Regency, where you can launder your shirts in mint-green machines that have stood, immutable, since Ted Heath was Prime Minister and Marc Bolan topped the charts. The capital contains multitudes: darkrooms channeling the spirit of Kreuzberg, trattorias hidden in factory corners, neo-Gothic cathedrals erected in service of sanitation.<\/p>\n
The best of London isn’t always catalogued in the guidebooks or paraded along the tourist trails. It lives down unmarked passages and up vertiginous staircases, behind unprepossessing fa\u00e7ades and several storeys below the pavement. It persists in places that have refused to capitulate to modernity, or have quietly adapted while preserving their essential character.<\/p>\n
These are the spaces where chronology bends, where artisans still work with their hands, where history is visceral \u2014 something to be touched, inhaled, inhabited. London, for all its scale and clamour and inexorable momentum, remains gloriously, intractably singular.<\/p>\n
Photobook Cafe, Shoreditch<\/p>\n
\u201cThe closest thing to Berlin bliss we have\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Photobook Cafe <\/p>\n
There was an advert in the early Nineties, where a huge, furry, legless blue monster bounds through somebody\u2019s house, and comes to rest softly on their shoulders in a huge, cosy hug. It was for Bachelors Cup a Soup (\u201chug in a mug\u201d) and while that particular soup never quite replicated that feeling, the Photobook Cafe in Shoreditch<\/a> might just be the real-life equivalent. <\/p>\n Warm and quite dark inside, with wooden floors and industrial-looking shelving, plus Moroccan-style lanterns hanging from the ceiling, it\u2019s reminiscent of the slightly womb-like nature of a photography dark room. The place is busy, and buzzy, with a real mix of characters and ages \u2014 chatting groups, a few on laptops, and a couple leafing through a magazine together that they had chosen while they drank a coffee and escaped the rain. It\u2019s a cafe, but it\u2019s also a gallery, and somewhere to hangout. There are always edgy-looking analogue photographers hanging around waiting for their developed film to dry in the Rapid Eye darkroom, too. And nobody \u2014 nobody \u2014 is on Instagram. It\u2019s the closest thing to Berlin bliss we have. <\/p>\n This is the sort of independent, quirky, rare place which people think doesn\u2019t exist in London any more. Well, it does. It\u2019s cult, it\u2019s niche, but everyone is welcome. <\/p>\n International Magic Shop, Clerkenwell <\/p>\n \u201cThe shop is in fact a magician’s wardrobe, one that travels you back to a disappeared world\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n It’s been a long time since magic<\/a> was at the heart of pop culture, when Saturday night telly drew millions<\/a> by having men disappear glamorous assistants, and Sunday morning markets were filled with men hustling with nothing but three cups, a ball and chutzpah.<\/p>\n But in Clerkenwell<\/a>, there is somewhere where the magic has never faded. For almost 70 years, there has been the International Magic Shop. It is a small, hole-in-the-wall kind of place, with a brass-handled, red front door flanked by two large windows under a sign where a man in tails crouches, holding billiard balls aloft. He is burgundy in relief against a gold oval background, like a faded photo in a locket.<\/p>\n If the name did not give it away, the windows would. They are more like glass fronted cabinets, each a teetering pile of tricks and illusions, of big boxes promising party goodies for beginners and neat cases containing secrets not found elsewhere. It has looked this way for most of its life, since Ron MacMillan first opened its doors. It’s MacMillan in that locket. <\/p>\n Today, it is the only shop of its kind in London. The walls pay tribute to all those who visited: besides Cooper, in came Channing Pollock (so famous in his time that he performed at Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly’s wedding), Tom Ogden (the highlight of Ronald Reagan’s 81st birthday), Dai Vernon, Paul Daniels, Stephen Mulhern. Countless others, not all pictured: some magicians never reveal their secrets\u2026 or where they buy them. <\/p>\n If magic does have another moment, this is the place to come to \u2014 but there is a sense that now, as much as anything, it is a curiosity of a kind, a tourist attraction. Magicians talk, and when they come to London, seek it out. For those not after a new top hat, or an endless run of handkerchiefs, the shop is in fact a magician’s wardrobe, and one that, once inside, travels you back in time, to a disappeared world, keeping a family tradition alive. Which is, you admit, one hell of a trick. <\/p>\n Bellerby & Co, Stoke Newington<\/p>\n \u201cLondon’s globemaker\u201d<\/p>\n Euan Myles<\/p>\n It is not, perhaps, a weekly situation, to find yourself in need of a globe. But should you desire one \u2014 for sprucing up a flat, choosing a holiday destination, revising for a game of Risk \u2014 only a few options present themselves. You could hunt for a secondhand one. If you\u2019re lucky, there might be one at a car boot sale. But for a brand new one, there are really only two options. You can buy a standard ready-made globe, the kind that stationers sometimes sell. Flimsy, lightweight, shiny, plastic. Or you can go bespoke: beautiful, substantial. Proper. Bellerby & Co, one of the few producers left, does the latter. It is a master in its field. <\/p>\n Bellerby & Co is not a quaint old family business or dusty relic \u2014 it was founded in 2008 by Peter Belleby, in a tucked-away corner of Stoke Newington. What began as a well-intentioned hobby became something of an obsession, an obsession that has become a business. Now, Bellerby & Co has a proud team of 30 artisans, made up of cartographers, woodworkers, metalworkers, painters and sphere-makers, who all work in harmony to recreate the world as art<\/a>. <\/p>\n The smallest globes start at \u00a31,290, but lurch up into the tens of thousands. The largest cost somewhere in the region of \u00a390,000. Bellerby says customs officers sometimes break them open with a hammer after detecting the presence of lead, used to help the globe spin freely. What\u2019s wrong with a Geiger counter, he wonders. <\/p>\n In a world of smartphones and satellite maps, Bellerby & Co offers something different: a tactile, timeless representation of Earth that is as much about memory and meaning as it is about geography. People buy them as heirlooms. \u201cWe\u2019re not just making globes,\u201d Bellerby says. \u201cWe\u2019re helping people tell their story on the surface of the world.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cA gateway into a London less talked about\u201d<\/p>\n Courtesy of Cable Cafe <\/p>\n This isn\u2019t merely a caf\u00e9: it\u2019s a gateway into a London less talked about. A London of interconnected communities, be they part of the live jazz<\/a> scene, the hospitality scene, workers from nearby supermarkets and repair shops on the Brixton Road and students<\/a> who call this part of town home. <\/p>\n The live music shows connect it to a network of venues across town where hot jazz, reggae, soul and bop are played nightly, for free, and the hospitality connects it to guests who don\u2019t want to pay \u00a34.25 for coffee; they seek succour in places where home cooking still takes centre stage.<\/p>\n Any accusations of misty-eyed wistfulness aren\u2019t unwarranted, but sitting in the Cable Caf\u00e9 during the day is one of the few joys to be found this close to Kennington Park. Cable sits on the edge of St Mark\u2019s Church, between busy delis and Latin restaurants and bars and an Italian Orthodox Church. Across the street at the sanitised co-working space, sorts that wear chinos and fine shirts enter and emerge folding their Bromptons and talk of commerce. Inside Cable though, time has stopped. <\/p>\n During the day, vibrant tomato and caper soup with olive bobbers sate a range of bright young things. Cool students come for the price point and the playlist. Come the evening, with the lights dim and the drinks and jazz plentiful, this could be Paris. A hangout discovered down some alley in the labyrinth of Le Marais.<\/p>\n Queer Britain, King\u2019s Cross<\/p>\n \u201cHere is a place for those who have taken a stand against discrimination, and a reminder that there is still more to do\u201d<\/p>\n Queer Britain<\/p>\n Queer Britain, the National LGBTQ+ Museum in King\u2019s Cross, isn\u2019t large. Instead it is a single, white room without windows, cool as museums are and should be and filled with all manner of historic artefacts dating back to long before homosexuality was made legal in 1967. It was then that the Sexual Offences Act was passed, legalising same sex relations in those over 21. It wasn\u2019t until 1994 that the age of consent was lowered to 18 in England and Wales; it was reduced to 16, in line with heterosexual activity, in 2000.