London’s hidden sights revealed

Press, 28 July 1987, Page 16

London’s hidden sights revealed

DONALD HIGGS

highlights some

of the lesser known tourist sights in London.

Buckingham Palace, The Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, Big Ben, The Old Operating Theatre. The Old Operating Theatre ...?

This “spooky” place may not be familiar to the hundreds of thousands of tourists who come to Britain’s capital each year. But it should be, says author David Brazil, in his new book, “Naked City — 150 Faces of Hidden London.”

Forget the great landmarks thronged with visitors and look instead behind the scences, in quiet comers for the real historical gems. That’s Brazil’s message for the visitor who wants to get away from the hordes. Take, for example, that Old Operating Theatre — it’s a wonderful place, only rediscovered in 1956 at St Thomas Street just south of the Thames and opposite Westminster. Here, until it was closed down and forgotten in 1862, students watched as surgeons hacked and sawed their patients. When the famous St Thomas’s Hospital moved from this site in 1871, the Old Operating theatre was bricked up. Now it’s open

to the public, in all its gory glory.

Down in the East End of London, in the area known as Bow, is another somewhat unpleasant sight — 130 very old and nasty looking Easter or “Hot Cross” buns, hanging from the ceiling of a pub! Each year, the British Royal Navy presents another bun to the landlord.

The tradition is a sad one. It began in the early part of the last century when the pub was a house owned by a widow — hence the pub’s name, The Widow’s Son. Her lad was due back from sea one Good Friday but never arrived. The poor woman had baked him a special batch of buns, as she did each Easter, of her life, hoping he would one day arrive. He never did.

The buns have stayed and are looking a little sorry for themselves. The pub is at 75 Devons Road, London E 3. In Whitehall — centre

of Britain’s various Government ministries — is, as Brazil says, “one of the Defence Ministry’s betterkept secrets.” This is Henry VIII’s wine cellar, deep below the pavement and open for visits on Saturday afternoons from March to September. The cellar, with Tudor roof, pillars and brickwork, was actually moved some 12 metres just after the Second World War when reconstruction at the Ministry was undertaken.

The whole vault was cloaked in a steel frame and nudged a quarter of an inch at a time on rollers to its present spot. In the "Swinging Sixties,” the King’s Road was the centre of fashion, food, and fads.

Now, the road is a pale shadow of its former self, but it has a hidden treasure. At first sight it looks like a little-used private garden. It is, in fact a graveyard reached via a small wooden gate-

way next to the Water Rat pub. Here are the tombs of 400 Moravians, a Protestant sect launched in the fifteenth century in Bohemia. Having fled from persecution, many settled in London — in the King's Road area and

in 1750, an aristocrat bought them a house and the plot of land for their burials. —Copyright DUO. "Naked City — 150. Faces of Hidden London," by David Brazil, published by Macdonald Queen Anne Press, London.