The Mysterious Meeting on Blackfriars Bridge

When the bus to The Making of Harry Potter Warner Brothers Studio Tour returned to the Victoria Bus Station, I walked along Buckingham Palace Road from there to Victoria Street to visit Westminster Cathedral. The only connection that Westminster Cathedral has to Westminster Abbey is that they are both located in the part of London called Westminster and are both essentially on Victoria Street (although it is called Broad Sanctuary by the time it reaches the Abbey).

Westminster Cathedral is a Catholic Cathedral, built in the 19^th century in the neo-Byzantine style, influenced by the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, Turkey. It was that influence that made me curious to see it. The exterior is striped with white stone and red brick. The interior is covered with mosaics. The Hagia Sophia influence was the mosaics. Otherwise the basic floor plan of the cathedral was a standard, western, crucifix with side chapels and one long nave.

There was a very interesting glass coffin containing Saint John Southworth, who was a Catholic martyr in the 17^th century. He was hanged, drawn & quartered. But his pieces were gathered up, sewn together and parboiled to preserve them. I do have to admit that I was glad there was a gold mask over his face.

I took a taxi back to the hotel. A friend of mine, who had never been to London before, was supposed to be flying in that day and was going to contact me so we could get together for dinner. I waited for quite a while to hear from him and even tried texting him at one point. Unbeknownst to me, he was having some issues with his phone.

At about 8:20pm I received a text asking me to meet him in the middle of Blackfriars Bridge at 8:30pm. The only way I was going to make it in time was to take another cab. Fortunately, since the hotel was right next door to Charing Cross Rail Station, a line of taxis was always there ready to take folks coming into the station to their destinations. I leapt into one, apologized to the driver for the strange request I was about to make and sat back as I was taken to the bridge, arriving just in time to see my friend walking towards me.

Actually the driver spotted him before I did. I lowered the window and called out to him. Then I paid the driver and hopped out of the cab.

From the bridge, we headed up towards Fleet Street, but I wanted to show him the Temple first. By this time of night, there was only one entrance open and that was the entrance nearest to where we were. Not being a resident of the area, I explained to the person manning the guard house why I wanted to come in for a short time. She was fine with it and let us in.

The Temple had once belonged to the Knights Templar. The only vestige of their prior ownership was the Temple Church. The rest of the area that belonged to the Templars from the 12^th through the 14^th centuries had been taken over by two of the Inns of Court – the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple from the 14^th century on.

Wat Tyler had sacked the Temple during the late 14^th century Peasant’s Revolt. One of the Jack the Ripper suspects lived on King’s Bench Walk in the Temple. The War of the Roses began at the Temple when each side picked a rose from the Temple rose garden to symbolize their cause.

I knew my way around when coming in through the entrance under Prince Henry’s Rooms on Fleet Street. But I had never entered the Temple from this particular entrance before and so was unable to navigate the maze satisfactorily to get to the Temple Church from there. I was able to point out the rose garden and King’s Bench Walk however, and called it a day.

I had planned that we would eat at the George Pub, which was a very old, very traditional, half-timbered Elizabethan pub at about the spot where Fleet Street became The Strand. So I wasn’t in any big hurry as we sauntered along Fleet Street. I pointed out St Dunstan’s Church which was reportedly where Sweeney Todd hid the remains of his victims in the crypt (until the stench started coming up into the church).

I told him about the Great Fire stopping just before Prince Henry’s Rooms (so they were authentic to their time) and that Prince Henry would have been king instead of Charles I had he lived. What a difference in history that might have been.

We walked by the Griffin marking the border of the official City of London from the rest of London (and where Fleet Street became The Strand) and gazed at the Royal Courts of Justice (where civil trials are heard) before turning our attention to the George Pub. Although it still looked the same outside, it had radically changed its menu since I was there last (and probably had changed ownership too). It had gone from being a traditional pub with traditional pub food to being a trendy restaurant with trendy, and expensive, food.

So we walked a couple blocks further along The Strand and had our dinner at a café. We sat by the window and marveled about how we were hanging out in London instead of Minneapolis. Had I known that the George had changed, I would have taken him to the Olde Cock Tavern (16^th century) just a short distance before Prince Henry’s Rooms. I had wanted to show him a place with some real traditional English atmosphere. Oh well.

After dinner, we continued along The Strand, veering off to Trafalgar Square to take a look at it all lit up at night before getting a few groceries for him from the Sainsbury’s by my hotel and putting him into a cab at the Charing Cross rail station. He was staying in the part of town near Victoria Station.

Then I prepared for my flight home the following day. I thought it was a shame that we only had that one evening in common.

Next – some time spent at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia where Confederate General Robert E Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S Grant to end the American Civil War.

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