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The London Ambler

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.

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.

15/04/2025

Me Ol’ China.

Any social housing is a ‘mate’ in this city and this handsome and robust plate a cockney bricks is China Walk, an estate created by the London County Council between 1928-34 across five acres of cleared slums in north Lambeth.

Composed of two large courtyards of 5 storey block dwellings, named after British china manufacturers in deference to the nearby Doulton works, the estate is an absolute classic of the LCC’s interwar urban housing formula with big ‘Queen Anne’ style Neo-Georgian linked blocks organised around formal communal lawns to the front and functional open galleries and service courts at the rear.

Long overshadowed by the more obviously eye catching feats of the council’s postwar programmes, this humble stuff is the real bread and butter of the city, there are dozens of them and their solid quadrangles are home for hundreds of thousands of Londoners all over the inner boroughs.

China Walk was created before the LCC started standardising its output and tightened budgets in the late 1930s. As a result - although thoroughly sober - it is notable for the quality and variety of its many details such as the giant orders of brick pilasters, ornamental balconies, dormers, tall chimneys, arcaded galleries and central civic archway focal point with projecting bay. 💪

03/04/2025

Pocket Baroque.

The extraordinary poise, flounce and gurgle of the pint sized, yet incredibly powerful church of St Mary le Strand. Created 1714-24 by architect James Gibbs, this fabulously situated building is one of the finest monuments of the English Baroque and a period of transformation in London when the city looked to Italy for a new architecture.

Commissioned by the state as part of the ‘Fifty Churches Act’ of 1711 - a building programme intended to keep pace with and impress power upon an expanding urban population - its original design was apparently boxier and more squat. However, the story goes that the church commisioners weren’t happy and urged Gibbs to make it more Anglican. The result is the soaring Anglo-Italian hybrid we see today with its soaring staged spire. More remarkable given the status it holds and its client is that Gibbs was Scottish and a Jacobite to boot! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿⚔️

Isolated for centuries on an island site at the centre of The Strand surrounded by traffic, it now commands one of the best new pedestrian vistas in London and where cars once choked and exhausts blackened its garlanded fruit and cherubs are now plane trees, lawns, wild grasses and cherry blossoms and hundreds of people simply hanging out.

Ian Nairn, 1964
‘This is something much more clever than a clever young scot’s marriage of Wren and the Italian Baroque. It is a perpetual British plea for sunlight and movement, a kind of poem to Italy that has been part of our life for four centuries.’

Baroque n roll with it….💪🇮🇹🌤️🕺

01/04/2025

Space Odessey.

Ground control to Colonel Seifert, well actually architect George Marsh (of the office of Seifert), but anyway….a long wandering around the sharp cut pop modern pizzazz of Space House on Kingsway and Kemble Street.

Created 1964-1968 by developer Harry Hyams, the spectacularly conceived office block is organised in two parts with a mighty cellular drum - covered in a honeycomb of faceted precasts - just like its older sibling Centre Point - connected via a bridge to a taut rectilinear block and both held aloof by a series of fantastically sculptural Y-shaped tapered columns. All of which swings aloud the super confidence and swagger of peak 1960s commercial modernism in postwar London.

Today the grade II listed structure is looking pretty glorious again due to a comprehensive - and long overdue - deep refurbishment led by architects Squire and Partners which was started in 2019 and unveiled this year. The work included full repairs to its distinctive facade system and palette of high quality materials, completely new glazing, an interior strip back of its floor plates for new work space and the addition of an extra storey or penthouse at the rooftop of the drum.

For those inclined, the rebooted Space House is BREEAM certified, for everyone else it’s looking absolutely fabulous so go check it out again, the contrast between the brutalist precasts of the drum and the geometric eye games played out on the smooth polished granite is just👌💪❤️!

16/03/2025

Châteaux de Feu.

Straight outta the Loire Valley!….the fantastic New Cross Fire Station. Created 1891-4 it was designed by the Fire Brigade Section of the London County Council Architect’s Department under chief architect Robert Pearsall.

That the LCC had a dedicated team developing this building typology speaks volumes of its importance for the city. The late 19th century fire station wasn’t just about the practicalities/logistics of putting out fires, they were also among the potent and distinctive symbols of a progressive modernising city, with a distinct yet fluid architecture that evolved from utility Gothic into Gothic Tudor, free English and later Arts and Crafts.

