To start: Open House is a very big deal to me. It’s basically my favourite weekend of the year. I was trying to explain it to my new boss – who had known me for all of six weeks by this point – and she said ‘you’re so excited, it’s like Christmas’ and she’s right. It’s like the whole city is there as a present.
You know, once upon a time, I considered – seriously considered – moving out of London. HA HA HA HA.
I’ve done Open House six or seven times now (with a few years’ break when I was always in Cornwall on holiday at the time) and I have got much better at planning it over time, which I will now demonstrate. Previously my record of sites was 9 over two days – not too shabby, and still enough to get me strange looks – but this year I managed THIRTEEN sites over the weekend.
It was amazing. I had such a great time. The planning process, if anyone’s interested, runs like this:
1) Get book and go through, marking everything that looks interesting.
2) Go through again a few days later and narrow it down, discounting anything that requires pre-booking (not a bad thing but I like having flexibility), and/or is open to the public at other times. 3) Plot remaining sites on a Google map to work out where they all are in relation to each other. 4) Add info to map points about opening times.
5) Work out travel times/distances between sites combined with opening times to make final decision.
I started off on Saturday morning getting stuck at Lewisham station after the doors stopped working on my train. I noticed a new apartment building that had appeared from nowhere behind Matalan, but this is Lewisham, where new apartment buildings appear at a rate of one a month. Eventually a new train turned up and I headed off to Custom House, currently used by HMRC and previously where customs duties were collected when ships came in to London.
It’s an imposing building, built in the early 19th century (with some rebuilding since), and inside it looks like most older buildings still in use in London – mostly normal but then with some really interesting period features, in this case the Long Room (190 feet long, in fact) - now in use as a very very big open plan office - and some big staircases. There were also some interesting displays on things confiscated by customs (including rare animals) and the different aspects of HMRC’s work now. Sadly they’re only open to the public for Open House.
You know, once upon a time, I considered – seriously considered – moving out of London. HA HA HA HA.
I’ve done Open House six or seven times now (with a few years’ break when I was always in Cornwall on holiday at the time) and I have got much better at planning it over time, which I will now demonstrate. Previously my record of sites was 9 over two days – not too shabby, and still enough to get me strange looks – but this year I managed THIRTEEN sites over the weekend.
It was amazing. I had such a great time. The planning process, if anyone’s interested, runs like this:
1) Get book and go through, marking everything that looks interesting.
2) Go through again a few days later and narrow it down, discounting anything that requires pre-booking (not a bad thing but I like having flexibility), and/or is open to the public at other times. 3) Plot remaining sites on a Google map to work out where they all are in relation to each other. 4) Add info to map points about opening times.
5) Work out travel times/distances between sites combined with opening times to make final decision.
I started off on Saturday morning getting stuck at Lewisham station after the doors stopped working on my train. I noticed a new apartment building that had appeared from nowhere behind Matalan, but this is Lewisham, where new apartment buildings appear at a rate of one a month. Eventually a new train turned up and I headed off to Custom House, currently used by HMRC and previously where customs duties were collected when ships came in to London.
It’s an imposing building, built in the early 19th century (with some rebuilding since), and inside it looks like most older buildings still in use in London – mostly normal but then with some really interesting period features, in this case the Long Room (190 feet long, in fact) - now in use as a very very big open plan office - and some big staircases. There were also some interesting displays on things confiscated by customs (including rare animals) and the different aspects of HMRC’s work now. Sadly they’re only open to the public for Open House.
After Custom House I walked up to Tower Bridge to visit Tower Bridge House, a building constructed mostly of glass which looks a bit like the new front of Blackfriars station (also mostly glass). Slightly confusing at times tbh. Anyway, I’d decided to visit this site because the book talked about a ‘giant window’ that overlooked the Tower of London (not hard to do by Tower Bridge, admittedly) and it was energy efficient and all that. It was worth it, as the view was great and the construction of the building was interesting as well - really nice use of light and space:
No comments:
Post a Comment