Route starts at Hyde Park Corner

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STOP: The Thin House

LOCATION: Junction of South Terrace and Thurloe Square 

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A triangular house, only 7’ wide at its narrowest. It widens to 34’ at the other end. Its shape is due to the route of the railway line, but we don’t know if it was built like this, or modified when the railway came along. 

 

The house is estimated at being worth over £2m. 

 

An artist’s studio, with a drawing room, kitchen, bathroom and the bedroom which is on a mezzanine sold in the mid-2010s for £900k. That was the same asking price as Carbisdale Castle, a stunning property in the Highlands of Scotland with 40 bedrooms, also for sale at the time. 

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STOP: Finborough Theatre

LOCATION: Junction of Finborough Road and Ifield Road 

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One of London’s smallest theatres, seating just 50 guests.

 

With a capacity of approximately 350, the Arts Theatre in Great Newport Street is London's smallest West End commercial receiving house. London's smallest marionette theatre is the Puppet Theatre Barge (a converted 80ft Thames lighter) which is moored at Little Venice for most of the year, and at Richmond-upon-Thames for the summer months. It has 55 seats.

 

Other contenders for the smallest London theatre are The Hen and Chickens theatre bar in Islington (home to many early Mighty Boosh performances) which seats 54. However the Etcetera theatre above the Oxford Arms in Camden Market, is probably the smallest, with seats for just 42. 

 

STOP: The Dove

LOCATION: Down the alleyway at the western end of Furnivall Gardens 

 

This tiny pub is famed for having the smallest registered bar in the whole of London - 4’2” x 7’10”. It’s a Grade 2 listed building and has been a Fullers pub since 1796.

 

A public house has stood on this site since the seventeenth century. Clientelle has included the poet James Thomson who composed the familiar strains of ‘Rule Britannia’ in the bar. Charles II romanced and dined his mistress Nell Gwynne here. 

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STOP: 10 Hyde Park Place

LOCATION: Difficult to spot - a red brick building squeezed in at the west end of Tyburn Convent 

 

The smallest house in London is barely a metre wide. Probably built to block a right of way through to St George's graveyard (behind), and hence deter grave-robbers. It dates back to 1805 and is now part of Tyburn Convent.

 

The house was hit by a bomb in 1941, during World War 2, and was rebuilt to match the building next door. Pre-war photos show it looking quite different. Lewis Grant Wallace was the first and only tenant. He was a writer and film producer, credited with several war-time documentaries. He died in January 2002 in West Sussex, England. 

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STOP: Pickering Place

LOCATION: At the south end of St James Street (east side), next to Berry Brothers wine merchants, before turning on to Pall Mall 

 

Until 1812 this was known as Pickering Court and is London’s tiniest square (a public open space). Georgian architecture. Pickering Place was gas lit until quite recently. In the past the square played host to illicit activities such as dog-fighting, bearbaiting, cock-fighting and bare knuckle boxing. 

 

It was the setting of the last ever duel to the death by sword in London town. It is believed Beau Brummel, close friend to King George IV and inventor of the cravat, also once fought here. 

 

It was home to the Texan Republic’s embassy - see plaque at entrance. The Republic of Texas covered modern-day Texas as well as parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado and Wyoming and existed from 1836 to 1846 when it was annexed by the United States. 

 

Famous past residents of Pickering Place include Grahame Green and Lord Palmerston. 

 

Berry Brothers and Rudd (at the entrance) is thought to be Britain’s oldest wine and spirit merchant, having traded from the same shop for over 300 years. Berry’s was established in 1698 by the Widow Bourne, whose son-in-law, James Pickering built Picking Court in 1731.

 

From 1765, at the “Sign of the Coffee Mill”, Berry’s not only supplied the fashionable Coffee Houses (later to become Clubs such as Boodles and Whites) but also began weighing customers on giant coffee scales. Records of customers’ weights, including those of Lord Byron, William Pitt and the Aga Khan, span three centuries and continue to be added to, to this day. Their cellars which run under Pickering Place and down Pall Mall store over 200,000 bottles. 

 

STOP: Trafalgar Square police station

LOCATION: A circular building at the south-eastern corner of the square 

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Built in 1926 to keep an eye on troublesome demonstrators, this tiny station could accommodate two prisoners at a time, although it was built to house just one police officer. 

 

At end of WW1 a temporary police box outside Trafalgar Square tube station was due to be renovated and made permanent. There were public objections, so they decided to build this ‘less objectionable’ one instead. It was designed to be inside an existing ornamental light fitting. Narrow windows were cut to give it a view over the square. It had a direct line to Scotland Yard and whenever the phone was picked up, the light on the top would start to flash to alert nearby officers. 

