The Secret Rooms of St Paul's Cathedral

London Asst editor Matt Brown recently got to go on a behind-the-scenes tour of simples Cathedral to see some parts of the amazing building which are rarely seen by the public our guide for the day was Oliver Kuro who immediately explained that there are so many parts of the Cathedral but some are still unknown even to him I spent my first year every fortnight just deliberately going to find a bit of the Cathedral that I hadn't found before and in fact our clockworks found a room that no one knew existed I haven't had that pleasure yet but maybe maybe our first stop though was up the staircase which you might recognize from Harry Potter films but it took us to the clock room just in time to hear the bells ring you can still hear the hum clan here in the background and then we took our first steps outside onto the roof and discovered some real London that is 300 years of London this is calcium carbonate this is the stuff of limestone dissolved in sulfuric acid mouth acid rain and redeposited here but it's black because that is the coal in London Oliver took us along a lot of thin narrow corridors as we climbed higher and got up to something a little bit scary above the choir here so don't get worried but you're already church floor what we're standing on intricately designed and built by Wren it's just 9 inches thick and Oliver removed a peg to reveal a hole down into which you can see something quite amazing I don't know if the camera can pick this up but there's a hole and and it goes straight down to the choir below and we're right over the book of remembrance down there I can see it here was us earlier down on the floor of the Cathedral looking up at the same hole and that is really frightening I don't know if your camera can pick that up there was still further to climb and involved going outside again which meant we got some great views believe it or not we're on the roof of st. Paul's Cathedral not the dome roof of course but the one of the lower roofs but it's no less spectacular you can see for miles so look behind the saints and apostles on the on the wall of the building you might remember it from the Mary Poppins song feed the birds the Saints and apostles looking down on the bird woman it's John the Baptist on the left after which we climbed up yet more stairs and eventually got to the ps2 resistance this door is really heavy so when you're ready I'm going to open it and then if you can dive through there's a set of steps right on the inside so just be careful okay I'm very scared about this but this is fine my hand on the other side of the door we found ourselves inside the dome of st. Paul's Cathedral this is scary when you think about what we're stood on what's below us and you just have to put your faith in 400 year old engineering 3 who's camping we call this ornamental gallery for reasons lost in the night but this was part of the tourist experience of London really for me to be able to come up here in the 16th 17th century so this handrail was put in so that people could come up here and enjoy this remarkable experience I know you're a really enjoyable of the view down but also the scale of the building outside

Channel: Londonist Ltd

Views: 298,258

Keywords: london, St Paul's Cathedral (Building), st pauls cathedr, londonist, geoff marshall, secret london

Id: m71G-PjdIpQ

Length: 3min 59sec (239 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 12 2014