Best Half Term Adventures

With so much going on in London, it can sometimes be so overwhelming to choose what to do, that we end up staying at home and not going anywhere.  So we've picked out our favourite what's on ideas for this autumn to help sort out what's worth going along to.  

Some of the best holiday workshops in London for kids are at the Geffrye Museum and the John Soane Museum, where the children get to create something really proper. And this half term is no exception: 

SPOOKY FUN 

Take the shiny new Overground to Hoxton which stops right outside the back door of the Geffrye Museum. It  really couldn't be simpler. 

On Halloween itself you can scare yourself silly making a spooky hat  and a yummy chocolate apple. Get there early to guarantee a place as these cooking workshops are hot favourite. There are two sessions 10.30 - 12.30pm and 2 - 4pm.

 If you miss this one there are scores of other lovely free workshops everyday for children aged 5-15.



CLAY TIME

Tucked away behind the Inns of Court is the John Soane Museum (nearest tube Holborn) where you can leave your kids to get their hands mucky making a clay Toby jug to take home. This is a fabulous, creative all day workshop for children aged 7+ at a cost of £20. Wednesday 31st October  10.30 - 3pm.  Booking essential 0207 4404263 admin@soane.org.uk.  Children must bring their own lunch. 


PUMPKINS AND FACE PAINTS

Head out west and walk along the Thames river bank to the delectable Petersham Nurseries near Richmond for an afternoon of pumpkins, toffee apples and scary stories.  Treat yourselves to a slice of delicious cake.   

Tuesday 30th October , 3 - 5pm   £5

OUTDOOR ADVENTURE

Give the dinosaurs a miss and pack your backpack for the first ever pop up campsite at the Natural History Museum with free events, Camper vans, movie screens and popcorn, real Arctic tents and music.    27 October to 2 November, 11- 16.30 in the Darwin Centre Courtyard. 

TODDLER TIME

Shake your tambourine with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at one of their popular events for the very youngest music-lovers.  Sunday 4 November 2012.  At the Purcell Rooms, South Bank Centre.


PUPPET SHOW

Catch the last performances of The Tear Thief, who in the hours between supper and bedtime carries her waterproof, silvery sack as she steals the tears of every child who cries. Find out what she does with these tears at the Little Angel Puppet Theatre. Written by poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy. 

CELEBRITY WALKABOUT 

Love it or hate it, Madame Tussauds near Baker Street is a children's favourite and is curiously perfect for a whistle stop tour of British history, complete with Royals and celebrities. It's also London's oldest waxwork museum and was created back in the early 19th Century by a woman escaping from the French Revolution.   Look out for web deals on ticket prices.

DARK ARTS

A little further afield, but still close to London is the Harry Potter Film Studio Tour Find out the secrets behind how the Dark Arts were brought to life in the Harry Potter films this half term, learn about the make-up techniques, come face to face with the Death Eaters, go a lesson in the Potions classroom and have your picture taken flying on a broomstick.  Book tickets in advance.

And lastly, these are the most popular must-sees in London and are worth taking the time to queue up for:

UMBRELLAS UP

Random International: Rain Room at the Barbican, is the place to get  wet in this half term. Opens at 11am and the queues are 2 hours long.  So get there at 10am with a coffee and a bun and sit it out.  

TEEN DRAMA

Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time at the National Theatre is the hot ticket this season. This GCSE novel by Mark Haddon is fabulously taken to the stage by War Horse Director Marianne Elliott.   Sold out but returns and day tickets available if you get there early.

Ghost from the past

Tucked away behind the bustle of building works at St Pancras and King’s Cross is a tiny church, one of the oldest in London, called St Pancras Old Church.  Step inside: it is almost always open.  It is eerily peaceful and quiet.  Not a soul to be seen.  

It’s a church with an amazing history: excavations have found Norman masonry as well as Roman bricks and tiles.  For centuries it was a popular spot for Londoners to walk to, being just a mile from London at the time, and was described as a remote country church surrounded by fields.  It had its ups and downs: Oliver Cromwell used St Pancras Old Church as a stable and barracks for his troops during the Civil War.  The church’s treasures were hurriedly hidden from the soldiers and not refound till the restoration of the tower two hundred years later.  The river Fleet once flowed beside it, channeled away in the 19th century to make way for the railways. 

Before the railways, the area of Somers Town around the church was being developed as a well-to-do neighbourhood, with fine houses at The Polygon (now a housing block).  In the eighteenth century, the pioneer of women’s education and rights Mary Wollstonecraft lived there with her husband William Godwin.  There is a fading tomb to them both in the churchyard.  Mary’s daughter grew up to become Mary Shelley, the author of the Frankenstein story.  It’s said that it was in this churchyard that the poet Shelley first saw and fell in love with young Mary while she was visiting her mother’s grave.  He lived nearby at 5 Chapel Terrace, now subsumed by the railway arches.  

The little church has played a role in London’s literature.  Charles Dickens, a Camden man from time to time, casts the church in the Tale of Two Cities as the place where Jerry Cruncher came to ‘fish’ - another word for bodysnatching.  The novelist Thomas Hardy also knew the graveyard well.  Before writing his novels, he  studied architecture under a man called Arthur Blomfield who was asked to supervise the exhumation of Old St Pancras Church graveyard in 1865.  Hardy was brought in to take on this unsavory task and piled the old headstones together in an artistic circle around an ash tree.  The tree, known as Hardy’s tree, is still there, the headstones now beginning to be engulfed by the trunk as it has grown.  

And there is one other remarkable thing to discover in this churchyard.  In the centre is a grand tomb, the burial place of the London architect Sir John Soane.  He himself designed the Monument at its centre on the death of his wife in 1815.  Its striking shape is said to be the inspiration for Giles Gilbert Scott’s winning entry for the design of the K2 London Telephone box some 110 years later.  It is one of only two Grade 1 listed monuments in London.

Spot the difference

If you ever find yourself at a loose end in King’s Cross, take 5 minutes to wander to the back of the station, away from the Euston Road, and discover this tiny but significant London church.   It’s a treat.

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