Each morning from about 8.30am, two queues gather side by side along a relatively narrow side street in the City of London, a couple of minutes’ walk from St Paul’s Cathedral. The door at the top of the queue is relatively nondescript, the entrance nothing special – just a gap in a grey wall.
A casual passerby might barely notice these people queuing to enter a building that looks like nothing. But this entrance, on a street known as Old Bailey, is probably low-key for a reason. The complex behind the door is home to the biggest and most serious criminal trials in Britain.
The Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, known to all as the Old Bailey, is steeped in history and also notoriety. A court has stood in this area since at least the 16th century. Since then, it has weathered rebellions, pestilence, fires (most recently in January this year) and violence. It was almost destroyed by German bombers during the Blitz in 1941 and was bombed by the IRA in 1973.
Yet the Old Bailey perseveres as a bastion of the English criminal justice system. This is where the nation hears the worst of itself – the murders, the rapes and gang activity. But in the florid inscriptions beneath its vast domes, it also seeks to project an English view of their nation’s best. “The law of the wise is a fountain of life,” reads one engraving.
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A work assignment recently brought me to the Old Bailey, and to one of the two morning queues down the side of the building.
The general public is still allowed in to view its trials but enters the building through a different door up and around the corner on Newgate. That entrance opens out on to routes that lead to the public galleries of the complex of 18 courts. The public, however, usually doesn’t get access to the most beautiful parts of the building, including its grand halls, sweeping staircases and marbled corridors.
The two queues at the other low-key entrance around the corner on Old Bailey street are for the people loosely grouped together as “court users” who have official business there, such as lawyers, staff, jurors and, on days like this, journalists.
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The queue on the right is usually reserved for “first-day jurors”, who arrive bearing identification and summonses and are fast-tracked into the building. The queue on the left moves much more slowly and this week, was even slower again. On Monday, the Old Bailey introduced new security protocols.
Once a guard at the top of the queue establishes that you have official business, you enter the security cordon. It feels tighter than airport security and, this week, took longer than that to navigate. But once you get through, you emerge into one of the most stunning buildings in London.
The grand hall on the second floor in the northwest corner of the building is one of the most beautiful spaces in the city. This part of the building was completely destroyed in the 1941 Blitz bombing, although the courts kept going and simply moved to another part of the complex.
The northwest corner was rebuilt and, in 1952, reopened to reveal its modern-day splendour. The domes high in the ceiling sit above huge murals such as one depicting the Blitz and an English view of the nation’s valour. Nurses wearing St George’s Cross uniforms are shown helping wounded citizens, while others appear to get on with the work of clearing the city.
Another shows Lady Justice who, unusually, is not blindfolded. Yet another mural on the ceiling is of four figures depicting Labour, Art, Truth and Learning. Labour is personified in the image of a sturdy man in work clothes, while Truth, for some reason, is a woman with an exposed breast admiring herself in a mirror.
Artist Gerald Moira had painted some of the original murals that were destroyed in the second World War bombing. At the age of 85, he helped to repaint them in advance of the 1952 reopening. That was a literal illustration of England’s sense then of its own resilience which, more than 70 years on, some in the nation now seem to doubt as it grapples with modern challenges.
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There are, of course, plenty of busts and statues of monarchs dotted around the grand hall, as well as copious paintings of versions of the royal standard, including harps to represent Ireland, their old conquest.
“Right lives by law and law subsists by power,” reads a nearby inscription, quoting poet John Dryden in three-foot high letters on the wall. Nearby, there reads another of unknown origin: “London shall have all its ancient rights.”