Indoor public spaces: bonus material
Indoor public spaces: bonus material
18 more free places with roofs + a map
Hello and welcome to Wooden City, a newsletter about London.
If you haven’t come here via @caffs_not_cafes, I'm a writer called Isaac Rangaswami and this is my Substack.
Today’s newsletter is a special bonus issue, off the back of last week’s public spaces piece. I made that one free to read, so this article is designed to be a short follow-up for paid subscribers, to give them something extra.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been asking everyone I know about places in London that let you sit inside for free. After writing about some of the more famous ones last week, I listed all the other indoor public spaces people told me about, as well as the spots I was kindly recommended via Substack and Instagram. Then I spent the weekend visiting them all.
This article collates the best of those recommendations, plus some other places that came to mind. This amounts to another 18 more public spaces with roofs, which are all in the Google Map at the bottom of this article. The map also includes the seven flagship spots I covered last week.
I’m very conscious that I’ve only scratched the surface of this topic. If you were to do a proper survey of all the churches, arts centres, free museums and other generous public buildings in London, I think you’d end up with a very extensive and heartwarming guide to the city. This piece doesn’t claim to be that; it’s just a collection of the additional places I've been to lately.
So please enjoy this follow-up in the same way you might have done (or still do!) with a DVD’s special features. These bonus pieces are something I’m thinking of doing every now and then: after 51 days of Wooden City, I’m already amassing lots of fun odds and ends that I’d love to share.
Museums and performing arts venues
Somerset House – Seamen’s Hall
Obviously Somerset House’s piazza-like courtyard is brilliant, but it’s mad how much of the inside of the complex you can visit too. This includes Seamen’s Hall, a fancy, open-hearted room with loos, plug sockets and some beaten-up leatherette furniture, all there just waiting to be used.
Victoria and Albert Museum
The V&A is my favourite of the big free museums, despite the horror of arriving there by tube. There’s lots of places to sit down among the exhibits, as well as the breathtaking Gamble room cafe. I’m also obsessed with the similarly elaborate ceramic staircase.
Royal Opera House
I didn’t know until the Instagram user @georgiasabina told me, but you can sit inside the Royal Opera House for free. I went at the weekend and the foyer is basically a slice of the South Bank in WC2, with lots of people just chatting and hanging out, many of whom haven’t bought anything.
Museum of the Home
The writer Max Fletcher told me this could be a good option – I hadn’t been since it was called the Geffrye Museum, and had a lovely time wandering around the other day. Maybe it would be weird to sit here for ages, but there are certainly exhibits that encourage lingering, such as the one with the SNES.