Flâneurs

[Image: To the left, a blank, circular white sign with a red border. To the right, a black-bordered white rectangle painted onto brickwork as a street sign, reading "Borough of Holborn / Leigh Place / E.C.1."]

While replying to rydra_wong's comment on our introductions post, I realised that most of my wanders these days are quite meticulously planned. So I decided to do an unplanned one for once.

Taking inspiration from azuire's comment on the same post, I decided to pick two streets that are alphabetically consecutive. I needed to get to Leicester Street, just off Leicester Square, to meet some friends, so decided to look at the index of my London A-Z and start my journey at whichever street was alphabetically next, and on the same page as (or an adjacent page to) my destination. This turned out (photo of A-Z index) to be Leigh Place in Holborn.

Looking it up on the map, I was quite excited to see that Leigh Place is a tiny alleyway that I would never have been likely to visit otherwise (map showing Leigh Place). Hurrah for flaneurs!

The first interesting discovery of the walk was actually on the way to the starting point from Chancery Lane Station — the entrance to the south courtyard of the Parish Church of Saint Alban the Martyr (photo and some extra info on the church). Unfortunately Leigh Place, just along the street from here, wasn't hugely exciting in itself, though the street sign (pictured above) is a little curious, since it references the (Metropolitan) Borough of Holborn, which hasn't existed since 1965 (the area is now part of the London Borough of Camden).

Wandering vaguely westwards and southwards, I passed the Cittie of Yorke on High Holborn (photo of pub sign and view down High Holborn towards the Gherkin), some decorative chimney pots on Chancery Lane (photo), and the Twinings Tea Museum on the Strand (photo). I also got to compare a City of Westminster lamp post (photo) with a St Martin-in-the-fields one (photo).

Passing a stand of Boris bikes, I thought it was worth photographing them since even though they're familiar to Londoners, they probably aren't to the rest of you (photo and some commentary). Then excitement struck! I walked past the premises where there used to be a really nice tea shop (which closed last year), and discovered that a new tea shop (photo) had appeared to fill the gap. So I had a pot of silver needles before continuing on my journey, which got increasingly tourist-filled from this point on, so I will stop here.

(I made a Flickr photoset with more photos and a bit more commentary, and a Google map of roughly where I walked.)