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The photographs below have been included to give potential visitors a taste of the many marvellous sights in City of London,  in the immediate vicinity of the Clockmakers’ Company Museum at Guildhall. They can all be enjoyed at no cost—and there are many more.

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1. Christopher Wren’s magnificent St. Paul’s cathedral, within a few minutes of the Clock Room.

 

2. Shakespeare’s bust crowns the memorial to John Heming and Henry Condell, situated 30 yards from the Clock Room windows, in the churchyard of St. Mary’s, Aldermanbury. Heminge and Condell were “fellow actors and personal friends of Shakespeare” who “lived  for many years in this parish and are buried here.” The memorial commemorates the fact that they collected and published the works of Shakespeare after his death and “gave them to the world”.  Also in the churchyard are the mortal remains of the notorious 17th century Judge Jefferies, who had a house in Aldermanbury.

St. Mary’s church was one of the many rebuilt after the Great Fire of London of 1666. Tragically it was wrecked a second time during the Second World War. The surviving stones were later removed to Fulton, Missouri, U.S.A. and there reconstructed Only the footings of the mediaeval church now remain.

 

3. The Bank of England, two or three minutes from the Clock Room, contains a free Museum, including machinery for engraving the plates for bank notes and gleaming gold bars.

 

4. Bow Lane, an ancient narrow City street, a short walk from the Clock Room, laid out on Roman building rubble in the 10th century, and where property alignments to this day are consistent with those of the 13th century

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5. Ancient and modern: a bastion of the mediaeval City Wall, with exciting modern steel and glass office buildings rising into the sky behind.

 

6. Bronze statue of Captain John Smith “Citizen and Cordwainer, first among the leaders of the settlement in Jamestown Virginia”. Smith died in 1631, the year that the Clockmakers were granted their Charter. Behind is the church of St. Mary le Bow. To be considered a true “Cockney” a Londoner must have been born within the sound of  St. Mary’s bells.

 

7. “The Monument”  photographed against the night sky. Erected near Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire of London broke out in 1666, the 200 foot Monument is decorated with reliefs by Cibber of the fire itself, and the rebuilding of the City. The view from the top is spectacular.

 

8. The “Millennium Measure”, by Joanna Migdal. Situated beneath the north end of the Millennium Bridge, it was presented to the City of London by the Worshipful Company of Scientific Instrument Makers to record the history of the City and the progress of  Science and Religion over 1000 years.

 

9. A bust of Admiral Phillip “Founder and first Governor of Australia” in Watling Street.

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