This Anglo-Gallic hybrid is remarkable for its soaring skyline of turrets, towers, spires, dormers and chimney stacks - all the classic elements of the French Rennaissance - but is perhaps more remarkable for it being an actual 130 year old working fire station!….still doing exactly what is was designed for and wearing its fabulous civic DNA with pride! 💪🔥⚜️

13/03/2025

Big Red Living

A follow up to a recent past - The colossal ‘Queen Anne’ red bricks, iron balconies and soaring gables of the Albert Hall Mansions. Created in 1879 these blocks of apartments were designed by Norman Shaw, an architect who had a huge impact on the look of English domestic architecture during the second half of the 19th century.

Mansion blocks emerged from the 1850s, first in Victoria, in response to the challenges and profitable opportunity of new urban densities with the ‘mansion’ name a fantastic Victorian marketing bribe for an aspirational class too modern for townhouses and too lofty for mere ‘flats.’

The curvaceous buildings here with their sweeping lines and extreme tapering, follow the full extent of a plot set out decades earlier when the site was part of the Royal Horticultural Gardens that opened here in 1862. The sweep of Kensington Gore follows the curving line of a long lost arcade, part of a promenade and terrace that flanked the north east corner of the garden linked to a great conservatory, now the site of Albert Hall’s southern steps.

11/03/2025

☀️WORDS ON THE STREET! ☀️

A few pics of a quite epic and very special weekend walkabout with the fabulous and always effervescent for 📚 exploring London architecture and literature between Liverpool Street and Hatton Gardens revealing urban layers and literary links through The City, Barbican, Smithfield and Farringdon!

Huge thank you to everyone who came along and enjoyed the buildings, prose, subshine and free association, was great fun and special thank you to and for the pics! 💪🙏😘👏❤️

03/03/2025

Anglo Scots Romance.

The extraordinary former Belgrave Hospital for Children in Oval, South London. Now flats, this powerful one off building was completed in 1903 by Charles Holden, an architect better-known in the city for his suite of Underground stations on the northern and later Piccadilly lines during the 1920s and 1930s.

The old hospital is one of London’s best arts and crafts buildings and shows a young Holden in expressionist mode, as an English Mackintosh - Glasgow School - and the city as avant garde as the Viennese Succession.

Dazzling in the early spring sunshine, it is an incredibly free and confident building - a structure where familiar red brick, gables and chimney stacks become shockingly modern and where English tradition is piled high ‘castle style with Scottish touches’ to create an outcome described as by Historic England as ‘romantic but austere.’

Cling to the romance as you pass by and check out the spectacular gold mosaic lined entrance hallway - a blast of Gustav Klimt-style shimmer along the Clapham Road! 👑💋

#1900

24/02/2025

Tyburnian Threeway

The no-nonsense modernist forms of The Water Gardens on Edgware Road on the south eastern fringe of Paddington’s Tyburnia. Created in 1966 by Trehearne & Norman, Preston & Partners the fantastic sculptural trio of big blocks are raised up on a podium of shops and dazzle in all-over white mosaics with jaunty balconies, sharp crowns and fantastic exposed spinal concrete frames.

The development was part of a much wider reinvention of what was the old Bishops of London or Church Commisioners estate that first developed the area from the 1830s.

By the 1940s however the area had slipped into decline, the 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…along similar lines as conceived by The City at the Barbican at the same time.

Water Gardens is the gateway block of the reinvented neighbourhood to the west and is THE outstanding block on Edgware Road. Away from the teeming street it steps down into a sequence of secluded sunken water pools and raised piazzas….shown here in final image via RIBApix owing to tight/super effective/terrifying security presence at the entrance. 📸🚨😬

16/02/2025

Super Shed.

The majestic steel and irons of Paddington Station. Created between 1850-54 by the Great Western Railway and designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel with Matthew Digby Wyatt, this is one of the great cathedral’s of the railway age and today - still! - one of the most incredible monuments anywhere on the British Rail network.

As Liverpool Street battles for light and Euston descends further into misery, here is a reminder of the beauty and purpose of architecture and space and the spectacle of travel as something thrilling, something transformative and something that stirs the soul.

Welcome to London! Go West! Bang!….or just passing through to use the toilets and the M&S. All are given power under this extraordinary super shed! 💪

11/02/2025

Wild Thing (Part Two)

The amazing interior of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. One of the prime anchors of ‘Albertopolis’ - named after Prince Albert whose idea it was to create the knowledge quarter after the Great Exhibition of 1851 - this colossus was designed by Alfred Waterhouse and realised between 1872-81.

Often taken for granted by Londoners keen to avoid the tourists and the epic crowds at half term, this cathedral to nature is one of the UK’s greatest Neo-Romanesque buildings and the massive cast iron, stone and brick structure is completely covered with dazzling ceramics and a host of sculptural details from the natural world with birds and monkeys clambering throughout its main hall and clinging onto its soaring arched ribs and columns.

