J6 traveled to London recently for a busy day exploring the Capital City. When they arrived at Paddington Station they hopped onto the underground to Westminster where we went through very tight security to the Palace of Westminster.
Our guide met us in Westminster Hall which has been there since the time of William II and in which Henry VIII used to play real tennis, Charles I was tried and Nelson Mandela gave a speech. A truly historic building. Our guide took us through to the Queen’s Robing room where she gets ready for the state opening of Parliament. There was a page from the original Magna Carta there, possibly to remind her how democracy evolved! We went through the hall in the House of Lords where portraits of monarchs through the ages and scenes from British History adorned the walls. The debating chamber in the House of Lords was magnificent where the monarch’s throne, parts of it gilded in 24 carat gold, was the highlight. In Central Lobby we saw the four saints of the United Kingdom looking down on us and the statue of Winston Churchill at the entrance to the House of Commons. The green benches seemed smaller and the whole debating chamber more cramped than it looks on television. Finally we met Lord Oaksey who told us what it was like to debate and vote in the House of Lords and the girls asked him interesting and well thought out questions.
After lunch in St James’s Park where we saw soldiers practising for the trooping of the colour we walked past Downing Street and Horseguards Parade to Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Gallery. There we examined some modern self-portraits for J6 to use in their work on later in the term as well as some very famous portraits from the Tudor era. We marched back up Whitehall to the Churchill War Rooms and were shown an introductory film of life during the Blitz which was so atmospheric it was possible to believe that we were back in 1940. With the help of our own audio-guides we made our way through the warren of underground rooms which were almost unchanged since the war.
Finally, after the obligatory trip to the gift shop, we made our way back to Paddington where the girls bought their own supper and then boarded the train.
The girls were a delight to be with and I was stopped three times over the course of the day by members of the public and London transport staff to be complimented on how beautifully behaved and polite the girls were.
Mrs Cotterell
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