Secret London � Hidden Gems in the Big Smoke
London: exciting, evocative and iconic. But, perhaps as a regular visitor to the capital on business or family visits you have tired of the same old sights and tourist packed attractions.
The great thing about London, if you take the time to explore it, is that there is always something new and exciting to discover. Book flights to London [http://www.skyscanner.net/flights/uk/lond/cheapest-flights-from-united-kingdom-to-london.html] and take a look at just some of the hidden and secret gems the city has to offer, away from camera happy visitors and the rest of the world!
St Mary's Secret Garden
50 Pearson Street, London E2
St Mary's Secret Garden, offers educational and therapeutic sessions to any who are interested. This little green haven lies in an unlikely Hackney location, displaying natural woodland, a fragrant herb garden and rich vegetable beds currently sprouting kale, winter lettuces and brussel-sprouts. Local residents all have keys to the garden, while the rest of the city can visit for free between 9am and 5pm on Mondays to Fridays. The friendly green-fingered team at St Mary's are also starting a 10-week gardening course. Great green fun.
Secret Cinema
Anywhere
If a visit to the same old soulless multiplex cinema has lost its appeal and you're fed up of paying daft amounts of cash for a ticket, then sign up for the phenomenon that is Secret Cinema. Each month you turn up at an unusual destination to watch a film, often with special guests and intriguing live installations. Recent nights have included a screening of Lindsay Anderson's classic 60s film If at Dulwich College and Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park in a disused railway tunnel. Last month's offering was the Marx brothers' A Night at the Opera, shown at the Hackney Empire complete with musical accompaniment, boiled sweets and an operatic rendition from Pagliacci. You never know what the film will be until you get there but that's the best part!
The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
39a Canonbury Square, London N1
The stylish Estorick Collection is housed in a Grade II-listed Georgian building in Islington. It's stuffed full of Italian art dating from 1890 to the 1950s with a permanent exhibition with a focus on futurism; an Italian movement based on an admiration for modernity, speed and technology. Other highlights include a series of breath taking drawings by Modigliani and a handsome collection of sculptures. After a good nose round the gallery, it's worth stopping for a coffee in the secluded courtyard café around the back.
Dennis Severs House
18 Folgate Street, Tower Hamlets, London E1
Number 18 Folgate Street appears to be a typical Georgian terraced house in Spitalfields, until you step through the front door and are swiftly transported back to the 18th century. Severs, originally from California, moved into the house in 1979 and took it upon himself to recreate the home of a fictitious family of Huguenot silk-weavers. Each eerie but beautiful candlelit room has a sense that the occupants have just popped out with half-eaten meals on the table, beds unmade and peculiar smells in the air. The attention to detail is staggering, verging on obsessive, with what Severs called his still-life drama blurring the lines between truth and imagination. Not to be missed.
Hunterian Museum
The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2
This free collection inside the Royal College of Surgeons consists of thousands of medical implements and specimens that range from the peculiar to the macabre. Following a recent £3m renovation, you can see everything from Churchill's dentures to anatomical tables from the 17th century and more pickled internal organs than you probably ever wanted to see in one lifetime.
Spa London
York Hall leisure centre, Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green, London E2
London's first public-sector day spa in Bethnal Green is surprisingly luxurious and certainly worth a try. The Turkish baths that originally stood on the site have been restored and renovated leaving you to enjoy a fabulous relaxing three-hour thermal spa experience for only £20.
Women's Library
London Metropolitan University, Old Castle Street, London E1
A part of the London Metropolitan University, the Women's Library has a fantastic and unique collection of books and articles relating to the subject of women. They have a reading room open to the public and currently have a special exhibition running until April on women's magazines and their readers.
Chislehurst Caves
Old Hill, Chislehurst, BR7
Get the train from London Bridge and pop out at Chislehurst where, somewhat unexpectedly, you can spend the next 45 minutes with a tour guide and an oil lantern in a 22-mile maze of man-made underground caves. Hear about the caves' associations with the Romans, Druids and Kent Mushroom Company from your guide (who unnervingly refers to the outside world as "topside").These amazing caves played a vital role during the blitz, providing shelter and safety for thousands of families.
Fitzroy House
Fitzroy House, 35-37 Fitzroy Street, Camden, London W1T
If the fact that George Bernard Shaw once lived in this original late 18th-century house in the heart of Fitzrovia wasn't enough, there are more reasons to visit. This is also the former home of L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, but who was also, staggeringly, "a professional in over two dozen fields including photography, horticulture, sea captaining, music making and exploration", as well as the holder of the Guinness Book of World Records' title for most published author (1,084 publications to be precise). To join one of the free tours, call in advance, but be prepared for a rather strange experience as you learn a myriad of peculiar facts about Hubbard.
Wilton's Music Hall
Graces Alley, off Ensign Street, London E1
Described as a 'crumbling pleasure', Wilton's Music Hall is the world's oldest and last surviving grand music hall and now runs an eclectic range of events including opera, theatre and concerts, as well as guided tours for a fiver. The venue has an incredible history, being used as a shelter during the blitz, a rag warehouse in the 50s and saved from demolition by Sir John Betjeman in the 60s. It is falling apart, so hurry to see it before it's lost forever.
