Old Bailey

Day 8

May 16th

Yesterday, my group got the day started off by going on a legal studies walk. Our tour guide took us to various locations in London of where law is studied. We saw two different Inn's, the Gray Inn and the Staple in. They were both very old and very impressive.
The second part of my day, we went to see the Old Bailey Court here in London. I think this tour of the court house was the best tour I have been on so far. Our tour guide was a police officer and he did a great job of explaining the history of the court and a lot of England's history. He took us to the deepest darkest places of the court house way below ground to all the way to the roof of the Old Bailey. One interesting story he told was how the Old Bailey survived the bombings from the Germans in World War II. He said there was a man  stationed on the roof of the court house that was ordered to take his shovel, scoop up the bombs and fling them off the building that were dropped from above. Surprising he must have lived because the Old Bailey Still stands today when many of the surrounding buildings were demolished. After showing us the roof of the Old Bailey he took us inside of the courthouse. It was absolutely beautiful. It had huge megalith marble pillars holding it up the structure and gigantic murals on the ceiling.   We also got to go inside courtroom number one which is the main courtroom or the courtroom that handles all the serious cases. It was very impressive and very interesting on how it was set up.