Gray's Inn

The Original Cell

Bank · 0.6 miles

The library is first fire-proof building in the country. As a result, the cell doors weigh half a ton each and are cast iron in order to attempt any outbreak of fire. Cell was used to store documents and other archives.

Dr. Johnsons House

Bank · 0.6 miles

Dr Johnson's House is a writer's house museum in London in the former home of the 18th-century English writer and lexicographer Samuel Johnson. The house is a Grade I listed building.

Royal Courts of Justice

St Clement Danes · 0.6 miles

The Royal Courts of Justice, commonly called the Law Courts, is a court building in Westminster which houses the High Court and Court of Appeal of England and Wales. The High Court also sits on circuit and in other major cities. Designed by George Edmund Street, who died before it was completed, it is a large grey stone edifice in the Victorian Gothic Revival style built in the 1870s and opened by Queen Victoria in 1882. It is one of the largest courts in Europe. It is a Grade I listed building.

The Lion of Knidos

St Giles · 0.6 miles

A marble lion, larger than life and weighing six tonnes, stands on a plinth beneath the roof of the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court, forming part of the British Museum’s collection. Carved from the same Pentelic marble that built the Parthenon, the recumbent figure measures 2.89 metres in length and 1.82 metres in height; only its lower jaw and front legs are absent, and the eyes were probably once set with glass inlays. The statue originally topped a square funerary monument with a stepped pyramidal top, a form that has prompted scholarly debate over its date, ranging from the mid-fourth century BC to the second-century BC, with the museum currently estimating a creation period of 200–250 BC. The lion was first observed by the archaeologist Richard Popplewell Pullan in 1858 while he assisted Charles Thomas Newton in excavations near the ancient port of Knidos, now close to Datça in Turkey. After the monument collapsed, the marble lion was recovered, transported along the coast and loaded onto HMS Supply by Robert Murdoch Smith before being shipped to London. Since 2000 it has been displayed prominently in the museum’s Great Court. In 2008 the Turkish town of Datça lodged a formal request with the British Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the statue’s return. The monument is listed in OpenStreetMap as a historic feature near the St Giles area of London.

Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice

West Smithfield · 0.6 miles

A collection of ceramic tablets in Postman’s Park commemorates ordinary individuals who died while saving others, ensuring their deeds are not forgotten. The monument stands in the City of London, close to West Smithfield, and forms part of the park’s historic setting. Visitors can view the wall of tiles arranged in three visible rows, with the original 24 De Morgan tablets occupying the central row, a second row of later additions above, and a fourth row added in 1908 below. The design includes a 50-foot wooden loggia that shelters the wall, and the tiles record fifty-four incidents ranging from a police officer’s bravery to a schoolboy’s sacrifice. Although the original plan allowed for 120 tablets, work ceased in 1931 with 53 in place; a further tablet was added in 2009, marking the first new addition in 78 years. The memorial’s development began with a proposal by painter-sculptor George Frederic Watts in 1887, later revived by St Botolph’s vicar Henry Gamble in 1898. After Watts’s death, his widow Mary Watts oversaw the project until work stopped in the early 1930s. Subsequent tiles were produced by William De Morgan, Royal Doulton and, more recently, in the Royal Doulton style. Access to the site is via the public pathways of Postman’s Park; wheelchair access is limited, and no admission fee or visitor facilities are recorded. The monument remains open to the public as part of the park’s landscape.

St Paul's Churchyard

West Smithfield · 0.6 miles

The area surrounding St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London has served as a public space with a long commercial and civic history. Historically the precinct incorporated St Paul’s Cross, an open-air pulpit where statements on the political and religious changes of the Reformation were proclaimed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A single execution is recorded there: the hanging of clergyman Henry Garnet, one of the conspirators in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. By the early modern period the site functioned as one of London’s main marketplaces, and as of 2024 the narrow lane to the north of the cathedral grounds bears the name St Paul’s Churchyard. With the introduction of printing, the location became the focal point of England’s book trade before the activity shifted to nearby Paternoster Row. The trade was initially dominated by foreign booksellers; a 1484 act passed by Richard III’s only parliament encouraged their presence, and the king intervened to secure exemptions for printers and booksellers from later protectionist measures. The area is also mentioned by Alexander Pope in *An Essay on Criticism*, where he uses it as a literary reference. Today the site is classified as a park and is operated by St Paul’s Cathedral. It lies close to West Smithfield and can be reached on foot from surrounding streets. No admission fee or specific visitor facilities are listed, so access is unrestricted and the space forms part of the open environment surrounding the cathedral.