Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

After a short tour of Tottenham Court Road, Paul and Chelsea set off for Barbican from Goodge Street station. Barbican and Goodge Street aren’t located terribly far away from each other, but because of the way the Underground system is laid out, we had to go all the way down to Embankment to meet the Circle Line in order to take it to Barbican, and the Tube journey alone probably took twenty minutes or so in itself.

The Barbican station surprisingly was outdoors, unlike most other stations we had seen. It lets out onto a fairly busy street, and we headed straight across it for Beech Street (which is actually a sort of tunnel), not knowing we were heading away from the Central Markets and the Museum of London. We ended up in a mostly residential area full of “estate houses,” which we thought meant low-income housing, but many of the buildings looked decent and well kept-up for the most part, making us question if that’s really what “estate houses” meant. We came across a small park and an elementary school, as well as an old building marked as a “free library,” which turned out to actually be offices for UBS and not a library at all. This building was a tall red-brick building with elaborate arches and ledges, which was in stark contrast to the concrete block apartment building right across the street. In addition, we found a Welsh church, but couldn’t glean much information besides the fact that it had been established in 1774 due to the fact that the signs were written in Welsh. The majority of the people we saw walking around were white and middle class in appearance, even though it was probably a more lower-income area. However, the area seemed very quiet and there were very few people on the street.

Walking only a block away from the residential area, we came to the Square Mile City and were dwarfed by the massive high-income office buildings. This area was in direct contrast to the estate houses simply on the other side of the street. The farther on we walked,  there were more and more modern glass and steel buildings, as well as men in suits and boutique shops. Deciding to head back, we found Moorgate Tube station and took a different route back home, taking the District Line and ending up at Tottenham Court Road and a short walk to the hotel.

We’re having technical difficulties getting the pictures up, but we hope to have that worked out soon.