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The London Ambler

Architectural walking tours bringing to life the many episodes, sagas and adventures of built and un I hope to join another walk soon.’ – Caro Stanleyl, London

Weaving unexpected and alternative routes through the city and tackling big architectural stories in an authoritative, yet accessible way, the London Ambler brings to life the many episodes, sagas and adventures of built and unbuilt London. With all walks devised and led by Mike Althorpe, an architectural historian, researcher and urban explorer with a passion for the greatest city on earth, The L

ondon Ambler is about mixing it up and exploring architecture with fresh eyes, new perspectives and sound footwear! FOLLOW ME

To find out about walks happening in 2016 check out the links below, follow me online or talk to me direct via email – all tours are repeated at regular intervals and available for private or group booking. Twitter
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TESTIMONIALS

‘The Marylebone and Mayfair walk was thoroughly captivating. Having lived and worked in the area for many years, I was interested to see if Mike could offer any new insights – and boy, did he! His expertise ranges across history, architecture, culture and social history, and his easy way with storytelling makes him an entertaining walking companion.’ – Katie Puckrik, London

‘I learnt a lot and saw many places I’ve never seen before, which is all I ask of a London walk.

19/06/2025

Festivalen Stad.

If London and its 8.8 million citizens had a common room, a place where everyone could crash and feel kinda at home, it would be the Royal Festival Hall.

Created between 1948-51, this smooth skinned concert hall was a gift to the city and built by the London County Council (LCC) with a design headed by Robert Matthew and J L Martin with Peter Moro.

Conceived as a civic venue ‘to which London and Europe should look as an example of English modern architecture at its best and as a well-tubed instrument for orchestras and conductors of international repute’ it was the only building of the Festival of Britain designed to be permanent.

Despite the ‘English’ ambitions, its fresh and clean sweeping modernist design owes much to Scandinavia, while its organisation is based on an ‘egg in a box’ concept, with the double-skinned auditorium at its heart held aloof by pilotti and buffered by wide stairs, landings and foyers on all sides.

It’s a grade 1 building today, but perhaps more significant than fabric is the social programme and attitude of openness it incubates, a legacy of the Greater London Council’s (GLC) ‘Open Foyer Policy’ under Ken Livingstone in 1983 that promoted democratic access to the site and radically extended its opening hours well beyond the 1.5 hours before concert start time into a full time social hub.

You might never see a concert at this place in your life and you know what??!…it kinda doesn’t matter. It’s also privately owned today (via a charitable trust since 1988) but still instinctively belongs to us all.

Interior images from Ribapix.

17/06/2025

Sink Full.

The spectacular maritime pop of Shadwell Basin, Maynard’s and Newland’s Quay.

Created between 1986-88 and designed by architects MacCormac, Jamieson Prichard & Wright these colourful postmodern housing terraces are together one of the most potent icons of London’s Docklands and were created in the years when the vast landscapes of the old docks were up for grabs under the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC).

Playfully rifting on 19th warehouse forms, Venetian palazzos - and with references to Liverpool’s celebrated Albert Dock ensemble - the project reinvents the old dock basin originally created 1828-32 as part of the expansion of the London Dock system between Wapping and the old Ratcliff Highway.

Today this striking and fun group is grade II listed. 💪

👉Discover more about the LDDC and the transformation of Docklands this Saturday 21 June with a walk around the making of Canary Wharf - BOOK NOW VIA LINKS IN BIO!👈

28/05/2025

Pre-Post Modern Folk(ish)

Or something. The multilayered and varied boxy forms of the St Katherine’s Estate on the edge of St Katherine’s Dock, Wapping.

Created between 1975-77 and designed by architects Renton Wood Howard, as an extension to the 1930s original next door, this was the look of new (public) housing in the revitalised Docklands in the days before it became Thatcher’s mega project.

Led by the Greater London Council (GLC) the estate’s design is a great example of low rise, high density, an approach that swept through British housing during the 1970s and sought to create purposefully nuanced modern alternatives to the banality of postwar tower-slab formulas.

The estate’s interlinked planted courtyards are based on layouts the architects developed earlier in the decade across town at the mighty Earlstoke Estate in Clerkenwell.

Similarly at St Katherine’s there are stacked maisonettes, ziggarated towers and raised decks and highwalks, but also attempts to rift on the local (real and unreal) vernacular with use of yellow stock bricks and the inclusion of weatherboarded projecting upper storeys, implying a maritime folk of a kind.

Had the GLC been allowed (and was funded) to complete its plans, the estate would have been next door to a new station on the unrealised Fleet tube Line to Thamesmead (completed elsewhere as the Jubilee Line).

21/05/2025

Kennington Grace.

In any other city the enormous proportions of Kennington Park Road in South London would have warranted avenue or boulevard status and there would be a series of huge monuments at key points creating axial precincts and massive rond points.

But, it being London it is lined with no less epic, but essential humble and mostly ordinary plain brick terraces created en spec’ from the 1780s as the modern metropolis and its merchant classes lept into the space and clean air of Surrey - te****le like - along London’s arterial roadways.