<\/p>\n Learned readers will know more of the complexities at play. The point is, being gay<\/a> has never been easy. Simple, much? Not hard to decipher, but there is ignorance all around. It\u2019s one of the prevailing messages and sentiments at the museum. In it, bright, bold placards fill the walls next to banners and photographs, letters and tapestries. Some of the literature is combative, outlining the hard fights that have continued up to now. Others are signs of love, soft, quiet but impassioned; paraphernalia that reflects a pool of society too often kept separate from others. <\/p>\n The museum offers stark reminders of a harrowing past for so many people in Britain. Here, in a country deemed to be progressive, tolerant and righteous groups were pushed to be effacing, cast aside, else sentenced as criminals for sex or love or both. <\/p>\n It is valuable. Nowhere else in the country is there a museum dedicated to LGBTQ+ rights, activism and history. Here is a place for those who have taken a stand against discrimination, and a reminder that there is still more to do. <\/p>\n \u201cA world that most think has vanished but, in fact, hasn\u2019t\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n St James\u2019s Street seems untroubled by modern concerns. It is the elegant slope that runs from flashy Piccadilly to the clear-eyed calm of monied Pall Mall. On it, one might buy medieval jewellery or a Faberg\u00e9 egg, invest in bullion, buy hunting supplies. But it is also somewhere to smoke. One shop looks more like the bar of a grand ocean liner, with its wood panelling the colour of rum and its hanging brass lights. Inside, the air smells of cedar wood and tobacco leaf, and customers and staff talk in quiet murmurs. This is James J. Fox, a cigar merchant that\u2019s stood here since 1787. <\/p>\n Upstairs, it is perhaps London\u2019s best tobacconist. The walls are decorated with smoking apparatus, the cabinets filled with heavy leather cigar cases and lighters of all kinds. The back of the shop is given to a humidor, refitted last year, with cigars arranged by strength. Those wishing to sample their purchases can do so, in a lounge upstairs of Chesterfield-studded club chairs. The basement offers even more: the room tells a history of cigars<\/a>, but of society too. There are the antique cigar cutters and cases, the advertising prints. There are ornate silver vesta boxes \u2014 to stop the old strike-anywhere matches from lighting unexpectedly \u2014 and ancient cigars<\/a> themselves. Some, like the Larra\u00f1agas on display, are well over a century old. Curiosities are kept, too: cigars rolled to the shape of a pipe, or three cigars twisted around each other like olive vines, called Culebras (still made today, but rare). Cigars from times gone by \u2014 including a number rolled before February 3, 1962, when John F Kennedy banned all US trade with Cuba. <\/p>\n To visit, you needn\u2019t smoke. All that\u2019s required is the desire to see a world that most think has vanished but, in fact, hasn\u2019t. <\/p>\n Books for Cooks, Notting Hill<\/p>\n \u201cRecipes, but also lunch for \u00a38\u201d<\/p>\n Matt Writtle<\/p>\n Books for Cooks<\/a>. Sharper readers may already have cottoned onto what this shop sells. It\u2019s found in the perfect part of Notting Hill<\/a>, Blenheim Crescent<\/a>, just above the hucksters of lower Portobello Road but below the butchers and rag shops of the upper reaches. <\/p>\n By the door, a handwritten note reads \u201cNo food or drink, please\u201d. Of course not, they have enough of that bound between covers on the shelves. On that sweet awning it reads \u201cThe shop for all cooks\u201d. They are not crowing; is every currently published book on eating and drinking in here? Perhaps. The shop is divvied into halves, one side for subject, the other for country. They allege 8,000 or so titles on the shelves, but it seems a modest count. There are guides to the big things \u2014 steak, fish, pies; Italian and French \u2014 and those for the more esoterically minded. Do you require 75 recipes promising to get \u201cthe most out of oil and vinegar in your kitchen\u201d? For \u00a320, Ursula Ferrigno may change your life. <\/p>\n Recipes sometimes have a way of lying that we recognise; we know instinctively that half an hour isn\u2019t long enough, or that 100g is too little, no matter what a publisher insists. And so, in 1988, a small kitchen with caf\u00e9 seating was put in at the back of the shop. The idea was neat: chefs would cook recipes from the books on the shelf, giving shoppers the very essence of try-before-you-buy. This allows the owners to know the books to suggest, push, to trust in. It allows buyers to see what suits their taste. It also means the place is one of salivating smells. Service is from midday; queues begin to collect around half 11. <\/p>\n Owner Eric Treuille picks the recipe each morning, and buys his ingredients from market nearby. That small kitchen is his domain, fitted out with a domestic oven, stove and fridge, so his meals give an accurate idea of what one might actually achieve at home (his dishwasher, he jokes, is rather bigger than is usual). Food is offered four days a week, and always in three courses: Tuesdays are vegetarian, Fridays are for fish, and in between anything is fair game. There are no bookings, no menu substitutions, no bending to dietaries. Tables are shared. Forty people come, and everyone pays just \u00a38. They do books for cooks here. But they also do inspiration. <\/p>\n The Old Operating Theatre, Southwark<\/p>\n \u201cA museum of horrors that both contains memento mori and is itself one\u201d<\/p>\n The Old Operating Theatre<\/p>\n Here is place where men would clamp opium-soaked rags over the mouths of women strapped down and wide-eyed with fright, before taking a blade to their flesh. But these men were hailed as heroes. They were surgeons, operating for three decades in the first half of the 19th century before anaesthetic was used. They worked at what is now a museum, the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret. It is a place of two parts, the latter leading through to the former.<\/p>\n This is not a big museum. But it is one full of horrors. It does not offer jump scares but shudders, things that stick in the mind, panic that lives on. It is as crammed as an antiques shop, or maybe a workshop, tables and shelves brimming. There are beak masks, those Venetian-looking things worn by doctors fearful of the bubonic plague<\/a>. There are stuffed crocodiles and alligators, meant to reassure patients of their doctors\u2019 wisdom and learning. Elsewhere are jars painted in pink and gold, others in blue and white. Apothecary jars, full of confections like U Martiat, \u201cthe Soldier\u2019s Ointment\u201d. In the books laid open are recipes for poultices that might be made with things like pigeon dung and the oil of scorpions. And all this in orange and green-tinted air, the light coloured by the bottles it passes through, those with skulls blown into the glass. These were the poisons measured out to be cures. Doctors, you learn, did not always get these measures right. Then there are the jars of leeches, at one time medicine\u2019s most popular cure, along with snail water. <\/p>\n Everything here is a reminder \u2014 of pain, suffering, of trying to find solutions for both. The feeling is of unease, for what went on, and of relief, for what we now avoid. The theatre both contains memento mori and is itself one \u2014 an acknowledgement that death comes for us all, in its way a lesson to embrace what is here and now. <\/p>\n Novelty Automation, Holborn<\/p>\n \u201cA captivating playground\u201d<\/p>\n Getty Images<\/p>\n TThe Novelty Automation museum <\/a>is not the sort of venue you would find by happenstance, pocketed behind the ungainly looking Red Lion Square and away from the sleek glass offices along tributary roads. <\/p>\n Tucked away, but once found, there is a welcoming sign on the black and glass frontage of the building and an illuminated arrow to pull in punters. The door encourages visitors to \u201cpush hard\u201d. What awaits is a dizzying and curious collection<\/a> of satirical machines, each one \u2014 bar a couple made by guest engineers \u2014 created by the Suffolk-based inventor and cartoonist Tim Hunkin. Less like the brightly lit arcades in British seaside towns, these are old-time machines of irreverence and humour. <\/p>\n Sensitive types may find the Novelty Automation museum<\/a> on the dark side. Others are sure to enjoy Hunkin\u2019s light rail against modernity: his expressive photo booth that mocks selfie culture; his housing ladder slot machine where people must walk the treadmill steps to carry an automated figurine towards a house. <\/p>\n The museum is a captivating and engaging interactive playground that brings a sense of history, perspective and possibly fear. It would be the perfect way to while away an afternoon for anyone who doesn\u2019t take life too seriously. <\/p>\n \u201cHidden in a factory is, improbably, an Italian restaurant\u201d<\/p>\n Polentina<\/p>\n There\u2019s no denying it: traipsing through metropolitan east London, around an industrial estate bordering Limehouse Cut, is not a priority for most. But somewhere in the middle of the warehouses and factories, the concrete and the old cars, is a small Italian<\/a> canteen called Polentina. It serves some of the finest regional Italian food in London.<\/p>\n The place was founded in 2020 by the photographer Sophia Massarella, Canadian-born but with Italian and Austrian heritage. The restaurant is a classic tale of lockdown-induced cooking and the culmination of passion and circumstance. The space is a canteen in the corner of a factory floor, somewhere the workforce at Apparel Tasker, a sustainable clothing manufacturer, use for break times. Massarella took it on and started cooking. Years later and it is becoming a destination.