Kiwi Roaming

Located near the Tower of London and just a few blocks apart are the Crypt Museum and the Monument for the Great Fire of London.

#14 in my list bundled together as they make a great afternoon activity.

Crypt Museum

We went to the Crypt Museum on one of the hottest days of July this year. It is located below the church All Hallows by the Tower. I had already marked it on my map of places but don’t recall seeing a sign outside so it’s not somewhere tourists flock to. We entered the Church and asked the attendant who directed us to the stairs for the museum. It might sound creepy but I was attracted to the idea of seeing the Roman ruins below the church which are visible in the museum.

It’s a small basement museum with a range of crypts to wander through. There are plenty of Roman artefacts on display including columns and parts of original walls visible. There were only about 8 people down there including us so it was both quiet and very very cool temperature wise so I thoroughly enjoyed the respite from the heat above. Is it creepy – yes a little bit.

Monument

If you’ve used the tube you’ll have seen a station called Monument which is located in the area dedicated to remembering the Great Fire of London. About 5 minutes walk from the Crypt Museum along Eastcheap and you’ll get to the station which leads to the Monument itself.

We did not walk up, there are 320 steps up a spiral staircase and as I mentioned it was one of the hottest days of summer – over 35C anyway. So we looked up at the monument, enjoyed the water fountain nearby to refil our bottles and wet our hands to help cool down. Besides you need a ticket so walking up isn’t free.

Beside the monument itself are large concrete seats each with some of the lyrics of the nursery rhyme – London’s Burning – engraved on them. I enjoyed researching the event itself and the monument location.

All up this took us about 2 hours. From here you can wander to many other sites in the central city.