 

It is thought the ornamental light on top (put there in 1826) is originally from Nelson’s Victory. 

 

It’s now a broom cupboard. 

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STOP: Bridge's Place

LOCATION: South end of St Martin’s Lane, next to The Coliseum, running through to Bedfordbury 

 

The narrowest alley in London is just 15 inches wide at its narrowest point. Brydges Place runs for 200 yards and connects St Martin's Lane with Bedfordbury in Covent Garden. The Marquis of Granby pub - a former haunt of Dickens - backs onto the alley, and its dark seclusion provides a perfect venue for late night piddlers. 

 

Brydges Place is named after Catherine Brydges of Chandos who married the fourth Earl of Bedford in 1608 (the Bedford family being the original owners of the land occupied by Covent Garden). Brydges Place as it stands today was created at the turn of the 20th century when the London Coliseum - which provides much of the alley’s northern wall - opened on Christmas Eve 1904. 

 

However, a passageway covering this ground is nothing new. An alley had existed on the site long before its present incarnation and was known as ‘Turners Court’ before morphing into Brydges Place. Today, the only active premise to be found tucked away on Brydges Place is the aptly named ‘Two Brydges Place’; a discreetly private club popular with those who work in the theatre and media. 

 

Two Brydges Place was established in the early 1980s by Rod Lane, an entrepreneur who founded the club on “the basis that I didn’t like going to places where people clicked their fingers at the waiters.”

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STOP: Toilets in Lincoln's Inn

LOCATION: East side of Lincoln Inn Fields 

 

Whilst you’re relieving yourself, ponder that one of the earliest public privvies in London was the Lincoln's Inn “bog house” built in the late 17th century. Planning for this "house of office" in Base Court began in 1689, when a passage to the bog house was to be built in Fickettfields according to papers dated February 1691. 

 

The siting of the bog-house was a problem, because of the unavoidable smell. The Council met on 1 July 1691 and ordered that the bog house be placed no nearer the kitchen garden than “outside the seventh window of the main building”. 

 

The first ever performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream took place in Lincoln’s Inn gardens. 

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STOP: Ostler's Hut, Lincoln's Inn

LOCATION: Difficult to spot (especially at weekends when the gates are closed). Head for the gated entrance into Lincoln’s Inn on Chancery Lane. The ostler’s hut can be seen inside the inns of court. 

 

It is London’s smallest listed building. It was built in 1860 to house the ostler, who looked after the horses of visiting lawyers and students. But being the affluent sort of place that it is, the majority of the visitors to Lincoln’s Inn swiftly upgraded from equine to engine. And with the advent of the motorcar came the demise of the ostler; his job was rendered obsolete. 

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STOP: Roupell Street

LOCATION: A few hundred metres after turning off Blackfriars Road 

 

Not strictly the smallest anything, but lovely nonetheless. Roupell Street was first developed in the 1820s. The land was owned by John Roupell, whose family lived in nearby Cross Street (now called Meymott Street). The Roupells were a wealthy family, whose money had been made in lead smelting and scrap metal. 

 

Before the development of Roupell Street, this area had been known as Lambeth Marsh. Sparsely populated, it was characterised by marshy areas and sandbanks, although the building of Blackfriars Bridge in 1769 kickstarted the building of houses and businesses from the late 18th Century onwards. 

 

The survival of such a street is surprising as this area of London was devastated first by the expansion of the railways, and later in the Blitz. The large-scale development of the railway terminus at Waterloo after it first opened in 1848 swept away entire streets, particularly when the huge station we see today was built at the beginning of the 20th Century. 

 

The houses built on Roupell Street were not high status dwellings of the sort that have been more likely to survive in London from this period. The area south of the Thames was one of industry, and the people working here needed somewhere to live. The houses of Roupell Street were homes for artisans and skilled workers – joiners, metal workers, stonemasons, blacksmiths and a host of other trades. The modest two-story terraced houses have no front gardens, which shows their low status at the time they were built. 

 

The houses of Roupell Street were later joined by more new streets, also owned and developed by the Roupell family. Collectively, these streets are known as the Lambeth Estate. The houses on neighbouring Whittlesey Street and Theed Street include some larger, double- fronted terraces. A large number of the buildings are listed, and along with the Lambeth Estate’s Conservation Area status this prevents the houses from being demolished or unsympathetically altered. 

 

The area frequently features as a television and film backdrop, including in the Kray twins biopic Legend starring Tom Hardy. Roupell Street also appears in hit TV shows such as Mr Selfridge, Call the Midwife and Doctor Who. Residents say it is one of the most filmed places in London with at least a dozen crews shooting each year. 

