24 Hours In London

The Sunday Age

Sunday April 6, 2008

Penny Webb

"Up and down the City Road, in and out the Eagle, that's the way the money goes ..." Despite the nursery rhyme, spending time in Islington and adjoining boroughs needn't cost a lot.

11am

A three-minute walk east of Highbury & Islington underground station and you're ready to view the Estorick Collection of modern Italian art. Start your visit with an espresso in the ground-floor cafe. The delicious smell of pasta sauces on the boil doesn't permeate the six galleries of this remodelled Georgian residence, but does somehow add to the anticipation of enjoying an astonishing number of major futurist works (by Balla, Carra, Russolo and Boccioni) as well as the collection's holdings by Morandi and Modigliani.

Estorick Collection of modern Italian art, 39a Canonbury Square, N1 2AN. Tel: 020 7704 9522. estorickcollection.com Wed-Sat 11am-6pm (Thu 11am-8pm), Sun noon-5pm. #3.50/#2.50. (#1 = $2.20)

Noon

Turn south towards the Angel and a brisk 20-minute walk brings you to Chapel Market (off Liverpool Road). At #3.50 for a small pie and mash with lashings of parsley sauce, Manze's is value for money, but try putting a price on the interior of this eel and pie house with a terracotta-tiled floor sprinkled with sawdust and its white marble table tops in dozens of dark-wood booths. Victorian light fittings and art nouveau decorative tiles contribute to the impression of service that has withstood fast-food fashions. Plain and chilli-infused vinegar (to take home with your jellied eels) is sold by the bottle - any old bottle judging by the display that includes whiskey and wine bottles.

74 Chapel Market, Islington, N1. Tel: 020 7837 5270. Tue-Sat, 11am-5pm

12.30pm

Catch the No. 43 bus down City Road (no credit on your Oyster swipe card: no go). Your destination is St Luke's, the Hawksmoor-designed church on Old Street that is now a recital hall and the venue for free Friday lunchtime concerts presented by Rachel Leach for the London Symphony Orchestra. You might contemplate checking out the ferociously trendy Victoria Miro Gallery at 16 Wharf Road, which is off to the left a few streets before Shepherdess Walk, which boasts The Eagle (on the corner of Shepherdess Place - and any number of people who will try to tell you the meaning of the words of Pop Goes the Weasel). But if you're partial to the sight of a grey squirrel lolloping along a branch as you listen to Debussy, say, get off before you get to Moorfields Eye Hospital, turn right and fiddle your way south (there's no grid here) via the Turkish Baths on Ironmonger Row to St Luke's.

Jerwood Hall, LSO St Luke's, Old Street, EC1

1.30pm

Walk west along Old Street crossing Goswell Road into Clerkenwell Road. When it was opened in 1863, St Peter's Italian Church was the "only church in Britain designed in the Roman basilican style". The touch of the Mediterranean here is more Northcote than Trastevere, but you don't have to be a footsore tourist to appreciate the warm friendliness of a working parish church. Irish architect John Miller Bryson can't claim credit for the ambience, but, at the same time, no amount of religious kitsch can detract from the integrity of his conception. And, unlike in Rome, a coin of any weight will trigger the electric candles.

St Peter's Italian Church, 136 Clerkenwell Road, EC1, www.italianchurch.org.uk

2.30pm

Continue along Clerkenwell Road, which becomes Theobalds as you cross Gray's Inn Road. Past the house where Benjamin Disraeli was born, turn left at Red Lion Street. You're heading for Lincoln's Inn Fields and the former home of architect John Soane, a collector of casts of antique sculpture, of objet d'art, paintings and works on paper. A commissionaire on the pavement will first inquire of the doorman whether you may be admitted. The formalities having been observed, you enter the confined hall to this fabulous memento mori over many floors of three adjoining houses. Soane remodelled the interiors to display his growing collection, engaging remarkable cabinetmakers - indeed, the ingenious joinery throughout is one of the pleasures of this unique, moodily lit museum. Sir John Soane's Museum, 13 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2, soane.org. Free entry, Tue-Sat 10am-5pm

4.30pm

Retrace your steps to Theobalds Road, travelling east to St John Street, which becomes Doughty as it travels north. There's not enough time to visit the house where Charles Dickens lived for two years from 1837, the years of Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, WC1. Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 11am-5pm, #5/#4) and, anyway, your destination is St George's Gardens, further north, approached via Mecklenburgh and Heathcote streets. This irregular open space was created by combining two disused burial grounds in 1889 as part of the movement to make overgrown graveyards into "open air sitting rooms for the poor". Relax. You're not far from the restored glories of St Pancras station and the uninspiring new British Library, both on Euston Road, NW1, but it's time to unwind.

5pm

From a stop outside Kings Cross station, bus home to your hosts in N7, picking up a bottle of Veuve Clicquot (#34) from an off-licence on Holloway Road on the way. Pop goes your budget, but any day in London is worth celebrating. And no visit to London is complete without a pub meal. The Duchess of Kent, just a block away, offers a stylish version of home-from-home pub decor. And the menu? Alas, no hint of "tuppeny rice" nor treacle - just good food, mixed up and made nice.

Duchess of Kent, 441 Liverpool Road, N7. Tel: 020 7609 7104. www.geronimo-inns.co.uk. Hours: noon-11pm (Sun-Thu), noon-midnight (Fri-Sat) -- Penny Webb

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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