The great thing about London, if you take the time to explore it, is that there is always something new and exciting to discover. Book flights to London [http://www.skyscanner.net/flights/uk/lond/cheapest-flights-from-united-kingdom-to-london.html] and take a look at just some of the hidden and secret gems the city has to offer, away from camera happy visitors and the rest of the world!
St Mary's Secret Garden
50 Pearson Street, London E2
St Mary's Secret Garden, offers educational and therapeutic sessions to any who are interested. This little green haven lies in an unlikely Hackney location, displaying natural woodland, a fragrant herb garden and rich vegetable beds currently sprouting kale, winter lettuces and brussel-sprouts. Local residents all have keys to the garden, while the rest of the city can visit for free between 9am and 5pm on Mondays to Fridays. The friendly green-fingered team at St Mary's are also starting a 10-week gardening course. Great green fun.
Secret Cinema
Anywhere
If a visit to the same old soulless multiplex cinema has lost its appeal and you're fed up of paying daft amounts of cash for a ticket, then sign up for the phenomenon that is Secret Cinema. Each month you turn up at an unusual destination to watch a film, often with special guests and intriguing live installations. Recent nights have included a screening of Lindsay Anderson's classic 60s film If at Dulwich College and Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park in a disused railway tunnel. Last month's offering was the Marx brothers' A Night at the Opera, shown at the Hackney Empire complete with musical accompaniment, boiled sweets and an operatic rendition from Pagliacci. You never know what the film will be until you get there but that's the best part!
The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art
39a Canonbury Square, London N1
The stylish Estorick Collection is housed in a Grade II-listed Georgian building in Islington. It's stuffed full of Italian art dating from 1890 to the 1950s with a permanent exhibition with a focus on futurism; an Italian movement based on an admiration for modernity, speed and technology. Other highlights include a series of breath taking drawings by Modigliani and a handsome collection of sculptures. After a good nose round the gallery, it's worth stopping for a coffee in the secluded courtyard café around the back.
Dennis Severs House
18 Folgate Street, Tower Hamlets, London E1
Number 18 Folgate Street appears to be a typical Georgian terraced house in Spitalfields, until you step through the front door and are swiftly transported back to the 18th century. Severs, originally from California, moved into the house in 1979 and took it upon himself to recreate the home of a fictitious family of Huguenot silk-weavers. Each eerie but beautiful candlelit room has a sense that the occupants have just popped out with half-eaten meals on the table, beds unmade and peculiar smells in the air. The attention to detail is staggering, verging on obsessive, with what Severs called his still-life drama blurring the lines between truth and imagination. Not to be missed.
Hunterian Museum
The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2
This free collection inside the Royal College of Surgeons consists of thousands of medical implements and specimens that range from the peculiar to the macabre. Following a recent £3m renovation, you can see everything from Churchill's dentures to anatomical tables from the 17th century and more pickled internal organs than you probably ever wanted to see in one lifetime.
Spa London
York Hall leisure centre, Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green, London E2
London's first public-sector day spa in Bethnal Green is surprisingly luxurious and certainly worth a try. The Turkish baths that originally stood on the site have been restored and renovated leaving you to enjoy a fabulous relaxing three-hour thermal spa experience for only £20.
Women's Library
London Metropolitan University, Old Castle Street, London E1
A part of the London Metropolitan University, the Women's Library has a fantastic and unique collection of books and articles relating to the subject of women. They have a reading room open to the public and currently have a special exhibition running until April on women's magazines and their readers.
Chislehurst Caves
Old Hill, Chislehurst, BR7
Get the train from London Bridge and pop out at Chislehurst where, somewhat unexpectedly, you can spend the next 45 minutes with a tour guide and an oil lantern in a 22-mile maze of man-made underground caves. Hear about the caves' associations with the Romans, Druids and Kent Mushroom Company from your guide (who unnervingly refers to the outside world as "topside").These amazing caves played a vital role during the blitz, providing shelter and safety for thousands of families.
Fitzroy House
Fitzroy House, 35-37 Fitzroy Street, Camden, London W1T
If the fact that George Bernard Shaw once lived in this original late 18th-century house in the heart of Fitzrovia wasn't enough, there are more reasons to visit. This is also the former home of L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, but who was also, staggeringly, "a professional in over two dozen fields including photography, horticulture, sea captaining, music making and exploration", as well as the holder of the Guinness Book of World Records' title for most published author (1,084 publications to be precise). To join one of the free tours, call in advance, but be prepared for a rather strange experience as you learn a myriad of peculiar facts about Hubbard.
Wilton's Music Hall
Graces Alley, off Ensign Street, London E1
Described as a 'crumbling pleasure', Wilton's Music Hall is the world's oldest and last surviving grand music hall and now runs an eclectic range of events including opera, theatre and concerts, as well as guided tours for a fiver. The venue has an incredible history, being used as a shelter during the blitz, a rag warehouse in the 50s and saved from demolition by Sir John Betjeman in the 60s. It is falling apart, so hurry to see it before it's lost forever.
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