Freezing in London but a pleasant concert

It was a Wigmore Hall concert day today - good way to spend a Monday :D.  We headed off and, oh boy, was it cold.  Off to a concert at Wigmore Hall but getting up there early for some pics

Stopped for a cuppa on arrival which warmed the cockles, as they say :D It would be good to sit out in this courtyard area if the sun has been warm.

We had a wander around the St Pauls area

 Pete looking cold.....

Odd to see the couple of mallards.. in one of the green areas

St. Mary Aldermary

It was still freezing and trying to snow!  But as we stepped into the church the heat enveloped us.... oooh it was one of the warmest churches I'd been in..

And then out onto the streets and the cold again..

An wander along Fleet Street and a visit to St. Brides Church  This is the eighth church to stand on this spot   And a short extract from the church's website

A short extract from the St. Brides website

"Chapter I: Introduction THE CHURCH of St Bride's is justly world famous. To enter its doors is to step into 2,000 years of history, which had begun with the Romans some six centuries before the name of St Bride, daughter of an Irish prince, even emerged from legend to become associated forever with the site. The story of St Bride's is inextricably woven into the history of the City of London. By the time the Great Fire of 1666 left the church in ruins, a succession of churches had existed on the site for about a millennium, and the area had already assumed its unique role in the emergence of English printing. It took nine years for St Bride's to re-appear from the ashes under the inspired direction of Christopher Wren, but for the next two-and-a-half centuries it was in the shadow of the church's unmistakeable wedding-cake spire that the rise of the British newspaper industry into the immensely-powerful Fourth Estate took place. Then, in 1940, St Bride's fell victim once again to flames as German incendiary bombs reduced Wren's architectural jewel to a roofless shell. This time 17 years elapsed before rebuilding was completed, although a series of important excavations in 1953 amid the skeletal ruins, led by the medieval archaeologist Professor W. F. Grimes, came up with extraordinary results, uncovering the foundations of all six previous churches on the site. Not only the nation, but the Christian world as a whole, was fascinated by the discovery."

Down below in the Crypts were relics of the ancient walls. and..

original Roman mosaic floors.  (here the picture is of a mirror strategically placed to show the floor.

and once again we emerged...

and by now the snow was coming at us horizontally - it was bitter!!  We decided to visit various shops before stopped at Pret for a pre-concert lunch.

Today's concert was the Arcanto Quartet with two pieces..

Haydns String Quartet in B minor Op. 64 No.2 followed by
Brahms String Quartet in Bsharp Op,67

Very pleasant concert but it was good to head off back to get in, in the warm!

And apparently, it's been snowing and settling in Sussex... hey ho!!