Brickbats and Tiles say St Giles without Cripplegate

Look, anyone can make a mistake, even someone as awesome as the BGC and when you’re dealing with ancient folk tales and a city as big as London it’s no wonder that the odd error creeps in from time to time.

It would seem that the last excursion to St Giles in the Fields was actually a visit to the “wrong” St Giles. The Oranges and Lemons rhyme features churches from the City of London and other parts of the East End and as faithful readers will do doubt have been screaming at their screens, St Giles in the Fields is in the heartland of the West End.

The “right” St Giles, it turns out, is St Giles without Cripplegate, located in the heartland of the City of London in the middle of the Barbican Centre. This is a much much older church and apparently the “Brickbats and Tiles” reference refers to the materials used by nearby builders and if you’re wondering about the strange word of Cripplegate it actually refers to a Saxon word, Cruplegate, meaning a tunnel or covered way. That said, St Giles is the patron saint of cripples, beggars and blacksmiths which I’m sure could be made into a joke: There were these three blokes in a bar, one of them, a blacksmith turned to the other two………..

It was a bit of a cobbled together tour that eventually got together in the first pub, Rack & Tenter in Tenter Square. The IT department had managed to put in a woeful turn out with only Spikey Haired Ed and James James eventually being persuaded to come out. Payroll had put in a much better performance with the regulars of Gemma, George, Tasha, Lucie and Isabelle being joined by new regulars of Lisa and Young Phil and a fresh face on the tour of Kevin.

A box full of tit-heads.

The journey to the first pub turned out to be easy as we timed our entry into the tube perfectly and met a Circle Line train with only a minute’s wait and with the first pub literally just round the corner from Moorgate Tube Station the only problem we suffered was having to wait until 6pm for Ed to finally finish work and herd the rest of the cats together, some of whom had left early for food (James James & Lisa for a romantic McDonalds) and some who got so tired of waiting for Ed had sneaked off for pre-tour cocktails.

The afterglow of McDonalds.

The area around Moorgate is to be quite frank, a bloody mess at the moment. There’s another massive bit of the Crossrail works which seems to have dug up every other road and quite a large part of this area resembles a 1970’s concrete shopping precinct with all the glamour of The Bill’s infamous Cockcroft Estate. The Rack and Tenter had all the charm and presence of a pebble-dashed council house and is nothing more than a square box-like drinking hole for City tit-heads in suits. It should be much more, it’s a Marston’s pub and had they put any effort into it like Fuller’s would have done it might have been better. The only redeeming feature was the very pretty tattooed barmaid and the free drink vouchers that we’d all downloaded before visiting. I had an acceptable pint of Marston’s EPA but the others had to make do with the limitations of the voucher which meant pints of fizzy Foster’s for Ed, James James and Phil and glasses of the house red or the house white for the lovely ladies.

Even though I would avoid the place like the plague under other circumstances, it had managed to attract a huge crowd of the aforementioned City tit-head in suits and it was a fight to get to the bar. Our ordering wasn’t helped by the vouchers as each individual voucher number had to be imputed into the till and we can only be glad the aforementioned pretty tattooed barmaid had the patience to do it all with a smile and a wink.
We took our drinks outside to escape the scrum and apart from discovering the outdoor heater could be turned on and off by a switch (a la The Ship in Talbot Court) I think the best thing than can be say is that at least we didn’t have to pay.

Photo not taken on the night......obviously.

Moving on, we took the 5 minute stroll along the beautiful and sculptured concrete jungle that appeared to be a multi-storey car park but in fact hides the Salters’ Institute and Salters’ Hall until we hit the corner of Fore Street and Wood Street. There tucked in the corner is another appalling looking pub called Wood Street Bar & Restaurant and having taken note of the signs outside which instructed people that “Drinking is not allowed outside the public house. Drinkers must stay inside” I was fully expecting the worst.
Thankfully the interior of the pub, lots of etched glass and dark wood was actually really really pleasant. Firstly the place was at the exactly right level of busy-ness, with a smattering of other drinkers but still with plenty of room at the bar and spare seats. This all was made even more so by the warm welcome of the barmaid and barman who were delighted to pour off a pint of Shepherd Neame’s Whitstable Bay Pale Ale.
Because we had vouchered in the first pub we didn’t bother with a whip on this tour so it took slightly longer until we were all “avec les drinks” and installed in a very cosy corner in the pub. Quite how the conversation got round to the next subject is anyone’s guess but at some point someone (I bet it was Ed) announced that we were all going to end up in a “Titty Bar” (presumably not one full of City Tit-Heads in suits?) to which three of the ladies performed strange actions in Pavlov’s Dog type fashion. George’s hand leapt into the air, either volunteering to go to said place or announcing that she knew of where one was, Gemma did some extraordinary hip grinding and thrusting but perhaps the best reaction of Lisa’s screeched exclamation that “why do I wanna go to a titty bar. I wanna go to a penis bar!” Say it in broad TOWIE tones and you’ll get a feel for this special moment.

