The City of London
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On Friday June 24th, the year 12 finance and business classes had the opportunity to have a guided tour of the City of London, courtesy of Mr. Jones & Mr. Shepherd. We parked at the O2 and got the London Underground to London Bridge station. Outside, our first views were the remarkable Shard and then London Bridge. London Bridge provides outstanding views of the City of London also called the Square Mile, the traditional centre of London’s finance and business. London Bridge was the most important crossing of the Thames, the reason London exists. The present bridge replaced a bridge which was re-erected in the USA in the middle of the Arizona desert! It was rumoured they bought the wrong one…..they wanted the one that goes up and down, Tower Bridge!
The traffic of all the boats under the ‘new’ bridge makes you realise how vital the river is to the life of Londoners to this day. Our second stop off was the Monument designed by Wren to commemorate the Fire of London in 1664. We saw where The Fire started, as all primary school children know, in Pudding Lane.
Our main item on the agenda was to go to the Bank of England Museum. Once at the Museum we began to explore the history behind the institution and the role it played in the history of the world. Naturally, we all tried to lift the gold bar on display with varying degrees of success. You can see here a photo of Mr Jones flexing his muscles. After becoming completely familiar with the history and role of the Uk’s central bank we exited via the gift shop! On our way to lunch we passed Lloyds insurance building which curiously had all its insides built on the outside so there’d be no interruption to the work inside if something goes wrong. Genius. Walking around the old famous streets of London the only thing we didn’t see was Dick Whittington’s cat.
It was truly an incredible thing to experience all that history in one place. Aside from history, business and finance we also got in a bit of criminology ( a site where one of Jack the Ripper’s victims was found, Mitre Square) and English Literature (where Bill Sykes fell to his death in Oliver Twist, Butlers Wharf). A walk over Tower Bridge (thankfully the Americans didn’t buy it) and we were back to London Bridge Station and on our way home. Arguably no place on earth has more history besides perhaps Rome. I cannot wait to go back and explore some more.
Written by Connor Tobin
Year 12.