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STOP: Clennam Street

LOCATION: Immediately on your left after turning right at the traffic lights onto Mashalsea Road 

 

The shortest street in London. Although controversially a recent Daily Telegraph article named Candover Street (41 metres long) as London’s shortest “genuine street” due to a technicality – that Clennam Street (26 metres long) was pedestrianised in 2010. 

 

Notice the street numbers - there is only one, number 28, which hints at the fact that much of the rest of the street was destroyed during the Blitz. 

 

STOP: Mice sculpture

LOCATION: Hard to spot. Stop immediately after you’ve turned off Eastcheap into Philpot Lane. Then look up to just between the ground floor and the first floor of the coffee shop. 

 

An interesting but tragic backstory. The mice are said to represent two men who were working on a nearby building and fell to their deaths whilst fighting over a missing cheese sandwich. It later emerged that the greedy culprits had in fact been mice! The remaining workers left this monument in their honour. 

 

The mice are engaged in a tug of war over the cheese. 

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STOP: St Ethelburga's

LOCATION: On the east side of Bishopsgate 

 

The smallest church in the City of London, St Ethelburga’s is one of the few surviving medieval churches in the City of London. Many were destroyed during the Great Fire of 1666 or the second World War. The foundation date of the church is unknown, but it was first recorded in 1250 as the church of St Adelburga-the-Virgin. 

 

St Ethelburga (died c.675) was the first leader of a monastic order for women in England. Having refused an arranged marriage to a pagan prince, she was banished to a nunnery by her brother, Erkonwald who later became Bishop of London (Bishopsgate, where St Ethelburga’s Centre now stands, was named after him). She died of plague. 

 

The church was rebuilt around 1411 and some of this fabric, notably the south arcade, remains. In the 17th Century two shops were erected in front of the church, serving as an early example of ecclesiastical social enterprise. It was not until 1932 that these were removed when Bishopsgate was widened and the original facade of the church restored to view. A small bell tower was added in 1775. 

 

A former priest of the church ran into a little bit of trouble when it emerged that he had been marrying people who were only citizens of Bishopsgate in that they had left their suitcases with him for six months prior to the ceremony. And in the 1930’s St Ethelburga’s achieved notoriety as one of the few churches in which divorced people could remarry, in defiance of the Bishop’s strictures. 

 

An IRA bomb in 1993 almost wiped St. Ethelburga’s off the map. The bomb targeted the neighbouring commercial buildings, but 70% St Ethelburga’s was destroyed and it was not insured. There was considerable disagreement about what should happen to the ruins. There was a proposal to demolish it in the aftermath but, following a sustained public outcry, it was rebuilt to its original plan, though much changed internally. 

 

STOP: The Betsey Trotwood

LOCATION: Junction of Farringdon Lane and Farringdon Road 

 

London’s smallest music venue, 'The Betsey Trotwood' is a characterful Victorian pub in the heart of Clerkenwell. It seats just 25 people. The acts are mainly solo acoustic, but all this nonsense about the laws of physics hasn't stopped them ramming in full bands from time to time. 

 

Such modern-day greats as Keane and The Magic Numbers have even passed through their doors before moving on to bigger things. 

 

They trade on three floors. The main bar room is at street level. Downstairs, you will find the famously atmospheric cellar gig venue. On the upper level, there is an elegant bar and acoustic room. 

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STOP: Crawford Passage

LOCATION: Opposite Herbal Hill 

 

London’s narrowest street. At its narrowest point, the distance between all those yellow lines is just 5cm.

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The interesting street names in this area - for example Herbal Hill and Saffron Hill - remind us that The Fleet river once flowed along the route of Farringdon Road and was navigable by boats bringing expensive cargo to The City.

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STOP: Keystone Crescent

LOCATION: A turning off Caledonian Road

 

Keystone Crescent has a unique matching outer and inner circle of houses and is the smallest radius of any crescent in Europe. Notice that the ‘conservation area’ grade Victorian townhouses have curved walls. The Caledonian Asylum for Scottish Children was here in 1825 before the crescent was built in 1846. It was then called Caledonian Crescent (still visible on the corner of 48 Caledonian Road). 

 

The area became a London transport hub with the coming of the Regent’s Canal in 1820 and later the railways, both of which acted as stimuli to industrial development to the north and west of the area. King’s Cross station opened in 1852 and St Pancras station opened in 1857. 

 

The road was renamed Keystone Crescent in 1917, during the first world war. This expansion and development included adaptations to London’s rivers as they were diverted and hidden below. The Council will not permit the removal of original or traditional front railings within the area. Owners are encouraged to reinstate traditional metal railings (where these existed) and basement gates must be painted black too. The houses are two storey townhouses with basements and attics. The bricks are set in Flemish Bond with Welsh slate roofs. Each entrance has a round-arched doorway with a four-panelled door. 

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The ride ends at the cafe in Russell Square

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