This morning I got to revisit one of my favourite London exhibits from my 2000 trip, Britain At War on Tooley Street. Not a single thing had changed since the last time I saw the exhibit last time, bar one or two new items in the gift shop and an extra quid or two on the admission charge (which is why the London Pass is a good thing). So it was really about soaking up the same atmosphere all over again, except that the simulated tube station bunks room was full of people watching some modern war documentary on a screen so that didn't really work for me this time. Still an interesting exhibit and worth seeing, but it lacked the punch of the first visit, and I cringe a bit at their use of Winston Churchill's name in the full title of the event...seems just a bit tacky.
On to a slightly lengthier visit of Southwark Cathedral than in 2000, though I still, sadly, didn't feel able to devote the suggested two hours to an audio tour of the place. Last time I wandered into the Cathedral purely by chance, and found an imminent organ recital had been cancelled at the last minute by a power failure that knocked out most of Southwark for a few crucial hours. This time I was able to take in a bit more of the ambience of the place, and saw the completed post-2000 Millennium building project on the north side, including an archeological display of various features of interest only discovered during excavation work in preparation for the new building in 1999, including part of an old Roman road, several stone coffins presumed to be 13th century, a portion of a 12th century wall and the only surviving example of a 17th century arched kiln in Northern Europe, complete with soot marks from the kiln up the 12th century wall! Nice. Inside the cathedral itself it was good to see the Shakespeare effigy being brightened up with fresh flowers, and they've clearly been busy cleaning up the indoor stonework, which is now a very healthy off-white colour, presumably as part of their imminent 100th birthday celebrations. Whilst there has been a building of worship on this site for more than a thousand years, connected to many luminaries from Chaucer to Shakespeare, it has been a priory and other things in the past, and only became the present cathedral in 1905. The Retro-Choir area survives more or less complete and was once the site of trials of various Protestant martyrs during the grim days of the reign of Mary Tudor.
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