The great exception to this uniform urban scene are the fantastic Nos 126 and 128 two matching pairs of semi-detached houses with gable ends and split lunette windows at their attic level created in 1788 by local developer William Ingle, a builder based in nearby Newington. Since 1879, the right-hand buildings have been the home of the art school of the City & Guilds of London College.

Together the pair act as a formal gateway to Cleaver Square, setting up a grand and elegant approach to a discreet Georgian Square laid out soon after in 1789 as the first square south of the river and that is today one boule removed from a town square in Provence!….easy to miss as the peloton masses hurtle to and from Clapham, but an ordinary oasis of early urban gentility!

Map of 1813. Third image from Lambeth Archives.

20/05/2025

Brick Knuckle.

Packing a punch in the back streets of Clare Market and the hinterlands of Lincoln’s Inn Field and Kingsway, this is the glorious brick expressionism of the LSE Saw Swee Hock Student Centre.

Created in 2014 and designed by architects O’Donnell Tuomey, this dazzling multifunctional building - housing music venue, pub, learning cafe, union offices, prayer centre, dance studio, careers library and gym - is located at a convergent point of the LSE campus described by the architects as an urban ‘knuckle-point.’

Featuring a series of converging, escalating and swooping geometric volumes its varied and relaxed form is all about pulling focus, drawing in and creating assembly with pattern-rich warm brick and timber rifting on back street heritage types nearby.

The modern LSE campus sits almost wholly upon the site of the old Clare Market and the last fragments of a network of 17th and 18th century streets that grew up behind Lincoln’s Inn from the 1660s and which narrowly survived complete erasure between 1897-1905 and the creation of the Kingsway Aldwych urban improvement.

19/05/2025

Mid century Tyburnia.

Continuity and radicalism through the cosy streets, sweeping crescents and soaring high rise of the mid century Hyde Park Estate on the southern edge of Paddington.

Part of the near comprehensive reinvention of what was the old Bishops of London or Church Commisioners estate, these modernist terraces and towers, flats, maisonettes and compact townhouses were masterplanned by architect Anthony Monoprio and built out between 1957-69 mostly by Cecil Elsom of Elsom Pack Roberts.

The buildings stand upon the grand urban framework of the original 1830s Commissioners estate, whose axial masterplan and code for grandiose townhouses and stucco terraces were set out by George Gutch and intended for a wealthy clientele.

By the 1940s however, the area had slipped into decline and commissioners sold off acres of land, rebranded itself as the Hyde Park Estate and took down most of the big old houses to attract back into town a more upwardly mobile, footloose urban dweller…following a model of architecture-led urban regeneration also conceived by The City on the other side of town at the Barbican at the same time.

The new(ish) Tyburnia - colloquial old name linked to the gallows at Marble Arch and now an estate agents favourite - is rather more tame than the brutalist megalopolis across town, but it’s high quality mixed townscape is a reminder of how an old urban framework of open streets and squares can be the prompt for a robust new architecture.

14/05/2025

SUMMER AMBLING VIBES!☀️

The full walks programme to the end of August is now available to BOOK NOW VIA LINKS IN THE BIO…..so to celebrate I’m sharing a few fresh(ish) pics courtesy of the fabulous .parkes.photo !

For all those I am yet to meet…my name is Mike Althorpe. I’m an urban historian, architectural researcher, writer and storyteller.

I have been creating and leading walks for almost 8 years and have lived in London for 25 years. The city is my passion and sharing stories about its architecture, how it has come into being and the forces that still shape its incredible urban fabric is what ambling is all about!

If you’re interested in architecture, history, cities, people, places and London! ….lets make a date and hang out at some point this summer!

See you soon! ❤️☀️💪🌆🥳🇬🇧 x

**s

13/05/2025

Needle Poise.

The enduring architectural punctuation of All Souls Church, Langham Place. Created 1822-24 this uplifting bath stone church is the work of architect John Nash and was created as a local chapel of ease, but much more importantly a crucial device in the urban scenography of his Regent Street mega project.

Closing the northwards vista of the street its shocking - and still original - needle spire rises out of a circular portico and vestibule attached to a simple box chapel - an ingenious device for facilitating a 270 degree perspective and seemlessly managing the street’s turn through Langham Place and onto Portland Place.

Now over 200 years old and small in comparison with all its contemporary neighbours, it’s striking Regency design and artful placement still packs a punch and viewed amidst the rough seas and general chaos of Oxford Circus to its south, acts like a light house offer urban travellers a firm guide out of trouble!

The church is the last surviving by Nash and within the portico is a bust of him, so it’s also a memorial with his gaze taking in the urban prospect.

08/05/2025

Lost London.

‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone….’

…the empty landscapes of the former Museum of London. Completed in 1977 and designed by architects Powell and Moya it was one of the final pieces in the City’s ‘London Wall’ mega project, operational until 2022 and in 1994, for a 13 year old London Ambler, kick started an enduring urban love affair(!)

