The Viaduct Tavern, 126 Newgate Street,  is a beautiful old Victorian tavern.  It has a wrought copper ceiling and a triptych of oil paintings representing Commerce, Agriculture, Science and the Fine Arts.  There was an opium den upstairs in the 19th century, but alas now closed.  However, the food and drink, the victuals served in the bar are excellent.

But what lies beneath?  Little remains of the infamous Newgate Prison.  It was London’s main prison for five centuries and built in a style known as ‘architecture terrible’ in an effort to discourage law-breaking.  The prison closed in 1902 but below the Viaduct Tavern cells have survived and they are genuinely horrible: cold, damp and

dark and in sharp contrast to the comfortable lounge upstairs.  Up to twenty criminals – usually debtors – were crammed into each one in what must have been total misery. Prisoners had to pay for the privilege of being locked up – or starve to death.

This is not only a regular haunt of ghost hunters and tales of bumps in the night and apparitions abound.  But it is also a genuine opportunity to visit the underbelly of a great city’s less salubrious past.