A CITY & VILLAGE TOURS JAM BUSTER DAYTRIP

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SECRET LONDON

Our Secret London trip is now entirely based in and around Holland Park where we remain off the coach throughout the day. We explore beautiful, select Holland Park, have free time for lunch with the opportunity to explore the brand new Design Museum in its new home at the old Commonwealth Institute and visit spectacular Leighton House.

Meet the Blue Badge guide at Holland Park at 10.30am for time to buy morning refreshments in one of the best looking park cafés you’ll ever come across. Surrounded by breathtakingly beautiful houses in one of London’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. As clean and perfect as the icing on a wedding cake this is the most romantic of London’s parks, easily missed even by Londoners.

The park was once the grounds of a Jacobean mansion that during the 19th century became a centre of social and political intrigue where statesmen like Lord Palmerston mixed with mad, bad and dangerous to know Lord Byron. The house was mostly destroyed during the Blitz but some of the formal gardens are intact from the early 1800s. The survival of a large private country estate in the centre of the capital until the mid-twentieth century is quite exceptional. We also visit some new additions to the estate like the Kyoto Garden - a tiny pocket of Japan in a very English setting.

There’s free time to buy lunch or picnic in the park with the option of taking yourself into the Design Museum in its new home, which also has a cafe and where two free galleries to visit.

In the Victorian period a number of artists colonised Holland Park: there were no starving artists in garrets here – only architect designed studio houses where well-to-do artists entertained the cream of high society. None were as splendid as Leighton House whose plain brick exterior hides one of Britain’s most extraordinary interiors. Every room is a delight but the breathtaking centrepiece is the Arab Hall where dazzling gilt mosaic friezes, intricate tiles and the calming murmur of a fountain evoke the world of the Arabian Nights. It is truly astonishing. In Leighton’s lifetime an invitation to a soirée “The House Beautiful’ was considered the ultimate prize.

There will be a little time to buy refreshments locally before heading home at 4.30pm.