<\/p>\n Massarella\u2019s food need not be defined. What\u2019s important is that it\u2019s celebratory and affirming, as if, in this pocket of working-class east London, there is a mirror to Rome. You will find her cooking the fifth quarter of the animal, or what the Romans call quinto quarto. That is to say: plenty of offal; the word \u201crustic\u201d is one favoured by some. <\/p>\n Where dishes used to be \u00a314, they are \u00a318 today. It is worth your time and money. For it is a buzzing, beautiful, strange place born out of a love of food, out of need. This room, unfettered, hidden away and hardly seen is the best of London: a bright, unruly beacon; a simple, loving nod to the best feeders in the world, grandmothers. It is the best use of space in a city where space is hard to find.<\/p>\n The Roman amphitheatre, the City of London<\/p>\n \u201cA part of our Roman history, amazingly still standing\u201d<\/p>\n Matt Writtle<\/p>\n Rome gets all the glory when it comes to amphitheatres. But did you know that we have London<\/a>\u2019s answer to the big ring right here below our feet? <\/p>\n Tucked away in the Guildhall enclave, close to Moorgate Tube station, is the Guildhall Art Gallery. Dodge through the many building sites and you enter a quiet plaza with a ring of dark stone set into the pavement, tracing where London\u2019s Roman Amphitheatre once stood. Bits of it are, amazingly, still standing, but you must descend into the bowels of the gallery to find it. <\/p>\n There, in a dimly lit basement, are the stone and timber remnants of an amphitheatre that was first built in 70AD from timber, before being upgraded with stone and tile some time in the second century, as Londinium reached new cosmopolitan heights. <\/p>\n Roughly elliptical in shape and measuring 100 by 85 metres, it would have been able to hold up to 6,000 spectators. Given that here in 21st-century London we can pack 90,000 people into Wembley Stadium, that might seem quite piddling. But in the second century there were about 30,000 people living in the whole of Londinium. Imagine a venue where you could scream and bay for blood with one in five of your fellow Londoners. <\/p>\n Even if you\u2019re not a history nut, the London Roman Amphitheatre is worth a visit to experience that curious sense of vertigo about how much there is below our feet. London is a palimpsest city, but as you pound the pavement you can forget how much lies just a few storeys below. <\/p>\n Crossness Pumping Station, Abbey Wood<\/p>\n \u201cLondon\u2019s cathedral of sewage\u201d<\/p>\n Crossness Pumping Station<\/p>\n London is full of crap. So says anyone up North, and anyone who\u2019s been to Chiltern Firehouse. There is some undeniable truth in this though, in the most corporeal sense, since the sheer numbers in the capital means a lot of waste is produced. <\/p>\n Thankfully we have a sewage<\/a> system in play that takes away all the filth from our homes, out of our streets, so we can continue to live as if we are pure, clean, tasteful, elevated, shaved and manicured humans way above the animal world, and not the disgusting creatures that we are. Isn\u2019t it about time our sewage systems had a bit more respect for this service they give us?<\/p>\n One way to do it is at the Crossness Pumping Station<\/a> near Abbey Wood, which is a spectacular Grade I listed building that was called \u201cThe Cathedral on the Marshes\u201d.<\/p>\n Built as part of his revolutionary London sewage system by Sir Joseph Bazalgette<\/a>, a visionary Victorian<\/a> engineer who was the Willy Wonka of this particular chocolate factory, the closer you get to it, the more you see not just the architectural pride at play, but loads of toilet humour too. The big deal here is entering the main pumping station to see a whole section restored to its original splendour. On the outside it\u2019s yellow Romanesque, but inside is dazzling neo-gothic Jules Verne Victorianism, in vivid green and red with decorative ironwork around its octagon centre. Put simply: they don\u2019t make \u2019em like this any more. <\/p>\n Forty Hall Vineyard, Enfield<\/p>\n \u201cLondon\u2019s only commercial scale vineyard\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n On a hill in north London<\/a>, about 100 metres above sea level, is the capital\u2019s only commercial scale vineyard, Forty Hall. It is found within an estate of the same name, a rolling, 170-acre mass of land in Enfield<\/a> that dates back to Tudor times. <\/p>\n Forty Hall Vineyard<\/a> was founded as a social enterprise in 2009, when Sarah Vaughn Roberts was granted permission by Enfield Council, owners of the estate, to plant vines on an acre of land. She did so as part of a project set up by Capel Manor College, the environmental school which leases the land from the authority. In 15 years, a single acre has become 10: two fields are now home to 130 rows of slowly growing grapes, each running south from hedge to city. It could be that London hasn\u2019t seen anything similar since the Romans tried their luck. <\/p>\n It is a curious feeling to be on a quiet vineyard, itself pocketed within a farm, but to remain in the confines of London. The M25 is circa two miles away as the crow flies. On a clear day you can see the Shard hazily in the distance, so too the City\u2019s oddly shaped skyscrapers. <\/p>\n Every year, Forty Hall makes a little shy of 20,000 bottles. They sell well, and fast, though there is little capacity or desire to grow. Rather, the vineyard will exist as it is, a platform for young people seeking therapy by way of viticulture, else who are beginning a career in winemaking. It is easy to see how spending time on the estate would provide solace and learning. <\/p>\n Maison Assouline, Piccadilly<\/p>\n \u201cA three-storey showroom for the self-professed \u2018Herm\u00e8s of publishing\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n Maison Assouline is a three-floor public showroom for the self-professed \u201cHerm\u00e8s of publishing\u201d, which was founded in 1994 and is renowned for its coffee table travel books, top-end fashion collaborations and exquisite, XXL-size tomes that start at a grand. <\/p>\n The old banking hall, first designed by Edwin Lutyen in 1922, has been a salon-style bookshop<\/a> and soir\u00e9e site since it opened in 2014. Fans including Anne Hathaway, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Kylie Minogue have all been through its oak doors for Valentino book launches and Netflix premiere lunches. <\/p>\n Everything here is done beautifully. Besides the books, watching the one per cent browse the books is the most enjoyable pastime. This can be done comfortably from the Swans bar, which is the brainchild of French founders Martine and Prosper Assouline, nestled in the left-hand corner of the store. It\u2019s no cheap boozer \u2014 but its martini is one of the best in London. A book shop truly unlike any other.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a touch of Rome\u2019s iconic Pantheon about it\u201d<\/p>\n Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n In the late 1600s London was expanding. To the north of the city, new mansions were being constructed and squares laid out on open land by people such as the Earl of Southampton. Soon, a genteel neighbourhood became established. But there was a problem: the nearest church for the smart folk of Bloomsbury to worship in was St Giles in the Fields, which meant passing through the infamous Rookery, a dangerous overcrowded slum filled with the drunkenness, criminality and debauchery so vividly depicted in Hogarth\u2019s Gin Lane.<\/p>\n Could the new residents of Bloomsbury possibly hold their breath or stave off temptation for so long? Petitions were made, strings were pulled and, thanks to an act of Parliament in 1711, a small plot of land off what is now Bloomsbury Way was purchased to build a new church for the princely sum of \u00a31,000. <\/p>\n Inevitably, money ran out and only 12 churches were completed, six by Hawksmoor, with one being St George\u2019s. There is a touch of Rome\u2019s iconic Pantheon about it. The crowning glory of St George\u2019s is its spire \u2014 again inspired by classical architecture, this time from the ancient Greek tomb of Mausolus of Halicarnassus in Turkey (from which we now get the term \u201cmausoleum\u201d, meaning above ground tomb). At St George\u2019s this is a tall, stepped pyramid on an array of columns. And on top, dressed as a Roman emperor, is none other than George I, looking out over the capital and beyond it to the country. <\/p>\n Today, there\u2019s a thriving congregation and the church is used for concerts, clubs, a caf\u00e9 and charitable work, as well as a place of worship \u2014 there\u2019s even a Museum of Comedy in the Undercroft. Visit and discover a church of monumental history. <\/p>\n Alfies Antique Market, Lisson Grove<\/p>\n \u201cIn a disposable world, Alfies is a champion of objects made to last\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n Church Street sits on the broad smudge of a boarder that fractions St John’s Wood from Marylebone. It is a thoroughfare from Edgware Road to Lisson Grove, at one end caf\u00e9s and carpet shops and places that promise everything for a pound, though almost nothing is. Here there is a daily street market, fresh fish sold next to clothes that must smell of them, fruit and veg, piles of plastic shoes. At the other, at the Lisson Grove end, are windows filled with walnut desks, club chairs, lamps shaped like faraway animals. These are the antique shops, where a single purchase might come in at twice what it would cost to buy out all the stalls only a few metres away. It is a tale of two halves, Church Street.