For completeness' sake, Saturday's three other Open House visits.
Open House:The Law Society (Chancery Lane) The Bicentennial One
A big anniversary is often an excuse to open up your historic HQ for Open House, which'll be why the 200-year-old Law Society chose to welcome visitors this year. They also did things properly with a free 24-page tour booklet and a full-colour double-sided map so you didn't get lost on the way round, because you'd expect nothing less from solicitors. They're based halfway down Chancery Lane, just round the corner from the Royal Courts of Justice, in the grand classical building with the gold lions on the fenceposts. The walk-through tour of their abode kicked off with the Reading Room, where 19th century lawyers would have networked while perusing the newspapers, before continuing to four other equally splendid (and hireable) spaces.
The blue Wedgwood frieze above the Library complements shelves and shelves of referential leatherbound volumes. The stained glass in the Common Room is partially Tudor and the fireplace is de Morgan. The Grand Staircase sweeps upwards and is conveniently located for the Six Clerks restaurant. The portrait hanging in the David Lloyd George Room commemorating the royal visit for the 150th anniversary looked so impressively unlike the Queen I'd have taken it down. And if you'd played your cards right you could have moved on from here to Lincoln's Inn and spent an entire half day absorbing all things legal, rather than traipsing out to the suburbs like what I did.
Emanuel Swedenborg was an 18th century Swedish scientist, philosopher and general polymath who, at the age of 57, had a vision in a London tavern and refocused his life on all things spiritual. He wrote copiously on theological matters, including his revelatory work Apocalypse Revealed, inspiring William Blake and a horde of followers long after his mortal death. The Swedenborg Society has been based in a former Georgian house in Bloomsbury since 1925, which is why when you walk in it looks like a bookshop with a coffee counter and a rare bullseye window.
Beyond is a lecture hall with seating for 100, also a gallery but that was closed pending a new exhibition opening on Friday, should you fancy dropping in then. A green Doulton-tiled staircase leads down to a spooky basement, close to the rumble of the Central line, and up to a library of original volumes, plaster skulls and a table Swedenborg supposedly sat at. They tried to sell me a book about his life in the way out, and it must be quite a tale given so many still pay so much attention so many years later.
In 2010 I spent Open House weekend going round several Town Halls, and was particularly unimpressed by Brent's because the vibe was 'brown' and because the building was about to close in favour of a newbuild nearer Wembley Stadium. Five years later the town hall was reborn as a French private school and ten years on it was open again for Open House so I went back. I was a lot more impressed this time, not least because I was shown round by a senior member of staff and a student demonstrating their language skills.
The council chamber became an assembly hall, the council suite an examinations room and the mayor's parlour, fairly predictably, the headteacher's office. Not everything fitted in so the Science department was accommodated in a new annexe where gas taps and fume cupboards were more easily engineered. The marble staircase is far more elegant than an educational establishment would be gifted these days, and indeed more slippery, but when you run a school in a listed building you can't change too much and the whole thing can become a practical headache. The 1930s civic safe is still in situ for example, halfway down a freshly-accessible ramped corridor, because it resisted all attempts to get it out.
We ended up on the roof, as so many Open House tours do, where a glass pavilion doubles as a staffroom and a long green terrace provides space for al fresco marking. Wembley's arch can be plainly seen close by, although not the stadium because that's disappeared behind flats since the school opened. I also liked the way that the BT Tower aligned almost perfectly beside the Shard, iconic twins on the far horizon, although I doubt many pupils will have noticed the near-conjunction. "Did you get your biro?" asked the gatekeeper on my way out and oui, certainement.