Just before the Penis Bar comment. Looks like butter wouldn't melt........

Time to leave.

Church. Pavement. Not night.......obviously.

Just around the corner of the pub, you enter the Barbican Centre (I need to investigate this area further) and the impressive stone structure of St Giles Cripplegate. The church is, as already stated, old, much older than any we’ve visited so far being built on a Saxon church which turned into a Norman one before having various bits and bobs added on over the years. It was severely damaged during the war and needed to be much repaired and renovated and now sits rather incongruously in the middle of a paved pedestrian area which I’m not sure does it any favours.

As you would expect with such an old church there’s a whole host of interesting facts to regale about such a place but the three that I focussed in on were that John Milton (he who had his daughter christened at St Giles in the Fields) was buried here in 1674, Oliver Cromwell was married here in 1620 and Rick Wakeman recorded his track “Jane Seymour” here. Enough history, let’s have another drink.

It was but a 5 minute walk down Wood Street and underneath the overhead complext straddling City Wall before continuing down Wood Street  and walking past the City of London Police Headquaters and the solitary standing spire of St Alban’s. The next pub was The Cape, a chain of Stonegate pubs all bearing the same name that are dotted around London. This one wasn’t packed but looked to have been in the same state as the Rack and Tenter was an hour or so ago. The pub had been  Cask Marque accredited up until the end of October last year but had either lost it’s rights to claim this honour (even though the certificate and door stickers where much in evidence) or had failed to renew. Either way the scan wasn’t working.

Should be publically demoted.

Pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord secured we retired to a isolated and unattended corner where although there was a huge curved banquette that could have seated us all we chose to stand in a uneven huddle.
Drinks drank it was also an uneven huddle which paused for a photo by the handily parked Police Horse Wagon, much to the disgust of the passing cabby, and then we needed to just round the corner to reach the next place, The Red Herring located at the end of Wood Street and the junction with Gresham Street.

Book them Dano.......

The Red Herring is a smart Fuller’s house doing everything Fuller’s seems to be able to do remarkably well with its City pubs. That said this one wasn’t Cask Marque accredited which is something or a rarity as most of their pubs are. But to make up for the lack of certificate we’d all got vouchers again, these one being a little more generous than the ones for the Rack and Tenter, allowing us to choose any drink up to the value of £5. I choose a pint of Gold by Butcombe Brewery and left the others to choose their vodka based fun drinks to their heart’s content. Naughty Lucie though, had once again done the trick of bringing her glass of wine from the previous pub into this one……just can’t trust the French.

Ed prepares to exchange his voucher.

Unfortunately as sometimes seems to happen, the evening slightly fizzled out and after some heartfelt rantings about work and a replay of “snog, marry, push off a cliff” we all disappeared our separate ways. Talking of “snog, marry, push off a cliff” though, the tour may end up being postponed for some weeks as Gemma and George are to go off gallivanting half way around the world to meet former tourist and former “marry” candidate lovely Nicole. So perhaps we should end not with the tale of my lonely tube journey back to the last train of the night out of Paddington but wish them Bon Voyage and ask them to drink a Croucher Pale Ale for me.

Brickbats and Tiles say St Giles in the Fields

So after much cajoling, nagging and a Christmas break, we finally got the tour organised again. Those following the rhyme will of course know that the next stop was St Giles’ because, and please feel free to join in if you know the words, Brickbats and Tiles say the bells of St Giles’ (I’m sure this is all made up.)

St Giles’ in the Field to give the place its full name is in Soho and is also known as the poets’ church. The Poetry Society holds their AGM at the church and various poets had their children buried there (Milton, Shelley, Byron to name but three). And it was with this bombshell of an interesting fact that I began the church talk. Determined not to be accused of missing this out again we went directly to the church from Tottenham Court Road station.

This area is all a bit of a mess at the moment. Not only have you got some massive Crossrail development underway directly outside Tottenham Court Road station but that end of Oxford Street and around the brightly coloured Central St Giles buildings is not exactly salubrious to say the least. New-Guy Micky who used to work in the area had already warned us to watch out for the “smack heads”.

