Barrow Boys & Bankers

For groups who enjoy each other's company having morning coffee
and lunch together makes this a very sociable day out

Hear contrasting stories of rags and riches in London districts a stone’s throw from each other but worlds apart. In the morning take in the atmospheric streets and alleys of Spitalfields & Whitechapel, in the afternoon the story of banking in the Square Mile with a coach tour and a visit to the Bank of England Museum. If your group has already been to the Bank Museum we’ll take you to the new Modern London Galleries at the Museum of London instead - just let us know when you book.

We begin at 10-30am in a pub at the Liverpool Street end of Petticoat Lane for morning refreshments included in the tour fee. Then we embark on a comfortable amble when the legs are still fresh. For centuries the City was a closed shop where only Livery Company members could ply their trades. Foreigners, whether from Deptford or abroad, had to settle outside the walls. In 1685, Huguenots fleeing France brought silk weaving to Spitalfields just outside the Bishop’s Gate in the city walls. It is their grand houses, some of the best preserved early Georgian houses in the entire country; houses that over the next three centuries would be home to successive waves of new arrivals.

What an amazing area this is, quite unlike anywhere else in London and very photogenic. A soup kitchen for the Jewish poor, Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, the sites of some of the Ripper murders. By Victorian times the silk weavers’ houses had become crowded lodging houses where the poor could “sleep on a clothes line”.  The Huguenot chapel later became a synagogue and today is the Brick Lane mosque.

Our walk takes us nicely back to the pub for lunch included in the tour fee. Lunch is a choice of two or three pies, fish and chips, or a sandwich with soup or chips. Your members can make their lunch selection over morning coffee and it’ll be ready on their return.

By coach then for a short but sweet history of banking. By Elizabethan times the usury laws had been repealed and the Goldsmiths began lending money for interest. You’ll see the old banking signs that predate street numbering (and a literate population) including England’s oldest private bank at the sign of the golden bottle. We visit the Bank of England Museum where the story of the nation’s bank is elegantly presented with life like models of Georgian bank clerks, lavish settings, a pyramid of gold bars and nostalgic crisp white fivers.

Finally we’ll step across the road to an old banking hall turned pub where you can buy a cup of tea and biscuits before heading home at 4-45pm.

If you opt for the Museum of London Modern Galleries there are wonderful recreated shop fronts and imaginative displays and a cafe on site where your members can retreat to buy tea to round off an entertaining day out.

The walking on this day is suitable for all those who can still make it to the shop and back for a newspaper.

This trip is available Monday to Friday only throughout the year

Adults & Seniors: £18.95

Price valid 1st April 2012 to 31st March 2013

Coach Mileage: 5

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