The Romanesque style derives from ‘in the manner of the romans’ with the key features being big round arches. Known in German as ‘rundbogenstil’ it was in Munich and Dresden that the revival of the style first developed and from where British architects took reference, combining it with the structural possibilities and swagger of the industrial age.

Monumental, dazzling, learned, heavyweight, but also playful and a bit kitsch. 💪🐒🦕❤️

👉THE NEXT EDITION OF THE NEW WALKING TOUR ‘ALBERTOPOLIS’ IS ALREADY SOLD OUT - LOOK OUT FOR NEW DATES IN SPRING/SUMMER.👈

04/02/2025

Crescent Boom!

The dramatic sweep of Crescent House, the most distinctive, most urbane and most assured building of the otherwise meagre Goswell Road in its hesitant journey out of The City to Islington.

Created 1958-62 and designed by architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon it was the final element of the Golden Lane Estate to be completed and consists of 159 flats organised in two parts around a sequence of internal atria and galleries that are raised up on pilotti above a public house and nineteen shops.

Won through a major competition hosted in 1951-52, estate was one of the key projects of the postwar era and its young architects were encouraged to innovate in terms of neighbourhood and dwelling form, materiality and construction technique.

Crescent House is significant as the experiment that set in motion the Barbican, with its all over rough texturised bush hammered concrete and vaulted arched forms - inspired by Le Corbisier’s Maisons Jaoul - taken to epic new scales by the same architects just down the road over the next 10-15 years. 🔨

28/01/2025

Albertopolis Ambling!

A few action shots from last weekend’s sun drenched premiere of ‘Albertopolis’ - a new walking tour uncovering the architecture, origin and legacy of South Kensington and its epic museums/knowledge quarter.

Big thank you to and for the fabulous pics! 💪😘☀️

The walk returns in March and is already sold out (sorry!), but for new dates and other urban adventures across London - check out the links in the bio, head to the website and sign up to the newsletter! 🎉

19/01/2025

Piccadilly Punch.

The fantastic geometric forms of Nos. 45-46 Albemarle Street, a pocket piece of modernism created 1957-61 by Erno Goldfinger, slap bang amidst the historic facades and showrooms of Picadilly/Mayfair.

Created as spec’ offices with a straight forward reinforced concrete frame faced in portland stone, its disruptive modern spirit can be seen in its sharp cubic form and use of exposed steel beams framing the shop/gallery units at ground and the projecting windows.

Punching out from a recessed elevation, the projecting motif of the window box is a great addition to the mixity of the street and creates an implied order to the building’s elevation - a punctuation device that architect Goldfinger would later scale up during the 1960s and 70s at Elephant and Castle at Alexander Flaming House, Poplar at Balfron and Kensal Town at the mighty Trellick Tower with neat and somewhat demure Portland stone - seen at Albemarle - replaced by big unapologetic rough cast exposed brutalist concrete.

18/01/2025

Passion Play.

Darkness to light….the incredibly powerful Westminster Cathedral, ‘the Blue Mosque of London’ created 1895-1903 by John Francis Bentley.

This enormous building is the outcome of a 60+ ambition to realise a mother church for English catholics during the 19th century and after a battle that saw Roman basilica, French and English gothic alternatives proposed, the church rested upon one of the extraordinary Byzantine structures in Western Europe, with an epic landscape of climbing domes and soaring campanile inspired by eastern Mediterranean Romanesque and Lombardic Italian precedents.

One of the key factors in the buildings struggle to be realised was cost and so efficient and utilitarian brick and concrete were used on the structure that meant it could - in the architect’s words - ‘be ornamented at leisure.’

On the inside, the outcome is a spectacular and dramatic contrast between exposed candle smoke blackened engineers brick and dazzling mosaics, marbles, gilt, metalwork and carvings. ✨🌚

14/01/2025

Strike a Pose.

Statuesque and catwalk ready, the still striking Centre Point, a postwar super model of a building created between 1964-66 and designed by George March of R.Seifert & Partners for the notorious property tycoon Harry Hyams.

Rising to a modest 34 floors or 385 feet, its presence is beautifully amplified by its isolation, its slim profile and all over deep honeycomb texture of precast segments cast in fine Portland stone cement that on sunny days does dazzling things with light to become pure 60s geometric op art.

Controversial when completed, it was purposefully kept empty for years as developer Hyams held out for a prestige whole building tenant rather than divide up and discount. The empty building became a symbol for the exploits, whims and absurdities of property speculation and the Centre Point homeless charity founded in 1969 was named after it.

Grade II listed today and converted to residential in 2018.

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