It’s unsurprising that a city as old as London has such an abundance of narrow alleys and tucked away lanes.
Many are well trod, the oldest and most attractive, tourist attractions in their own right, developing a kind of ‘film set’ quality over the years.
But there is a lane hidden off the Strand that is almost never visited but has atmosphere stamped all over it. This is Strand Lane, which runs parallel with Surrey Street.
True, it does feature in Secret London’ guide books because it contains an interesting oddity. An original Roman bath which apparently Charles Dickens used to bathe in. Sadly, neither is true. This so-called bath is actually the remains of a cistern built in 1612 to feed a fountain in the gardens of old Somerset House that stood nearby. At some stage over the years someone described it as a genuine Roman bath to get publicity and the name stuck.
But the somewhat sinister atmosphere of Strand Lane comes from another time. At the top where it meets the Strand, a pub once stood. It was the Duck and Drake and sometime during 1605, thirteen co-conspirators secretly met here to discuss a deed so wicked, that it has gone down in English history as one of the country’s most infamous events.
These men were involved in the Gunpowder Plot, the plan to murder King James I while he addressed Parliament.
Visit Strand Lane on a dark day in November and you can almost feel treachery hanging in the cold air and imagine Guy Fawkes, the man chosen to carry out the evil deed, lounging in the shadows smoking his pipe, his face lit my an eerie glow.
And if this isn’t enough to run a chill down your spine, the slightly odd looking building at the north of the Lane was in the 18th century, the site of St Clements Watch House, where watchmen kept a nightly vigil on a nearby graveyard to guard against the grisly practice of grave robbing by body snatchers.
Courtesy of Wikipedia. A late 17th- or early 18th-century report of the plot.