It was also a pretty wet and miserable evening when the majority of the tour stepped off the Central line at the afore mentioned Tottenham Court Road station. It’s always the most difficult tube line to get onto from our corner of the Circle Line at Tower Hill as the routes to get the famous red line throw up many questions. Do you wait the 10-15 intervals between Circle Line trains to get round to Liverpool Street? Or do you take the much more frequent District Line service down to Embankment and walk from there? Or do you do what we did, which is one stop on the District down to Monument and then walk through seemingly endless miles of tube station corridors to Bank and get the Central Line from there? Luckily we managed to stay together and lost no-one on route even though Young Phil (a New-New-Guy) and myself had to pause whilst the geriatric others finally caught us up.
The long walk through the station must have took its toll on George and “Smash-a-Glass” Lisa as they took advantage of the pause outside Tottenham Court Road to dash into the McDonalds across the road and line stomachs with various meaty treats. The pause was to locate New Guy Micky, who turned out to be waiting for us at the church and the double-act of Mr Cheese and Mr Clarke, who turned up finally in the 1st pub.

Burgers eaten and New Guy Micky located we took stock outside the Church, which again is not benefitting from overgrown shrubbery and boarding panels. Built between 1730 and 1734 this was the first church on the tour which didn’t leap from the mind of Christopher Wren but is instead a Henry Flitcroft creation in the Palladian style (oooo get her). It replaced an earlier church where victims of the Great Plague had been buried and became a landmark on the journey of condemned prisoners from Newgate Prison (see Go to Jail) to the Tyburn Gallows (see Park Lane) where the soon to be hung would stop for a drink in a local pub.

Talking about drinking in a local pub, this seems like an ideal point to move on to Monmouth Street and The Crown which is a triangular end of terrace pub from the Taylor Walker stable. There was no sign of the Cask Marque certificate (Remember that? Collecting those scans?) but there was sign of Mr Cheese and Mr Clarke who were instantly recognisable because of the Dorset Knobs.

Look at the smiles on seeing the Dorset Knobs.

The beer was ok, although the selection of Pride, Doombar and Old Golden Hen are never going to set the world on fire, which was a bit of a shame because the pub is actually quite nice in a strange shapely, horse-brassy, Victorian picture sort of way.

The Cambridge

The tour was soon on its way again, skirting around the Seven Dials before crossing Shaftsbury Avenue and onto Charing Cross Road which was to be our route for the rest of the evening. The Cambridge is an imposing looking place which belies a quite small interior into which we just about managed to squeeze amongst the early evening theatre goers. Again the beer offerings were actually quite slim, disappointing for another national chain (Nicholson’s this time) with the only more unusual brew being Ultra Pale Ale from the Bristol Beer Factory. This satisfied the ale drinkers, limited this excursion to just Mr Cheese, Mr Clarke, Brenda and yours truly. The rest were on a variety of fizzy yellow stuff (Bud still for Buddy Rob you’ll be pleased to know), vodka fun drinks and in the case of Isabelle and Lucie a surprising diversion to red wine.

Inside The Cambridge - Red Wine not in view.

The pub filtered out slightly as curtain up must have been called in the surrounding theatres but we didn’t spend that long enjoying the extra room. In fact we were so quick Lucie took her glass of wine with her.

The next pub was quite literally a stone’s throw away being the gaudily green looking Molly Moggs. Look at any website about this pub, (not the pub’s own one, that seems to be down) and you’ll see a variety of brightly drag acts camping it up like Baden Powell’s back garden. Sadly it must have been a quiet night tonight as although there was a smattering of all male clientele in the pub there wasn’t a hint of a sequin or a feather boa.

Molly Moggs - Feather Boas not in view.

Obviously not a pub that builds its living on beer there was but a single lonely ale pump but the pint of London Glory it served wasn’t too bad and more than drinkable. Lucie managed to sneak her half glass of red inside without any challenges, I guess I only wonder if the owners of Molly Moggs wonder where the extra glass came from?

It’s a good job the tour wasn’t feeling too exhausted tonight as the next pub was literally next door meaning one of the shortest crawls between pubs on any of the tours ever. The next place was a narrow fronted but hugely interiored Wetherspoons called the Montagu Pyke (aka The Cinema King – look it up).

Montagu Pyke - Good Service not in view.

As previously mentioned the inside of the pub spread out to the back of the pub with a vast number of tables as well as a small balcony, it was also doing a roaring trade as it was almost full with drinkers and diners. Managing eventually to get to the bar, I ordered 4 pints of something which has slipped my mind. The first two, which went to Mr Cheese & Mr Clarke looked ok but the 3rd which was destined for Brenda had the look and consistency of a swampy pool.

