Round 2 - Places
Right then, let's get down to it shall we. Here are the candidates (And I warn you, this will be spammy)
1 THE GUILDHALL
This is the ceremonial centre of administration both for the City of London and for the Corporation through which the Lord Mayor of London rules his fiefdom of the Square Mile (not to be confused with City Hall across the river from which the Mayor Sadiq Khan - without the 'Lord'- administers GREATER London). In the Guildhal Chamber are two enormous statues of the giants Gog and Magog, while underneath is a Museum of Roman London. What Tourists don't know is the existence of a staircase hidden behind the statue of Magog that leads down, via a Temple of Serapis into the Underdark.
2 ST BRIDE'S CHURCH
The current church building, the second highest of those rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren after the devastation caused by the Great Fire of 1666, is the seventh on this site, the first being founded in the seventh century by St Brigid. The remains of the first church are identical in design to the Church of the Oak in Kildare, Ireland which was also founded by St Brigid. In the Crypt is a doorway with the word CROATOAN carved into the Lintel. None know where this goes as the door has been locked since 1587.
3 ALL HALLOWS-BY-THE-TOWER
This is a Saxon Church in Byward Street, founded in 687 by Abbess Ethelberga of Barking in 687 AD. It remained property of Barking Abbey until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539. It is built from stones taken from Roman buildings that stood in Londinium at least two hundred years earlier. It has survived both the Great Fire of London and (despite damage) the Blitz. It was here that the Sixth President of the USA, John Quincy Adams married Louisa Catherine Johnson in 1797.
4 The Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garrett
Rediscovered in 1956, this 19th-century operating theatre in the roof of an English Baroque Church examines what surgery was like in the pre-anaesthetic and antibiotics era.
5 Chislehurst Caves
Venture beneath the woods in Chislehurst to a labyrinth of man-made caves. Created when chalk and flint were dug from the ground from the 13th century onwards, the Chislehurst Caves have been a place of smuggling, murder, a wartime munitions store and air raid shelter, plus a latter-day concert venue. It was also, of course, the site of one of the first LARPs in the world
6 The Artists' Houses of Dreams
Two for the price of one here. First of all, walk into the weird and wonderful world of artist Stephen Wright at his house and gardens in East Dulwich. This secret London hidden gem is crammed full of his own work and collections, which range from dental molds to masks and dolls’ heads. It's only open on selected days throughout the year. More secret still are the caverns carved beneath Antony Dracup's house at 1 Maunder Road, Hanwell W7 until he moved to Bridgnorth, Shropshire in 1983. The Shropshire caverns are well known since the house above them has changed several time. The prototype in Hanwell though, was sealed before Dracup left. They are hand carved from bare rock resembling a temple of Cthulhu. It is accessible only from the Underdark.
7 The Old Bailey Beneath:
Remember the old courtroom, of course you wouldn't. When has anyone ever remember law and justice in these godforsaken Queen's land. The Old Bailey used to mean something back in the day, no longer. When you travel around the tubes and hear the chains a coming, best start running, else you'll find yourself at court. When you find yourself at court, then lose all hope of escape. You won't find the Queen's good graces at the Bailey, the condemned of executions past now roam free to raise hell, the lawyers are the devils themselves, and the judge will only be the reaper's scythe. Pray the reaper grant thy mercy, pray that you can find the exit before it's denizens deem you guilty.
8 Under Big Ben:
Every Londoner worth his salt would know their great landmark that is Big Ben. The clock tower with the biggest clock to ever been built and accompanied with it's Great Bell, everyone in London can tell you that it's their pride and joy. Even in these trying times, it is still the symbol of our beloved United Kingdom. But to those foolish or opportunistic explorers wanting a taste of the unknown, look no further than visiting Big Ben. If you enter the door under the inscription "Lord save Her Majesty Queen Victoria", you'll find that the tower's insides is just as it said in the brochure. But that's what a tourist would see, explorers like you can see something hidden. If you know the right places, the right cracks, the right walls. You might be surprised in finding that there's a lot of strangeness in Big Ben than most people think. Under the Tower lay multiple apartment level rooms, all shifting continually by a sort of clockwork mechanism, for you see theirs a new architect for Big Ben, and his got all sorts of plans for the old tower. To you Explorers, you'll find all kinds of supplies, mechanisms, and trinkets, but beware of the horrors that make the tower it's home. Plus I hear security can be a tad trigger happy. Good luck to you explorer!
9 50 Berkeley Square, Mayfair
the most haunted building in Britain (yes even more haunted than Borley Rectory) Premises of Maggs Bros bookseller and manuscript merchant to Her Majesty the Queen.