<\/p>\n In this half is a building that has stood there since the 1880, Alfies Antiques Market<\/a>. The building seems absorbent: it is somewhere its visitors might get blindly lost in among the labyrinth of staircases and thresholds. There are clusters of antique clocks ticking in imperfect unison, hands pointing in different directions as if in disagreement over the time. Elsewhere, trays of silver cutlery sit, polished to an ethereal shine. There are the serious watch dealers specialising in Longines and Omega and charging thousands for each; there are stalls doing junk-store quartz from forgotten brands. Victorian postcards are neatly catalogued in one spot; elsewhere are kitsch Fifties bits \u2014 old diner signs, jukeboxes, that sort of thing. One stall might offer a perfectly preserved vintage dress in midnight silk, and the next a display of taxidermy, its inhabitants frozen in postures of improbable life. <\/p>\n But there\u2019s more still. Christ is there more still; Alfies is a promiscuous slow dance with the past. In a disposable world, Alfies is a champion of objects made to last and of beautiful things being given new life. <\/p>\n \u201cA shop where fashion is considered a disease and style the ultimate aspiration\u201d<\/p>\n Daniel Hambury\/Stella Pictures Ltd<\/p>\n In west London<\/a>, there is a cut-through from the coughing traffic of Kensington<\/a> High Street to the calm of Holland Street called Kensington Church Walk. Apart from the pretty neo-Gothic church itself, St Mary Abbots, the walk is unremarkable. Almost. Nearing Holland Street there is a shopfront in what might be called 1960s brown \u2014 a sludgy, unprepossessing colour. This is Hornets<\/a>.<\/p>\n The name is not what draws attention. The frontage does: two expansive windows that usually boast a quartet of mannequins, suited in tweeds or navy, invariably with a hat. Cravats make frequent appearances. Lining the front, pressed close to the glass, are boxes with their mouths open, and in them sit gold and silver cufflinks as colourful and impressive as birds of paradise. Over them protrude leather shoes polished to an almost unfathomable shine. At night, you can look at them and see the moon. <\/p>\n Hornets is what might today be called a vintage gentlemen\u2019s outfitters, though when it opened, more than 40 years ago, it would have said it sold second-hand clothes. These are not the clothes of vintage stores that fill up student towns. Instead, the shop is full of tailoring from a different age: suits of alpaca wool, grey worsted trousers, bow ties of black marcella. There are correspondent shoes, leather motoring coats, Panama hats and velvet dinner jackets. Velvet jackets in all cuts, as it happens. Outfits that were cut in the basements of Savile Row and Jermyn Street find their way here. None of it is cheap; all of it is reasonable. It is a shop where fashion<\/a> is considered a disease and style the ultimate aspiration. <\/p>\n \u201cSome of the most generous and reasonably priced dishes in town\u201d<\/p>\n Matt Writtle<\/p>\n The number of people who will have strolled down the Cut in Waterloo<\/a> unaware of their proximity to the Bus Cafe is uncountable. It is among the most nondescript locations in town, hidden behind imposing steel gates on a tributary of a road, the sort nobody notices unless there\u2019s a fire. <\/p>\n The Bus Cafe<\/a> resembles a greasy spoon or the staff room at a poorly performing comp in Zone 6. Beyond the pool table are plastic chairs and tables fitted to the grey lino floor and an open kitchen at the far end. The furniture is a faint mustard yellow, the ceiling tiled with flat square light fittings, while signs, posters and old cookbooks fill the walls. On each table, salt and pepper shakers; on one side of the room is a well-stocked condiment station, the kind that delivers vinegar-heavy ketchup and inexpensive mayonnaise. <\/p>\n Between the hours of 8am and 4pm, the Bus Cafe serves some of the most generous and reasonably priced dishes in London<\/a>. There is a steady stream of outside customers who bed in next to bus workers for whom this is a necessary canteen. The mix is nothing new: the cafe has been open to the public for seven years after an allowance was made owing to staff cuts and moves. <\/p>\n The chefs behind the counter are Caribbean. There came three seasoned thighs among rice and peas and stewed peppers, coleslaw, a scoop of potato salad and lettuce leaves, tomatoes and cubed beetroot. Otherwise, expect a full English, braised oxtail, steamed beef with jollof rice, mackerel and plantain and pan-fried red bream. <\/p>\n There is often talk that places like the Bus Cafe are on their way out. Then there\u2019s a secondary discussion about how their continuation is partly found by way of social media embellishment, which is as much a curse as a vantage point. The paradox of old London, gentrified to be saved.<\/p>\n Here, none of that matters. It is not in trouble at all because the rent is minimal and the customers regular. Buses aren\u2019t going anywhere and nor are the cafes that feed those who steer them. The wheels, after all, go round and round. And so does breakfast, so does lunch.<\/p>\n Charlton House and Gardens, Charlton<\/p>\n \u201cWhere else can you find mermaids and meet Venus and Vulcan?\u201d<\/p>\n Charlton House & Gardens <\/p>\n Where in London<\/a> can you find mermaids, meet the gods Venus and Vulcan, participate in a festival of debauched madness, be inspired to eat more healthily and enjoy the capital\u2019s poshest loo?<\/p>\n The answer is Charlton House. Often overlooked \u2014 except by locals \u2014 this is a place rich in history<\/a>. The house, arguably the most impressive early Jacobean mansion in the city, was completed in 1612 for Sir Adam Newton, a Scottish courtier to James VI, who came down to London when James VI of Scotland was crowned James I of England.<\/p>\n A long gallery for exercise and to display oil paintings of the relatives, a magnificent oak staircase, a hall, private saloon and plenty of grand bedrooms make up the statement building, but it is the ornate plasterwork and gorgeous fireplaces where Newton truly went to town. The finest room in the house is the second-floor saloon, which is dominated by a huge fireplace flanked by near life-sized statues of Vulcan and Venus. These are exquisitely carved in alabaster, most likely by the King\u2019s master mason Nicholas Stone. Plants, nature and gardening are celebrated at Charlton, too, including the city\u2019s oldest surviving black Mulberry tree. <\/p>\n Here is a place with a fascinating past to explore. <\/p>\n The Barbican Launderette, Barbican<\/p>\n \u201cA glimpse of a future that has never taken shape the way people thought it would\u201d<\/p>\n Slow Horses<\/p>\n A washing machine is rarely worth crossing town for, but most washing machines<\/a> aren\u2019t like those in the Barbican Launderette. To one side, 10 of them stand proud, lined up like a regiment. Each is as tall as a man. They are a green that does not exist in nature: the green of mint choc chip ice crean and of mouthwash, of Fender guitars and Californian Cadillacs. They have stood here, unchanging, since the early Seventies. You can use them to wash clothes, or to travel back in time. <\/p>\n The machines first made it here in 1973, the launderette opening three years before the estate\u2019s last building, Shakespeare Tower, was finished. Though owned, managed and rented out by the Corporation of the City of London<\/a>, the Barbican Estate<\/a> was never \u201ccouncil housing\u201d \u2014 it was marketed at high-flyers, captains of industry, men of the universe. Big names duly moved in: George Best, Sir Peter Hall<\/a>, Clive James. It housed both minor aristocrats \u2014 the Earl of Elgin \u2014 and leftie, establishment scourges, like Arthur Scargill, who without moral qualm let his union pay his rent for him. It was its own little city of success stories, 2,100 executive homes. Washing in one didn\u2019t always suit the tone. Rather than being a last resort, the launderette opened as another of the estate\u2019s luxuries; no need for wet towels clogging up the sitting room. <\/p>\n This is a world of chromium-plated words from a different time: Washeteria, Electrolux Wascator. Made-up names offering a glimpse of a future that has never taken shape the way people thought it would. It if sounds like a movie set, that\u2019s because it is. Scenes from Killing Eve scenes were shot here, so too in Slow Horses: Gary OIdman\u2019s Jackson Lamb uses it as a base in which to meet informants. It is a favourite for brand campaigns and magazine shoots. The Barbican Launderette stayed still as the world around it moved on, but now the world is coming back. <\/p>\n \u201cThe shop for the person with everything\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n What do you get for the person who has everything? Take a trip to Connolly<\/a>. Perhaps London<\/a>\u2019s most stylish shop, it is a vault of beautiful things \u2014 endless objets d\u2019art, but also more usual items refined past the point of rationality. A fondue set with antler handles. The world\u2019s most elegant set of dominoes. Salt and pepper cellars whose weight might only be second to their cost. Or how about an oyster shell tray for caviar, with matching mother-of-pearl spoon? No, no, no. What you really want is the handmade, hand-knitted, cashmere cable crew necks. Only eight are produced each year. They are, however, reliably a sell-out.