London Calling. London Walks connecting. This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead. Story time. History time.
Here’s a London secret.
A very good London secret.
One of those glorious little discoveries that make you feel you’ve somehow slipped through a crack in the guidebooks.
Tomorrow, for one day only, one of London’s oldest and most fascinating institutions throws open its doors.
Free.
No booking.
Just wander in.
And hardly anybody will.
Millions of people know Burlington House.
Well… they think they do.
They stream through the gates to the Royal Academy.
Perfectly understandable.
But tucked alongside the Royal Academy are several learned societies. Wonderful institutions that have spent centuries quietly expanding human knowledge.
And one of them is very close to my heart.
The Society of Antiquaries of London.
Now don’t let the name put you off.
“Antiquary.”
It sounds faintly alarming.
As if admission requires a beard, a tweed jacket and strong opinions about Roman roof tiles.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
An antiquary is really a detective.
Only instead of solving yesterday’s crime…
He or she solves yesterday.
Every old building.
Every ruined abbey.
Every Roman coin.
Every Saxon brooch.
Every weathered inscription.
Every fragment of stained glass.
Every broken pot.
Every ancient map.
Every one asks a question.
Who made me?
Why?
When?
And what can I still tell you?
Those are the questions the Society has been asking for more than three hundred years.
It was founded in 1707.
Think where Britain was then.
Queen Anne sat on the throne.
The Act of Union had only just brought England and Scotland together.
St Paul’s Cathedral was still a newcomer on London’s skyline.
Daniel Defoe hadn’t yet published Robinson Crusoe.
The Georgian age hadn’t really begun.
And a handful of extraordinarily curious people decided Britain deserved a society devoted to understanding its past.
Not romanticising it.
Understanding it.
That’s a very different thing.
Because history isn’t nostalgia.
History is detective work.
It’s evidence.
It’s asking awkward questions.
It’s refusing to be satisfied with comforting myths.
The Society has been doing exactly that ever since.
And here’s the remarkable thing.
Almost everything you and I take for granted about Britain’s past…
Stonehenge.
Roman Britain.
Anglo-Saxon England.
Our medieval cathedrals.
Ancient monuments.
Historic buildings.
Much of the groundwork was laid by generations of Fellows of the Society.
Take Stonehenge.
In the early eighteenth century William Stukeley paced it out.
Measured it.
Drew it.
Recorded it with extraordinary care.
Thank goodness he did.
Because bits of Stonehenge disappeared afterwards.
His drawings preserve details that would otherwise have vanished forever.
Or think of the countless churches, castles, manor houses and ancient monuments that were carefully recorded before enthusiastic Victorian “improvements” altered them forever.
Memory can be fragile.
Stone is surprisingly fragile too.
One of the Society’s great achievements has been reminding Britain that the past isn’t infinitely renewable.
Once it’s gone…
It’s gone.
I sometimes think civilisation depends on people who care enough to ask one simple question.
“What are we in danger of losing?”
And then quietly get on with saving it.
The Society has had some extraordinary people among its Fellows.
Samuel Johnson.
You can almost hear him booming across the room.
Horace Walpole.
The man who gave us Strawberry Hill and virtually invented the Gothic Revival.
J. M. W. Turner.
Looking at old buildings with an artist’s eye.
T. E. Lawrence.
Lawrence of Arabia.
Mortimer Wheeler.
Perhaps the first archaeologist to become a genuine celebrity.
Nikolaus Pevsner.
Without whom we’d scarcely know how to look at Britain’s architecture.
Generation after generation of brilliant, curious, slightly obsessive people who’ve enlarged our understanding of these islands.
Which brings us back to Burlington House.
Oh my.
What a setting.
You leave bustling Piccadilly.
Black cabs.
Red buses.
The roar of London traffic.
Then you walk beneath that magnificent archway.
It’s almost theatrical.
Within seconds the city seems to lower its voice.
The courtyard opens before you.
History is all around you.
It’s more like being invited into the drawing room of three centuries of scholarship.
The atmosphere is unlike anywhere else in London.
You don’t feel hurried.
You feel welcomed.
Invited to look.
To wonder.
To be curious.
Tomorrow you can wander through the Society’s rooms at your own pace.
Browse exhibitions.
Admire remarkable treasures.
Meet Fellows.
Listen to a curator’s talk if you fancy.
Or simply soak up one of London’s most civilised atmospheres.
And here’s where this little London secret gets even better.
When you’ve had your fill…
Don’t go home.
Don’t even think about it.
Walk the hundred yards or so to Green Park Underground Station.
The Green Park exit.
At half past two…
Join London Walks’ Old Palace Quarter walk.
Because these two experiences belong together.
Beautifully together.
The Society gives you the scholarship.
London Walks gives you the city.
Inside Burlington House you’ll have seen the evidence.
Outside you’ll walk through the landscape that produced it.
St James’s.
Great houses.
Palaces.
Hidden streets.
Churchill.
Spencer House.
Royal intrigue.
Political gossip.
The sort of London that doesn’t shout.
It whispers.
One experience illuminates the other.
It’s rather like a relay race.
For three centuries the Society of Antiquaries has carried the lantern.
Gathering knowledge.
Preserving it.
Passing it on.
Tomorrow afternoon London Walks takes that lantern and carries it out into the streets where the history actually happened.
History inside.
History alive outside.
One remarkable institution.
One unforgettable walk.
A couple of hundred yards apart.
Now that is what I call making the most of a London Friday.
See you tomorrow.