Yesterday's Open House tally was eight.
Here's a quick summary.
• The one where the organiser glared at me for walking through the door at 10am because she wasn't ready yet.
• The one which eventually degenerated into a local nostalgia reminiscence nodding session.
• The one where there was nobody on the front desk and I spent ten minutes wondering if I was trespassing around the building.
• The one with free tea and cake afterwards, but the tour stopped elsewhere so nobody went.
• The one where I scarpered before the vicar launched into a long lecture.
• The one where the bloke on the front desk had done his own information sheet but spelt 'Cubitt' wrong in two different ways.
• The one with the bottled aphrodisiacs and sponges.
• The one that smelled of relentless butchery.
Let's do four of those in more detail (not necessarily in the above order).
Sometimes when checking through the Open House building list you stop and think "really? ooh!" In this case the trigger was the possibility of entering the private world of Smithfield meat market, not just walking between the impressive painted ironwork of Grand Avenue. "There will be a tour route setup up through the East side of the building that visitors can walk through on their own", it said, with the choice of peeking in on Friday or Saturday from 4pm, after hours. Nobody turned up to give a spiel or dish out information, we just pushed through the flapping plastic strips and entered the private world of the fleshmongers.
Smithfield's East and West Market Halls were designed by Sir Horace Jones, opened in 1868 and are of course Grade II* listed. Each building is about 90m long with a central passageway called Buyers Walk, and shielded beneath a high ribbed ceiling supported on iron columns. To either side are moppable bays and refrigerated counters, each belonging to a long-established family business specialising in the wholesale meat trade: Absalom & Tribe, Warman & Gutteridge, Gee & Webb, Reeve & Co, take your pick.
It certainly reeks of meat, like a particularly potent high street butchers, even on a non-trading day after everything's been scrubbed down. Glass fronted counters lie empty, heavy trolleys sit idle and rolls of plastic wrap await Monday's custom. The larger units have little kiosks where the cashier sits (We Do Not Take Amex), some emblazoned with seriously retro posters for Scotch Lamb, Danish Crown and Cole Valley Bacon. I spotted a discarded receipt for £44 of beef on a bloodstained plastic tray, also a nameless chunk of meat inert on the concrete floor.
But all this is merely front of house. Each of the 22 units has a longer bay behind leading to a service corridor along the side of the building for easy access. Just one of these had its shutter up, clearly revealing a strip-lit room with carcasses hanging from individual steel hooks attached to some kind of pulley system on the ceiling. I think the meat was pork, also the bagged haunch ready-wrapped on the table, but I'm not an expert on identifying skinned animals fresh from the back of a lorry.
To be fair anyone can buy meat, poultry and provisions at Smithfield, it's open to the public by Charter, not just for Open House. Trading starts at 2am and they recommend arriving before 7am, partly because the whole range of stalls is open and partly because that's when the Congestion Charge kicks in. But the market's days are numbered after the City of London announced its intention to close the halls by 2028, no longer with any proposed replacement out at Dagenham. The traders will still sell game and mutton elsewhere and the buildings will be transformed into a "cultural and commercial hub" of some kind, yet to be determined, to complement the adjacent London Museum. They've suggested a focus on food so it could be Spitalfields on steroids, or worse, but I'm glad I saw it when it was a down-to-earth flogger of meat, no airs, no graces. [10 photos]
Students at Guy's Hospital (officially King's College London GKT School of Medical Education) have access to a splendid little repository of bones and belljars tucked away round the back of the Memorial Gardens. It was partitioned from the main library in 2007 but is rammed with so many wooden cases that it looks every inch an Edwardian original. I was expecting human body parts for medical teaching but the specimens are animals of all kinds, from armadillos to bottled Spanish Fly beetles and from penguins to an extinct marsupial wolf. Pharmaceuticals also get a look-in, notably a very early batch of insulin, plus a rare French 3D plaster model labelled Do Not Touch The Snail.
It's all a bit higgledy, so case 45 with the boa constrictor isn't necessarily anywhere near case 46 with the midwife toad. But the curator knows where everything is, indeed I was desperately impressed when she identified the species of the baby elephant skeleton purely from the shape of the ridges on its teeth. She also said the university's lucky to have a collection of this size because it'd be nigh impossible to assemble it today, especially after the end of an informal arrangement they once had with London Zoo. Be sure to sign the Visitors Book on the way out.
These two sumptuous mansions bookend Belgravia Square, Romania at number 1 and Argentina across the road at number 49. One's an ambassadorial residence and the other a cultural institute, so don't bring your visa request to either.
Argentina's is the finer building, a detached villa entered via an octagonal hall beneath a flapping blue and white flag. Downstairs is used for entertaining with a cream-panelled dining room and two loungier spaces, all fully chandeliered, complete with a blazing fire and a fully-stocked spirits collection. It was easy to imagine diplomatic shenanigans on the comfy chairs, also just a bit special to be swanning around freely like you were an important guest.
Over in Romania the focus was art, not negotiation, with two contemporary exhibitions gracing the walls and a piano recital ready to begin in the salon upstairs. The building looked more interesting though, sorry, especially the gorgeous swirling staircase climbing three duck-egg-blue storeys beneath an elliptical skylight. As with many other properties hereabouts it was originally a private residence, the Romanians arriving in 1936 and the ambassador moving out to Kensington in 2005. But at least here you could easily tell which country was being celebrated, whereas the Argentine residence seemingly had more nods to London and classical Europe than to the land of beef and tango.
I'll tell you about the other four venues later, also those I hope to visit today. Meanwhile this year's Open House album on Flickr is now up to 58 photos, and to help you out I've put the newest at the start.
