Sunday 23 February 2014

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.

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