The sprawling otherworldly complex was the largest new museum of the postwar era and featured a labyrinthine multi level sequence of spaces that wrapped around, above and below the City’s network of highwalks, a series of green courtyards and the historic Ironmongers Hall.

Responding to the tough conditions of a highway adjacent roundabout site and not completely reconciling some awkward relationships between ground and upper level, it nonetheless pulls off some extraordinary urban gestures that includes the medina-like garden sanctuary within the walls of the roundabout and a unique viewing window that projects out of the podium, focusing the gaze of visitors to the surviving fragments of Roman/medieval wall immediately below.

The new ‘London Museum’ is going to be amazing and the old imperfect, but it’s impossible to wander through and explore these landscapes without feeling an incredible sense of loss and, with its proposed comprehensive demolition, utter waste. 🥺

👉CATCH IT WHILE YOU CAN AND DISCOVER THE FULL STORY WITH ‘FRAGMENTS OF TOMORROW’ - a walk uncovering the postwar story of The City of London on Saturday 12 July - BOOK NOW via link in bio!👈

05/05/2025

Arena Dolce.

Over the past 10 years British Land have destroyed almost all of the original Broadgate in a process of maxing out that now features some of London’s most uncompromising and swollen office buildings, but holding the monster ball together is the beautifully smooth travertine contours of the Broadgate Arena at its heart.

Created by Arup Associates between 1985-91 the amphi-theatre-like structure was the original retail/cafe hub of the 29 hectare development and was once surrounded by four matching office blocks in pink Swedish granite and bronze.

Notable at the time for hosting London’s only outdoor ice skating rink at winter, the space was also intended for outdoor performance and its structure is sunken into the adjacent landscape and open with passages and stairs allowing views and access through its framework of green hanging terraces and loggia.

Travertine is a form of limestone quarried in Italy and was used at the coliseum in Rome and across the ancient world. Its light textured strata of warm coffee latte and caramel colours gives it a fantastic tiramisu quality….uplifting, sweet, cool, smooth and delicious!…a classic amidst so much hard novelty candy. 🍰

23/04/2025

Drum Roll.

It’s easy to overlook the Royal Albert Hall, it’s so etched on the British national psyche you don’t think about it, like a grandfather clock or mantelpiece, its also miles (not actual miles) from the nearest tube station, so catching a glimpse or passing by is rare…

…but once reacquainted, you realise how stupendous it is. A vast Romanesque tiered rotunda created 1867-1871 and designed by Royal engineer Captain Francis Fawke with an elliptical form - that somehow manages to appear huge and intimate at the same time - inspired by the colosseum and Dresden’s 1840s Opera house by Gottfried Semper (Semperoper).

Opened as the Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences in tribute to Prince Albert - who promoted its construction and the realisation of the adjacent neighbourhood of museums and learning institutes - it was intended to stage meetings, concerts and exhibitions with an enormous glass and wrought iron roof providing natural light and notoriously bad acoustics, remedied in the 1960s with the addition of sonic booms or mushrooms.

Outside, the hall is covered in red brick and terracotta and a sequence of arcaded elevations and projecting porches with a 800 foot long mosaic frieze at its upper level entitled ‘the Triumph of Arts and Science’ depicting achievements throughout civilisation from ancient Egyptians and their abacus and pyamids to the modern Victorians and their steam engines and instruments.

Ian Nairn, 1964
‘A mangler of anything but the loudest noises yet a wonderful place which converts each concert or meeting into an occasion.’

Also my workplace for 3 fantastic years. Cream, Eric Clapton, John Martyn, Erasure, the Scissor Sisters, Block Party, Devine Comedy, Foals, The Flaming Lips et Al….(!) 💪

17/04/2025

Waterloo Sublime.

You can save the chintz of Tower, the disappointment of London, the non event of Blackfriars and the crowds of Westminster, the most spectacularly elegant, graceful and well situated of all of the city’s bridges is Waterloo.

Created between 1937-42 and opened in 1945 it was commissioned by the London County Council and designed by Giles Gilbert Scott to replace the original ‘Strand Bridge’ by John Rennie of 1816 - swiftly renamed to honour Wellington’s victory over Napoleon - which was showing structural faults as early as 1884.

Completed in reinforced concrete and clad in Portland stone, the current bridge features five soaring spans that are - technically - arch shaped structural beams, whose smooth, effortless and light touch form, belies plenty of heavy engineering in its massive internal cross beams and weighty piers.

Finished with streamlined staircases and liner-esque white tubular handrails, it has for decades provided the epic central stage set for song, romance, sunsets, sunrises and perpetual urban contemplation with the best views of London - not only up top, but also down below with its south side landing arch framing the city’s greatest open air snug and hang out outside the BFI bar complete with second hand book market.

In the 1870s, the construction of the Embankment encased one of the 1816 bridge piers and today - if you are willing to climb up onto one of the river jetty’s (please take care!) - you can see the fragments of the original structure beneath the northern most span, plus the jaunty 1950s viewing platform and info panel with small relief of Rennie’s old structure in full - now boarded up to prevent possible use by people experiencing homelessness.

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