“Don’t think I’ll be able to get the fourth out of this” shrugged the non-plussed barman who was wearing a name-tag that said “manager”. “Yes, not so sure I want that cloudy third one” I commented. “Up to you” shrugged the shruggy “manager” who was managing to take disinterest to a whole new level. And without going too CAMRA on you all, it’s experiences like this which is why the Real Ale crowd will never fully endorse the Wetherspoons chain.

Anyway, the pint of Oxford Gold from Brakspear that I finally choose from the vast range of ale pumps where far too many of the pump clips were turned round was OK but to be honest, you get some good Wetherspoons, in fact you get some great ones, but you also get some bloody awful ones and this one was one where no matter how cheap the drink is it was always going to fall into the latter category.

The one redeeming feature was that the Cask Marque certificate was proudly hung on the wall by the bar which meant the first scan of the night from the third accredited pub.

The final pub of the night was not quite so little a distance away as the previous two, but it was still only a short hop to the top of Charing Cross Road and a left hand turn into the Crossrail building site and the Royal George, whose bright pink neon sign can just about been seen around the cranes and cement mixers.

The Royal George - Mr Cheese just in view.

The first thing I noticed was the Cask Marque certificate just by the door which meant the second scan of the night. It was a good job that the certificate was by the door because it was hard to make anything else out in the gloom of the pub’s interior. I can’t remember the whole beer range but I do remember that I was drinking Hopback’s Winter Lightning which the ale drinkers amongst us persisted with.

I can’t remember what caused the exodus but it seemed that one moment the place was full and then in a blink of an eye there was only Mr Cheese, Mr Clarke, New Guy Micky and Spiky Haired Ed in the place. Oh and me of course. It seemed somehow fitting that we finished the evening by ordering a lovely bottle of Delirium Tremens which was only spoilt by a veritable mixture of mixed glassware. I mean, come on pubs, if you’re going to invest in a range of interesting bottles, invest in some decent glasses as well yeah?

Well I said “we finished the evening” because for me there was only the attraction of a double Upper Crust baguette and the last train home whilst Mr Cheese, Mr Clarke and Micky ended the evening with a slap-up Chinese meal in Soho. What Ed did is anyone’s guess.

Bullseyes and Targets say St Margaret's, Lothbury

I suppose I should start with an apology………….so to the thousands of faithful readers out there, I’m sorry.

Sorry that I’ve not updated for so long. Sorry my entry for St Margaret’s is so small. Sorry for not telling the tour newbies that they would be immortalised in this fair blog. Sorry to the tour quitters that we never said goodbye in blog format.

And maybe most of all, sorry to everyone that once again there’s some more piffling drivel that you have to read.

OK? Happy? Satisfied? Can we get onto St Margaret’s now?

St Margarets

Unfortunately it now about 10 weeks since we did this tour and quite a bit of it has dropped out of the memory banks. So like a brief news bulletin, here are the highlights.

Tour attendees – Most of the usual faces;

Most of the usual faces, in Simpson's Tavern.

Tour newbies – Me old china Rob the Big Cheese and his on-off landlord and on-off lover Clarkey. New payroll girly Lisa who was so excited she decided to smash a glass outside the Jamaica Wine House whilst kicking off.

A smashing time.....

Pubs – The previously mentioned Jamaica Wine House – absolutely rammed back alley pub that needs to be visited again. Simpson’s Tavern – Another back alley place that wasn’t rammed. In fact we were at one point the only customers. Cock and Woolpack – mid-terrace pub that seemed to go back forever. Main highlight, I found a glove in the toilets. The Phoenix – Strange mix of old man’s pub with drum and bass music.

Pubs

Beers – I seem to remember some sort of coffee/choco/mocha porter thing at The Phoenix. The rest was average.

Mr Cheese and Mr Clarke taste the Scotch Eggs.

Church – Apparently Bull’s eyes and targets say the bells of St Margaret’s, or St Margaret's Lothbury to give it its full name. When we got near the church (which is opposite the Bank of England) I asked the group if they wanted to take the short detour down to the church for the talk. No, it’s too cold they all shrieked. So we didn’t. I then get nothing but earache for the next 10 weeks about missing out what some were describing as the best bit of the tours. Some people!

Tour quitters – Just have to mention a couple of tour stalwarts who were there from the beginning of Monopoly and may only be making guest appearances on the tour from now on. Charlie has left the company and although he’s still somewhere in the dirty city no doubt he’s got some new friends to play with. Aussie Pete on the other hand will have some job on his hand trying to pop back for a night out having returned to a land down under. Guys, hope you do make it out again…….you’ll be missed.