<\/p>\n Ralph Lauren once declared Connolly his \u201cfavourite store in the world.\u201d It is not hard to see why. Or smell why, for that matter: the shop, with its scent of leather<\/a> and wood-smoke and tobacco, smells the way you imagine a forest-bound country house might, if it were owned by a racing driver from the 1950s.<\/p>\n \u201cSo much is made by hand,\u201d owner Isabel Ettedgui says, pointing to the shelves. \u201cI mean, this is not AI designing your wallet. I think Connolly means\u2009\u2026\u2009when you buy it, you have it for life.\u201d<\/p>\n The Jermyn Street Theatre, St James\u2019s<\/p>\n \u201cThe cheapest tickets in the West End\u201d<\/p>\n Alamy<\/p>\n Hidden gem? The phrase was practically invented for the Jermyn Street Theatre<\/a>. It\u2019s not impossible to find \u2014 the clue is in the name \u2014 but it doesn\u2019t exactly scream for attention. No, this is a place for those in the know. Not that it\u2019s snooty, far from it in fact. It\u2019s just more concerned with delivering a pure hit of theatre than the hard sell. And part of its cult appeal is in its size: this is a theatre where the audience is basically in the play. \u201cI\u2019ve seen someone knock over their drink and the actor, still in character, picked it up and gave it back to them,\u201d says artistic director Stella Powell-Jones, \u201cThere\u2019s a mischief here, it\u2019s so live here, and actors really surf that wave with the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really like the West End\u2019s studio theatre, the last of its kind,\u201d says executive producer David Doyle. \u201cThat\u2019s what\u2019s kept audiences coming back and kept people like Stephen Sondheim to remain as champions of it, all these megastars who often just come to be part of the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t rely on Arts Council funding, it operates through box office sales, donations and the support of patrons (including the late Sir Michael Gambon). And their approach is of particular importance now in a theatre scene where prices for the most sought-after A-lister shows are hundreds of pounds. Jermyn Street Theatre, where the most expensive tickets are \u00a335 and the cheapest \u00a310, democratises it in a way that\u2019s more valuable than ever.<\/p>\n For audiences, even if you don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going to get, there\u2019s nothing to lose, and you\u2019re very likely to see something life-changing. \u201cIt makes theatre sociable again,\u201d says Powell-Jones. <\/p>\n \u201cAn everyday curry house; an institution\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n In Honor Oak Park, not known for its restaurants, Babur stands alone. This family-run Indian<\/a> is celebrating 40 years of trade in 2025, no mean feat anywhere in London but especially commendable here.<\/p>\n The place is every bit a grand fixture in an unassuming part of town. Entirely fronted in glass and with an enormous fibreglass tiger standing on its roof, what was once a large end of terrace was converted into a modern restaurant four decades ago. Today, a ruby red flag announcing the restaurant\u2019s 40th birthday hangs in the wind and drop-lighting creates a fuzzy glow emanating from within.<\/p>\n Babur is owned by Emdad Rahman, who opened the restaurant when he was just 22. In the 1970s, Rahman had moved with his family to Wembley, from Sylhet in north-eastern Bangladesh, but decided to go it alone in the restaurant business. \u201cI wanted to build something myself, something new,\u201d he says, \u201cand so I moved south of the river. Some people thought I was mad to do it, but the rent was very cheap.\u201d <\/p>\n The fixture began, at least by design, as a traditional \u201ccurry house\u201d, with white linen tablecloths, a chrome-edged corner bar and moustached waiters ready to explain what cumin was to people who owned Jaguars. But Rahman has always wanted to set his restaurant apart. There were never Anglo-Indian classics on the menu \u2014 no chicken jalfrezi or lamb madras. Instead, dishes borne out of the dynastic Mughal Empire. Founded by Babur, a ruler from what is now Uzbekistan in the early 1500s, at their peak the Mughals ruled much of South Asia, doing so from Delhi, still home to the Red Fort in the old town alongside a vast population of Muslim descendants. <\/p>\n So often in London, the term \u201chidden gem\u201d is bandied around like so many samosas. If ever it is appropriate, it is for Babur, an everyday curry house; an institution. <\/p>\n \u201cWithout Latimer House, the allies might not have won the war\u201d <\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n War is a machine serviced by countless places, parts and people, and battlefields take many forms. The Allied victory in the Second World War<\/a> was won on brown, muddied grass and in the opaque grey of cloud, in the ice-cold waters of the Atlantic and under the desert heat in El Alamein. But it was also won in British<\/a> country houses, in rooms of studded leather chairs and silver cigarette cases, rooms which smelt of smoke and Scotch.<\/p>\n One of these was Latimer House, found where the Metropolitan line scuttles just beyond the M25. A mansion has stood there since 1194, becoming in the 17th century the family seat for the Cavendish clan. Charles I was taken here after his arrest for treason. William Cavendish, 3rd Earl Devonshire, entertained the king with his mother; a couple of years later, Charles was dead. The two aren\u2019t connected.<\/p>\n In the Second World War, the house held prisoners, but treated them almost as guests. In came U-Boat crew, Luftwaffe officers, top Nazi generals. At Latimer they were not just fed and watered but spoiled. The hitch, for the Germans, was that heroic British<\/a> intelligence officer Thomas Joseph Kendrick and his team of Jewish refugees were listening in from secret sites in Latimer\u2019s grounds, transcribing every conversation \u2014 100,000 of them. <\/p>\n Historian Dr Helen Fry, whose fascinating book The Walls Have Ears documents Kendrick and his team\u2019s work, says: \u201cThis was somewhere almost like a gentlemen\u2019s club \u2014 they had good food, whisky and wine. They were relaxed, sitting in comfortable chairs, talking to each other as fellow generals, not realising that the walls quite literally had ears.\u201d <\/p>\n In total, 10,000 prisoners were recorded. The information uncovered was invaluable. When the generals chatted about Hitler\u2019s plan to launch 300 missiles a day on London, the British were quick to react, saving the capital by destroying the German missile base. We may have been flattened without the listeners. In fact, without them, Britain may not have won the war at all. <\/p>\n Dennis Severs’ House, Shoreditch<\/p>\n \u201cLike nothing else in London\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n Dennis Severs\u2019 House<\/a> is like nothing else in London<\/a>. Tucked away on Folgate Street, this Grade II-listed Georgian home is testament to the singular vision of its late owner. The young Dennis Severs relocated from sunny California, where his parents Earl and Helen Severs owned a gas station, in pursuit of his dreams of English nostalgia and a new life as an openly gay man. <\/p>\n Following a stint running madcap horse-drawn carriage tours<\/a> around London, he purchased the run-down terraced house at 16 Folgate Street for \u00a318,000 in 1979 (\u00a3140,000 or so in today\u2019s money, a steal). It was the hip thing to do at the time; artist duo Gilbert & George had refurbished a similar house nearby. <\/p>\n Severs set about restoring the house, or rather reinventing it, one room at a time using friends\u2019 artistic efforts and items he found in flea markets. Each room is set in a different point in the house\u2019s history<\/a>, which he conjured around a fictional family of characters that had lived there since its construction in 1724. Artists get a look-in too; one parlour is arranged to evoke Hogarthian excess, while the attic recalls Dickensian London. Lit entirely by candles and coal fires, the rooms are what Severs called a \u201ccollection of atmospheres\u201d, arranged as though someone has just left and you, an interloper from the future, have stumbled in. If you make your own pilgrimage, you won\u2019t be disappointed. I challenge you to step blinking into the daylight afterwards and remain unchanged. <\/p>\n Goldsboro Books, Covent Garden<\/p>\n \u201cWhere book-lovers from around the globe gather to find a new gem for their collection\u201d<\/p>\n Matt Writtle<\/p>\n Stepping into Goldsboro always feels like going back in time<\/a>. The first thing that hits you is the smell: the scent of old buildings, fossilised wooden floorboards and ink. And books. Lots and lots of books, all of them valuable first editions and most of them signed by the authors \u2014 often in the store itself. Goldsboro isn\u2019t an ordinary shop: it\u2019s also a place where book-lovers<\/a> from around the globe gather to find a new gem for their collection. Or, simply, to celebrate the written word. <\/p>\n As a specialist in signed first editions, it draws a lot of collectors. Mark Gatiss in one day; Philip Glenister \u2014 DCI Gene Hunt \u2014 another. Bernard Cornwell says it\u2019s his favourite bookshop in the world; Ian Rankin<\/a> must like it too \u2014 he does signings frequently. <\/p>\n Part of the appeal is how hidden it feels, though it occupies a prime location on