Escorts in Bank and Monument, EC3 and EC4: who is close, and how soon
The Great Fire of London broke out in the small hours of a Sunday early in September 1666, a few streets from where the Monument now stands, after a summer so long and dry that the timber city caught like kindling and an east wind carried the flames west for days. The oldest corner of the City has taken its moods from the calendar ever since, and it still does.
Bank and Monument escorts meet a different district in each season: crowded pavements in June, empty lanes in August, candlelight in December and almost nobody at all in the last week of the year. None of the names on the board has a home in EC3 or EC4, so she travels in from the west, normally at your door around an hour on from the office agreeing the booking and later when the six o'clock exodus clogs the roads; the messages carry her precise time, and the rates carry the lengths.
On the ground
Bank and Monument in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameEC2R 8AJ, EC3N 4AJ, EC3N 4DJ, EC3A 7AB.
Nearest stations
Walking timeBank, 1 minute. Monument, 2 minutes. Cannon Street, 4 minutes.
Getting there
EC3, EC4Travel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to Bank and Monument
Who works here
On the board in Bank and Monument
The six prints above are a first shortlist for Bank and Monument tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Summer on the pavements
From May until the light goes in September, the lanes off Eastcheap and Lombard Street fill every fine weekday evening with people standing outside the pubs, jackets off and glasses in hand, spilling into streets built for handcarts. It is loud and good humoured until dusk, then gone. The gilded urn of flames on top of the Monument catches the late sun long after the pavements below are in shadow.
August is the exception. The holidays thin the offices, the standing crowds shrink to a few tables, and for a month the junction feels like a town out of season. Escorts in Bank and Monument find it at its gentlest then, warm, light and half empty.
Note 03
December, and the week after it
Early December is the busiest the district gets after dark. Office parties fill the bars from the moment the working day ends, and the streets around the junction stay noisy well into the evening. The churches answer with candlelit carol services: St Mary Woolnoth on the very corner of the junction, Hawksmoor's church, and St Stephen Walbrook tucked behind Mansion House, whose dome Wren built before the one at St Paul's.
Then, between Christmas and New Year, the district simply stops. Many of the places that feed the office crowd close, the trading floors are dark, and a walk from Bank down to the river can pass nobody at all. For anyone staying nearby, it is the quietest week of the year in central London.
Note 04
Autumn and the dark afternoons
September brings everyone back at once, and the autumn is the working heart of the year here, busy, purposeful and dark by the end of the afternoon once the clocks change. Each November the new Lord Mayor's procession sets out from Mansion House, the one day the junction belongs to a parade. The first cold evenings are the best time for a long dinner in these lanes, with the crowds indoors and the stone buildings lit against an early night. For a longer walk, the wider City of London spreads west and north of the junction, and London Bridge is just across the river.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for Bank and Monument
Asked most often
Bank and Monument, asked and answered
Which month is quietest around the junction?
Is early December a crowded time to be here?
What is a summer evening like near the Monument?
Does the last week of the year make sense for an evening here?
One zone either way
Next along from Bank and Monument
City Airport and ExCeL hotels
E16Same ladder, but outside Zones 1 and 2: the office confirms the travel and any minimum in writing on WhatsApp before booking.
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.