10 Ye Sette of Odd Volumes
This is a London-based bibliophilic club/Gentleman's club, begun in 1878 by bookseller Bernard Quaritch. It has a grand club House at 67 Pall Mall SW1.
11 The Fairy Investigation Society
This group, also known as the Society for the Investigation of Fairies, is a semi-secret occult group devoted to collecting evidence and information about the existence of fairies, as well as to organize documented instances of fairy sightings. The society was founded in Britain in 1927 by Capt. Sir Quintin Craufurd, MBE and the artist Bernard Sleigh. They meet in the upstairs rooms of the Cittie of Yorke, Holborn a pub that dates from 1430AD.
12 Museum Station
British Museum was a tube station on the Central Line from 1900 to 1933. Since its closure, most of it, including the surface portion, has been destroyed in the nearly nine decades since it closed, the exception being the Eastbound Platform, still used for storage and visible from passing trains on the Central Line. Few but the most dedicated nineteenth century historians are aware that 100 feet beneath British Museum, was an older Station known simply as Museum. This station, though closed on the day it opened in 1871, was never destroyed. There is a tunnel leading to the North , connecting to an access tunnel at Russell Square station. Museum is home to a cannibal tribe made up of the descendants of Victorian Railway Workers, sealed underground by management during an industrial dispute.
13 London Necropolis Railway
From 1854 to 1941, the London Necropolis Company operated its own railway transporting corpses and mourners from the Leake Street entrance of Waterloo Station to Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, then the world's largest open-air cemetery. Although the railway has gone and despite flooding, rockfalls and unstable surfaces, this 27 mile tunnel still exists and albeit with difficult access in places, still leads from the Waterloo Tunnels to the Russian Orthodox Monastery of St Edward the Martyr in Brookwood.
14 The River Fleet
The Fleet is a tributary of the Thames. Due to building and its increasing filthiness over the centuries, it has been driven underground. The lower course of the river is now an empty tunnel, flooded daily at high tide but otherwise dry. The upper course rises in the Highgate Pools and Hampstead Pools and from there flows immediately underground into the sewers which instead of leading to its original mouth on the Thames, flow into...
15 The Northern Sewage Outfall
This is the Northern Half of Sir Joseph Bazalguette's enormous Victorian sewer built to take the filth of London to the Beckton Sewage Treatment works. There is a footpath along the top, leading from Stratford High Street through West Ham and Plaistow to the Barking Road in East Ham From there, it's a short walk to Beckton Sewage Treatment Works and to Beckton Tescos, which bizarrely was the scene of the Stanley Kubrick Film Full Metal Jacket. It carries a million tonnes or more of human waste every day.
16 The Waterloo Tunnels
This is an extensive network of tunnels under Waterloo Station. It includes fragments of former lines including the former London terminal of Eurostar, moved to St Pancras in 2003. It also contains at least two bars and a performance space opened by the New York Dolls in 2008. The tunnels also include the Leake Street tunnel, which is given over to grafitti artists and another tunnel whose walls are covered by mosaics representing the works of William Blake.
17 Walthamstow Nuclear Bunker
This is subject to some of the most stringent D-notices in history. It was built to withstand a nuclear attack on London and was expected to be the headquarters of London Government should central London be destroyed. It is not known whether this has been decommissioned since it is still veiled in official secrecy.
18 The Time Tunnel
The Woolwich foot tunnel was built in 2012 and temporarily closed for repairs from 2010 to 2011. During reconstruction it was found that time passes at variable rates within the tunnel. Some workers found that their eight hour shifts had lasted as much as three days to them (with the expected hunger and dehydration effects) while others completed eight hour shifts in twenty eight minutes. This phenomenon is still not understood and is still being investigated.
19 Greyfriars
Beneath the former Greyfriars Franciscan Friary and Studium on Newgate, which existed from 1225 to 1538 and is now represented only by a blue plaque on Newgate Street is Greyfriars University, also known as The University of the Underdark. When the aboveground Greyfriars was first built, its Studium was second only to Oxford University as a place of education. Although its students and faculty are somewhat different, this remains the case for the underground version.
20 The Oubliette
Deep, deep and deeper beneath London lies this hideous high security prison. If you explore, you may find yourself there. If that happens, run as fast as you can. If caught, you will not be allowed to leave, at least not with tongue and fingers intact.
There we have it, 20 potential places. Please vote by DM to me, listing your votes in order of preference. If you don't vote for all (and I hope you do), please at least tell me your favourite(s) and LEAST favourite(s)
I MAY use all of them but the top ten will be considered cannon and WILL be used.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:45, Fri 09 Sept 2022.