Cecil Court, the cut-through from Charing Cross Road to St Martin\u2019s Lane. Yet curiously, despite it being so close to Leicester Square, it\u2019s not somewhere most tourists make, just another among the warren of tiny Victorian streets that squat in the space between Seven Dials<\/a> and Charing Cross. After 26 years, the magic is undimmed. Browse at your leisure \u2014 just make sure to keep track of the time. Just as with the books on its shelves, Goldsboro offers a world all of its own. <\/p>\n Brompton Oratory, Knightsbridge<\/p>\n \u201cA church, yes, but once also a drop site for the KGB\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n In places as elaborate and stunning as Brompton Oratory, it is common to forget their functionality. This Catholic church, tucked away below Knightsbridge, still holds up to seven services a day. Typically these begin at 7am and run into the evening when they are not infrequently performed in Latin. On Sundays at 11am, a \u201csolemn mass\u201d is held, when ceremony and practice are all. <\/p>\n It is neo-classical, late Victorian, once a parish church for an area still then as much a village as anything urban. And from the outside it still appears almost out of sorts in bustling London, not least because it stands on the busy A4, which ferries so many travellers to the centre of town from the sparse and oft-forgotten far west. <\/p>\n To that end, it is imposing too. To the Soviet spies<\/a> who once used the covered, pillared entrance as a dead drop for top secret documents, it must have made quite the impression. Journeyed intelligence officers will have seen far grander fa\u00e7ades but new ones were surely impressed as they attempted to contact Moscow during the Cold War<\/a>. The drop site, if you want it exactly, is behind a marble pillar on the right, inside the front door. Spies are said to have used it until 1985.<\/p>\n It is deserving of wider acclaim \u2014 and is worth the trip across town to witness quiet grandeur. In its silence, it is beautiful. <\/p>\n The Ragged Museum, Mile End<\/p>\n \u201cYou can feel the ghosts of those who sought refuge and an education here\u201d<\/p>\n Will Pryce <\/p>\n Charles Dickens<\/a> is London<\/a>\u2019s greatest biographer. Our city is a continual backdrop for his novels, or is even a co-star, one half of his Tale of Two Cities. He was not only an author, but a social campaigner who cared deeply about its citizens, especially the poor \u2014 a theme embedded in most of his books from Oliver Twist<\/a> to David Copperfield. It\u2019s no surprise then that he was an early supporter of the ragged school movement, schools set up for those children who are \u201ctoo ragged, wretched, filthy and forlorn to enter any other place\u201d. In late summer 1843 he visited Field Lane Ragged school, and it inspired him to write A Christmas Carol that same winter. <\/p>\n The ragged school movement had begun in the late 18th century when a few free schools were set up for poor children in towns across the country, but things were still sufficiently bad to change the life of a young trainee doctor, freshly arrived from Dublin in 1866. What Thomas Barnardo saw in this city shocked him: the slums, particularly in the east, were rife with cholera and other diseases; these, alongside poor nutrition and unsanitary living conditions, led to a death rate that left many children without their parents, struggling to survive. His solution was to abandon his studies, although he always used the title Dr, and set up schools and homes for vulnerable children. By the time of his death in 1905, Thomas had established 96 homes caring for 8,500 children. <\/p>\n The ragged schools were more than places of education, they were also places where the malnourished children could get a hot dinner \u2014 just one a week in the winter of 1878, rising to three times a week plus breakfasts by 1885, and every day during the winter in 1888. Breakfast consisted of cocoa and bread, while dinner might be more bread with pea soup or rice and prunes. Hearty fare. Clothes too were sometimes provided, and Barnardo\u2019s workers were concerned to help their pupils find jobs after they left. They were places of refuge, warmth and often salvation. <\/p>\n The Ragged School Museum still retains its spirit of place. You can feel the ghosts of those who sought refuge and an education here \u2014 and hear their stories. It is a deeply poignant place to reflect on inequality, past and present, and how we can help in the future.<\/p>\n Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham<\/p>\n \u201cThis Gothic castle is a fantasy of pinnacles, towers and battlements\u201d<\/p>\n In Pictures via Getty Images<\/p>\n Today\u2019s fascination with vampires and horror stories is nothing new. For every cast member in Twilight, Buffy the Vampire Slayer or What We Do in the Shadows, there is a predecessor in Mary Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein, Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula or Edgar Allan Poe\u2019s ghost stories. But if you want to know precisely where and when horror fiction first started, then look no further than Strawberry Hill House,<\/a> near Twickenham<\/a>. Why? Because Strawberry Hill was the inspiration for the first ever Gothic<\/a> novel \u2014 The Castle of Otranto \u2014 penned by its owner, Horace Walpole<\/a> in 1764, after he had a nightmare in one of its faux medieval chambers. Gothic fiction is all about imagination, suspension of belief and mystery, which pretty much sums up the extraordinary Strawberry Hill House. It is well worth a visit. <\/p>\n Walpole\u2019s little Gothic castle is a fantasy of pinnacles, towers and battlements \u2014 gleaming white, it looks like an iced-sugar wedding cake. It is an enchanting surprise today, so imagine the response from 18th century visitors \u2014 this was a new type of architecture, more resonant of old churches than the then popular symmetrical facades of most country houses, which took inspiration from classical Greece and Rome. Strawberry Hill has a strong claim to be the starting point for Gothic Revival architecture in the country, which eventually led to many other London icons, including the Palace of Westminster and Tower Bridge.<\/p>\n No room is the same. You go from surprise to surprise: a room full of Holbein miniatures; the Tribune, a jewel of a chamber designed as Walpole\u2019s cabinet of curiosities; the Round Room, with its Carrara marble chimney piece made by Robert Adam in 1767; so it continues, a gorgeous assault on the senses. The gallery cannot be missed. <\/p>\n Paper Dress Vintage, Hackney<\/p>\n \u201cBy day, it could be any retro clothing shop. The real fun starts at night\u201d<\/p>\n Paper Dress Vintage<\/p>\n If you walk along Mare Street in Hackney<\/a> on a Saturday night, you are greeted by the odd sight of a queue snaking out of a vintage<\/a> clothing store. Multi-coloured lights and music burst from the upstairs window, while a crowd of young artistic types trickles through the door.<\/p>\n By day, Paper Dress Vintage<\/a> could be any retro clothing shop. Mannequins wearing 1950s dresses and 1970s silk shirts stand in the window, while inside there are rail upon rail of clothes and knick-knacks dating back to the 1920s. When night falls, it transforms into a bar, live music venue and club.<\/p>\n The shop is set over two storeys, with a stage on the upper floor framed by a heavy red velvet curtain and vintage neon signs. The bar downstairs serves local craft beers and cocktails, including a mean espresso martini. There\u2019s a big leafy beer garden out back and a yoga studio in the adjoining room. \u201cEvery square inch of this building is used,\u201d says owner Hannah Turner Voakes.<\/p>\n Last year the UK lost a grassroots music venue every fortnight, meaning places like Paper Dress become more precious by the week. \u201cThere aren\u2019t many of us left, so we provide a platform for new talent. It\u2019s not all about making it big; it\u2019s about creative expression and community,\u201d says Turner Voakes. \u201cYou have to adapt, see what the neighbourhood needs, and offer something useful.\u201d It\u2019s that spirit which keeps people coming back for more. <\/p>\n The Museum of Brands, Notting Hill<\/p>\n \u201cCuriosities sit in every corner\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n Much of our lives are shaped, subtly sometimes but often not, by branding<\/a>. Your shoes, watch, what you had for lunch. The pint that might come later. Who can say with a straight face they make their choices on the grounds of quality alone? We accept our favourites even as corporate mergers grind them down and private equity funds<\/a> strip their very essence. But brands bind us: advertising works, kids.<\/p>\n Proof can be found on Lancaster Road, in the Museum of Brands<\/a>. The name is a bit of a ruse. It is more a gallery of the past than a museum: inside, it is a treasure trove of past purchases from the Victorian era till now. The museum is split in two. One part is an ever-changing exhibition<\/a>, usually a rummage through history<\/a>. But it is the other half where much of the draw is found. This is the Time Tunnel. In it are cigarette packets as ornate as oil paintings, wrappers of sweets promising extraordinary things, faintly mystic coffee jars. Cereals branded\u2026 curiously (Kellogg\u2019s All-Bran: \u201cThe natural laxative food\u201d).