Many of our London walks focus on the one square mile of the City of London.

Walks that take in this area include The Secret City London Walking Tour that snakes its way through the old lanes and alleyways at the heart of the City.

However, there is more to London than its history for the City of London is a thriving hub of commerce and as a world class City it encompasses some terrific, not so terrific and downright awful architecture.

Take the Barbican for example. There really is nothing quite like the Barbican development. in all British architecture. It brings together several of the favoured concepts of radical post-war planning: a traffic free housing precinct linked by elevated walkways towered over by multi-functional mega-structures. In short, it is the City of London’s futuristic district and several of our Walks will help you discover it.

A hundred years ago, however, this area was very, very different. It comprised an area of terraced housing mixed with some office buildings and a large number of clothing warehouses and factories. London Wall, the main road that connects Moorgate with Aldersgate Street, and which today is a major thoroughfare ended at Wood Street.

London walks through the Blitz.

All that was changed on the 29th September 1940 when the bombs of the blitz rained down and devastated this neighbourhood. This night of destruction was described in our earlier London walks blitz blog.

By the end of the Second World War the bombing had razed the area and left it as a wasteland through which, it is said, you could walk for over half a mile without seeing a single standing building.

In the years that immediately followed the War the Corporation of London began planning a new commercial development to replace what had been lost.

But concerns were expressed about the depopulation of the City of London and Duncan Sandys, the Government Minister for Housing and Local Government, proposed, rather of a commercial development, a genuine residential development that would incorporate schools, shops open spaces and amenities even if it meant “forgoing a more remunerative return on the land.”

The proposal was accepted and in 1959 the site was purchased by the Corporation of London and the London County Council.

Clearance of the site began in 1960 and the building work commenced in 1963 to the design of the architectural practice of Chamberlaine, Powell and Bon whose stated aim was, rather nicely, to create “a coherent residential precinct in which people can live both conveniently and with pleasure.”

Part of that pleasure that we encounter on our City of London walks was the creation of “pedways,” raised walkways such as the ones that run above London Wall. The idea here was to elevate people high above the noisy, traffic-clogged streets allowing them to make their way between locations in good, clean air.

But by the 1970’s, when much of the development was completed such Utopian dreams had been forgotten and Commercial development had begun to creep through the area.

We’ll return to the theme of the Barbican in a later City of London walks blog so be sure to return here on a regular basis.