London's Secret Places

Opened as a public garden in 1880 on former churchyard land, this small park takes its name from its popularity as a lunch spot for workers from the old General Post Office headquarters nearby.

Its real draw is the Watts Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice, a covered gallery of glazed ceramic tablets commissioned by Victorian artist G.F. Watts in 1900, each one a brief, plain-spoken account of an ordinary Londoner who died attempting to save a stranger — a drowning child, a house fire, a runaway horse.

Unlike a war memorial or a monument to the famous, every name here belonged to someone with no other claim to public memory — the tiles are the only reason most of these people are remembered at all.

Built in 1881 on a site that's hosted a market since medieval times, Leadenhall's cast-iron and glass roof, cobblestones, and maroon-and-cream paintwork make it one of the most photogenic covered markets in Europe — and one that predates the shopping-arcade boom in most other major cities.

Film fans will recognize it as the entrance to Diagon Alley (specifically the approach to the Leaky Cauldron) in the Harry Potter films, but its real charm is simply as a working City market: butchers, wine bars, and cafés operating under Victorian ironwork, largely for the office workers of the surrounding Square Mile.

The public arcade itself never closes and never charges admission — only the individual shops and restaurants inside keep their own hours, so the architecture is visitable at any hour, including at night when it's lit and near-empty.

Cross Bones is believed to hold the remains of an estimated 15,000 people, many of them 'single women' — a euphemism for sex workers licensed to work in the area by the Bishop of Winchester in medieval times, and denied burial in consecrated ground even in death. By the 19th century it had become a general pauper's burial ground before closing in 1853.

Rediscovered during 1990s railway works and threatened with redevelopment, the site was saved by a local campaign and is now a small memorial garden run by volunteers, its perimeter gate covered in ribbons, flowers, and handwritten tributes left by visitors.

A monthly gathering has honored the site's dead at 7pm on the 23rd of each month since 2004, one of London's longer-running grassroots memorial traditions — though check current details, since recent gatherings have sometimes moved online.