<\/p>\n There are Marmite jars changing over the years but seemingly staying the same, Coke cans pulling off the same trick, bottles of Johnnie Walker too. Royalty pops up: the Union Jack is a regular. Patriotism leveraged to make a quick buck, big right till the Nineties \u2014 and then, for a while, it stops, out of fashion, not the thing to flog. Curiosities sit in every corner. Spam, somehow still around today; tinned blancmange, thankfully long gone. Medicines, pill boxes, potion jars.<\/p>\n Towards the end, there is a stand that reads: \u201cToday\u2019s packaging, tomorrow\u2019s memories\u201d. It is a reminder that the world we know will become one we knew, and one day, a world people won\u2019t. But there will still be a document of it. What the Museum of Brands is doing, then, is stopping it becoming a world forgotten. <\/p>\n The Hill Garden and Pergola, Hampstead<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a truly surprising and beautiful location, a man-made canvas upon which nature\u2019s palette of plants creates a glorious picture\u201d<\/p>\n Hampstead Heath’s Hill Garden Pergola is one of the new sites added to the list<\/p>\n Historic England<\/p>\n London is full of these places where couples may clasp hands against an iconic backdrop. Of these, Hampstead Heath glows bright. The Heath has its hidden corners and secrets. One of these is the scented pergola at The Hill<\/a>, a house purchased by William Lever in 1904, and now known as Inverforth House. An industrialist from Bolton, Lever made his fortune in the manufacture of soap, including the brand Sunlight. The Hill was almost 100 years old when Lever moved in and he soon decided to refurbish and expand it. This was more than a wallpaper job, and perhaps the best of what he created is the extraordinary pergola in the garden.<\/p>\n For this he commissioned a fellow Lancastrian, the great landscape designer Thomas Mawson, who began work in 1905 and extended the garden and pergola in phases over the next seven years as Lever acquired the neighbouring properties (incidentally, Mawson also designed Fazl Mosque<\/a>, the first purpose-built mosque<\/a> in London).<\/p>\n The result was a 200m long structure comprising a colonnade of Doric columns made of Portland stone with a timber pergola overhead imitating a classical entablature. It is a truly surprising and beautiful location, a perfect blend of the natural and cultural worlds, a man-made canvas upon which nature\u2019s palette of plants creates a glorious picture. Or pictures to be precise, because each season brings a different feel to the place, ranging from the structural starkness of winter to the earth and ochre colours of autumn, bookending the vivid greens of spring and blousy blooms of summer.<\/p>\n The magic of the place is completed by its elevated views, an effect that is largely man-made as Lever had to import huge quantities of earth to raise it up. Fortunately, the Hampstead Tube extension of the Northern line was under construction at the same time, so there was plenty of material to lift the land the required nine or so metres. From here, hidden from prying eyes within its framework of greenery, it\u2019s possible to take in a magical panorama of London. <\/p>\n Kirkaldy\u2019s Testing Works, Southwark<\/p>\n \u201cA temple dedicated to destruction\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n Kirkaldy\u2019s Testing Works<\/a> looks like a Renaissance building that wouldn\u2019t be out of place on a Venetian canalside, but it is a temple dedicated to destruction. It opened in 1873 and is the earliest purpose-built independent commercial materials testing laboratory in the world. It still houses the main machine that it was designed for \u2014 a 14.5m leviathan that stretches the length of the building. The machine could exert an extraordinary 450 tonnes of pressure \u2013 the equivalent of 62 double-decker buses stacked one on top of the other bearing down on a single smartphone screen. <\/p>\n But this is not the only machine: the building is filled with devices that will crush, stretch, batter, shatter, dent or twist whatever is placed in their maws. There is a Denison chain tester for marine anchor chains, Brinell and Vickers hardness testers, and countless others that were used to test a huge variety of materials from the strength of rope, wire and bolts to the quality of cement, parcel tape or parachute lines. On the upper floors of the building, Kirkaldy created his own Museum of Fractures \u2013 essentially an exhibition of specimens that had failed the rigorous tests, which served both as a teaching tool and a clever marketing device to alert new clients of the importance of testing. <\/p>\n Among the famous buildings and structures that have been tested in this small corner of Southwark are Wembley Stadium (1923), the chains supporting the Festival of Britain’s Skylon (1951) and a De Havilland Comet crash (1954). <\/p>\n Most modern museums have now moved away from an old-fashioned approach that demanded \u2018Please do not touch\u2019. But the Kirkaldy Testing Museum takes this to a whole different level where its main message to visitors is \u2018We want you to break something.\u2019 A smashing place.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much magic in places like these\u201d<\/p>\n Cheese of Muswell Hill<\/p>\n Cheeses of Muswell Hill is like something out of a film, the kind of place that becomes an unsuspecting star in a Richard Curtis<\/a> rom-com. It is the kind of place that Americans think all shops<\/a> in England look like, especially around Christmas, when two life-sized nutcrackers guard the shop. Londoners won\u2019t be surprised to know they\u2019ve been stolen and returned a few times. <\/p>\n Cheeses of Muswell Hill is a family business run by Morgan McGlynn Carr, who might be familiar from the telly. She\u2019s the resident cheese expert on Sunday Brunch, which makes for a perfect hangover watch, and her knowledge of cheese and knack for creating beautiful cheeseboards has scored her viral success and three book deals. But the shop, curiously, remains something of a secret, even among her fans.<\/p>\n It has been open since 1982, and it remains a true hidden gem. There\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll miss it strolling down Fortis Green Road, just off the Broadway. Its glass-panelled facade spans just under three metres, and the shop itself is no bigger than a store room. Despite this, it stocks well over 200 cheeses, making it a cheese-lover\u2019s haven. The smell is mostly heaven, just a little bit of funk. <\/p>\n In a world where a trip to a single shop can serve almost all of our grocery needs, stop and think of this glorious little independent establishment. There\u2019s so much magic in places like these, where discovering new cheeses is like uncovering a new secret. <\/p>\n Two Temple Place, the Strand<\/p>\n \u201cA faked death gave London one of its most beautiful buildings\u201d<\/p>\n Rex<\/p>\n Who hasn\u2019t pondered faking their own death to get away from it all, if only as an idle daydream? William Waldorf Astor<\/a>, who was once America\u2019s second-richest man, seems to have actually gone through with it. It didn\u2019t work, but London<\/a> still got an architectural treasure in the process \u2014 Two Temple Place.<\/p>\n In 1891, William Waldorf Astor had had enough of his native America, declaring \u201cthe newspapers make the country unfit for a gentleman to live in\u201d. The press had ridiculed him for his political ambitions, speculated about his children being kidnapped, and the loathing was mutual. So Waldorf Astor moved his family to London<\/a>. By July 1892, New York papers began reporting that Astor was dead at 45 of pneumonia, per his staff. This was not, in fact, the case. <\/p>\n Had the reports of his death been greatly exaggerated? Or was he trying to avenge himself on the hated papers with some early fake news? Very much alive, Astor read his own obituaries with glee. \u201cI observe with great interest that the comments are written in a far kindlier spirit than the papers have shown toward me for many a day,\u201d he wrote to a friend. <\/p>\n For his permanent London estate office, Astor hired John Loughborough Pearson, an architect renowned for his gothic revival style \u2014 think gargoyles and flying buttresses. Astor House, at 2 Temple Place<\/a>, was suitably dramatic. Designed as a neo-Tudor mansion, it\u2019s built of Portland stone with parapets on the exterior and an interior stuffed with rich materials. Its intricately patterned floors are made of marble, jasper, onyx and porphyry, windows are made of stained glass, and its panelled walls carved from mahogany. It cost \u00a3250,000 when it was completed in 1895 \u2014 equivalent to \u00a345m today. <\/p>\n Astor\u2019s own tastes and interests were included in every detail. A stint in Italy had given him a passion for European art and sculpture, which combined with his American wealth and penchant for the gaudy. The golden weather vane atop the roof was a miniature of Christopher Columbus\u2019s ship, symbolising Europe\u2019s connection to America. Carved wooden sculptures along the main staircase\u2019s balusters are characters from The Three Musketeers, Astor\u2019s favourite book. In the grand meeting room a carved frieze is a madcap menagerie of fictional and historical characters \u2014 Anne Boleyn (Hever Castle<\/a> was her childhood home), Pocahontas and Marie Antoinette included. It is worth marvelling at. <\/p>\n Severndroog Castle, Shooters Hill<\/p>\n \u201cLondon\u2019s Taj Mahal, with the most spectacular views in the capital\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n Imagine a London<\/a> version of the Taj Mahal. Not a copy of the splendid 17th-century Mughal tomb built by Shah Jahan for Mumtaz Mahal, his cherished wife, but a place constructed in the same spirit of remembrance for a lost loved one. And a place with strong ties \u2014 for good and for bad \u2014 with India. This is Severndroog Castle.