OpenHouse London is such a fantastic event that even those who aren’t into architecture and buildings must surely appreciate the opportunity to see a side of London the public probably wouldn’t normally get to see. Sure some of the buildings in the program can be visited by the public (at a price) but the majority of those on offer cannot. As an added bonus if you’re lucky enough you’ll also get a chance to hear a bit more about the building from volunteer tour guides or even the architects or building custodians.

The buildings on offer can vary from year to year (for example the Gherkin, or the Swiss Re building, participates seemingly every second year) so its always exciting to receive the OpenHouse handbook to see what’s on offer. In honesty OpenHouse is one of those London secrets that I wish I could keep to myself – its become so well-known that many buildings are so popular that they have had to begin requiring people to pre-book, and in some cases you can’t even pre-book but you have to go into a ballot for a slot!

In the morning I headed off to visit a Masonic Temple near Liverpool Street. Without OpenHouse I would never have realised that there was a functioning Masonic temple at the back and above of the restaurant Catch. (In fact the previous owners only discovered it when tearing down what ended up being a fake wall!) The building was built way back in 1912 by the son of Charles Barry, who was the architect responsible for the Houses of Parliament. It cost £50k back then, which is roughly the equivalent of £4m. The temple was as grand and intriguing as I imagined it to be – its just a shame that we weren’t given a guided tour like I thought we’d been promised. It was admission by timing (yes, one of the buildings you had to pre-book) so when we were ushered in we kind of sat around waiting for someone to tell us something. After it became obvious that it was a discover at your own pace visit it became a free for all with everyone milling around opening doors, trying to break into secret cabinets and spaces. Hilarious. There was a fact sheet but it didn’t really point out meaning of the various bits and pieces in the temple, which is kind of half the fun of going into a Masonic temple. Although it did point out the fact that the many believe Jack the Ripper was a Mason and likely to have attended this temple as it is closest to his hunting ground. After this it was off to City Hall!

This year, for something different, I decided that I wanted to volunteer to be part of the team over the weekend. I was lucky enough to get a Saturday afternoon slot at the beautiful City Hall near Tower Bridge. Not only is the building in a lovely location, but the building itself is so lovely and gorgeous and exciting that it almost didn’t feel like work as I was introducing people to it’s delights. Of course it didn’t hurt that we also got to have a wander around the building ourselves before our shift. I think I took almost the same photos as I did the last time I visited City Hall!

However, as an added bonus on this visit I not only got a double rainbow …

… but I also got to witness the Tower Bridge opening up to let a boat through!

We didn’t really have too hard a job as a volunteer though by manning the front desk it really helped to know a little bit about the building. The one question that everyone seemed to ask was what exactly was the function of the GLA? I was so caught up in the building itself being a fascinating piece of architecture that I hadn’t even really thought to keep in my mind any key facts about the GLA – like how they are voted in etc. .. although I could tell them at least that this was where Boris Johnson’s office was 😉