The Best Wall

Tower Bridge from the Monument: The Best Bridge?

We took an architecturally themed walk in London's "Square Mile," from Saint Paul's Cathedral to the Tower on Saturday.  The walk zig-zags for five miles through the once medieval streets of the Old City of London.  Most of the actual medieval city was destroyed by the Great Fire in 1665, but the street plan remained close to its original geometry as the city was rebuilt by architects like Wren in the ensuing decades.  The famous Monument, a huge classical column designed by Wren, overlooks it all, and we climbed the 311 spiraling steps to the top to take in the view.

Along the way, we encountered St Mary's Wolnoth, the church which was a hotbed of anti-slavery movement in the late 18th century and where "Amazing Grace" was putatively first sung.  Our book told us that the north wall of this church is "certainly the best wall in Britain."   One tends to throw around a lot of questionable superlatives in London (the climb to the top of the Monument was "one of the most satisfying architectural experiences in the City"), but this one seemed to verge on absurd.  Nevertheless, thanks one's need to have seen the best of everything, we stood a while and appreciated what was indeed certainly a very interesting piece of architecture.  It's a wall.  Saint  Bernard said that if the wall is unbroken, it has no window.  But there are windows here, though the wall is unbroken, delightful windows that dance across the otherwise blank surface.  Grey, hidden, pigeon-dung encrusted, fabulous.

Saint Mary's Wolnoth: the best wall in Britain

But there are other walls in Britain in stiff competition for the Best.  One of them rings York.