<\/p>\n The castle sits on Shooters Hill<\/a>, the highest point in south London<\/a>, where it is possible on a good day to see the hazy outline of each of London\u2019s seven surrounding counties. Built in 1784, Severndroog is a pretty gothic tower, three storeys tall and triangular in plan, with hexagonal turrets on each of its corners. At first glance, it is difficult to make any connections between the pocket-sized castle\u2019s red brick facades and India\u2019s white marble masterpiece, separated as they are by over 4,000 miles and 150 years. But connections are there.<\/p>\n Firstly, there is a similar motive. The castle was built by Lady Ann James, the second wife of Sir William James. Sir William died of a stroke in 1783, aged 62, the tragedy of his death compounded by the fact that it happened during their daughter\u2019s wedding. What does any self-respecting partner do on the death of their spouse? Lady Ann had the castle constructed in memory of her husband, celebrating the most important moments of his life. Its first-floor chambers were originally filled with memorabilia from Sir William\u2019s time in India, including a model of one of the ships he commanded, guns and armour. The source of Sir William\u2019s fame and wealth was to come from India. He\u2019d joined the East India Company<\/a> aged 26, and his most successful action was against Suvarnadurg, the Golden Fort, a 17th century castle positioned on an island off the west Indian coast. The name Suvarnadurg was anglicised as Severndroog.<\/p>\n Severndroog remained in private ownership throughout the 19th century but was eventually purchased by London County Council in 1921 for \u00a36,000. Since then, it has variously been opened to the public \u2014 once with a restaurant on the first floor \u2014 and it served as a location where German planes could be spotted in the far distance during both world wars. <\/p>\n In the past it has been described as a castle, a folly and a memorial, but perhaps the best definition for Severndroog is as a belvedere, from the Italian \u201cbella vista\u201d or \u201cbeautiful view\u201d. Run by a trust, and today open to the public, this is exactly what meets those who visit. <\/p>\n Boston Manor House, Boston Manor <\/p>\n \u201cJust 10 minutes from the tube, but the walk will take you back 400 years\u201d<\/p>\n Boston Manor House<\/p>\n Boston Manor House<\/a> was built in the early 17th century for Lady Mary Reade, clearly a woman of some substance. Her husband, who had inherited the nearby Osterley Park as well as some buildings on this site, died in 1621 and Reade needed a place to match her standing. Her solution? Knock down the old, rambling medieval building and rebuild in a new style. Her initials are everywhere \u2014 including on the lead downpipes hurrying water away from the roof and, most conspicuously, on the ceiling of the state drawing room. <\/p>\n It is this drawing room that is undoubtedly the star attraction. Look up: there are no paintings, but the ceiling itself is an extraordinary five-by-10 metre artwork. Within the cornicing is a whole storyboard filled with characters.<\/p>\n The four elements of water, earth, air and fire stare down, alongside the five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch), three virtues (hope, faith and charity) plus symbols for peace, war, time and plenty. This heavenly choir of characters is framed within cartouches and medallions and set among a forest of plaster ribs and straps, very typical of the period. <\/p>\n Today, the house is open to the public. So, next time you see Boston Manor on the Harry Beck\u2019s famous tube map, step off. The house is a just 10 minutes from the station, but the walk will take you back 400 years. <\/p>\n \u201cA mecca for Crystal Palace fans\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n It\u2019s a sensory experience to travel to a part of London<\/a> still upsettingly devoid of the Tube \u2014 call it the \u201cginger line\u201d all you like, the Overground doesn\u2019t count \u2014 and be met with the noise, smoke and vibrations of Selhurst<\/a> Park. SE25 is the home of Crystal Palace<\/a> football club, Premier League minnows voraciously punching above their weight, but also Original Tasty Jerk, where some of the most comforting food in London<\/a> is acquired. Together, on match days, when the stadium and its locale are a festival of red and blue, these combine to become one powerful force. The flowing sound of song binds itself to flavours of barbecued meat and hot pepper sauce. <\/p>\n Tasty Jerk is one of those places<\/a> that has, for the most part, sailed by largely unnoticed. It has always been known to Palace fans and south Londoners, more recently a band of hard-working food writers, but it sits in a part of London less charted than most and rarely visited by the trudging masses. It is a local institution, not a pin on a sightseer\u2019s map. <\/p>\n There are always queues of locals. On match days, chants of \u201cEagles\u201d echo along Whitehorse Lane to the stadium, wonky and part-hidden behind a Sainsbury\u2019s supermarket, as jerk chicken<\/a> and pork belly are scorched and seasoned in rising flames. But on any evening there is likely to be a wait. And you know when Tasty Jerk is open: its tall chimney billows grey smoke into the sky, a signal that the parade of oil drums are fired up and cooking. Just as it has on occasion in the past when Crystal Palace<\/a> have announced a new manager, a mirror to the Vatican when a Pope has been decided. <\/p>\n Tasty Jerk is many things. It is a midweek necessity or a post-match scramble. It is a gentle reminder of a life before, else a welcome introduction to those who have never been. <\/p>\n Fernando Bonenfant<\/p>\n It\u2019s extraordinary to see 2,000-year-old cat prints in what was once soft masonry. Same as now, Latin felines then had little regard for their human keepers, wandering as they pleased over wet concrete as builders worked. In one section of the old Roman wall in the heart of the City of London<\/a>, one mischievous cat left its mark for posterity. The outline of its paws is still visible today.<\/p>\n These imprints are one of innumerable traces at The City Wall exhibition at Vine Street<\/a>, a subterranean nod to history sandwiched between steel and glass. With the Saxon church towers, Norman<\/a> facades and medieval stonework, the square mile is one of juxtaposition: once grand buildings appear diminutive today; skyscrapers about them reflect sunlight onto ancient stone.<\/p>\n When the Romans founded Londinium in circa 50\u2009AD and built the wall about 150 years later, it was a monumental effort, encircling a population of about 25,000 in an attempt to keep people safe from Saxon raiders. Back then the wall would have been a magnificent sight \u2014 like the Shard or Gherkin in their striking modernity \u2014 as the Kentish ragstone, transported up river by barge from Maidstone, rose 14 feet toward the sky. It was as much a boundary as a status symbol, proclaiming the city\u2019s wealth and importance. <\/p>\n At Vine Street, the wall is immaculately preserved alongside stories of those who lived and worked in its shadow, from 200 AD until the present day. Artefacts have been found over the centuries as excavation work uncovered tidbits of eras bygone. Pieces of Roman pottery, some practical, others decorative, begin the charting of life there. Elsewhere are fragments of old combs. Many of the pieces on show are remarkably well kept, especially those from more recent centuries. It\u2019s hard to imagine how astonishing it might be to dig up from the rubble a German stoneware jug complete with an engraving of a \u201cbearded man\u201d. To see an object dating back to the 1600s is poignant enough: a vessel once regularly full of wine or beer, an aid for conviviality after a long day. Or else it might have been filled with blood, hair and urine and placed outside to warn off witches. History so often astonishes.<\/p>\n \u201cA slice of countryside in the city\u201d<\/p>\n Press handout<\/p>\n London is hardly hurting for green spaces, but OmVed Gardens<\/a> is something special. Tucked away down an unassuming side street in Highgate<\/a>, it\u2019s a slice of the countryside in the city. <\/p>\n The community garden has been operating since 2017, but has only recently reopened after a refresh that has added new spaces and a whole programme of events focused around art<\/a> and ecology, food and climate resilience. This revamp has introduced a constellation of buildings designed by landscape architect Paul Gazerwitz, in collaboration with London-based practice Smerin Architects. <\/p>\n Lots of food for the supper clubs hosted on site is grown in the kitchen garden, although the team are patient and pragmatic enough to let the very best plants go to seed. Seeds are then collected and stored in the Seed Store, a building that\u2019s something of a cross between a high-end art gallery and a witch\u2019s apothecary. <\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SEI272508455.jpg\")
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