Legal London Prayer Walk

A walk through the often hidden heartland of Legal London. Sights include the Old Bailey, the Royal Courts of Justice, Temple Church, Middle Temple Hall and Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Legal London lies on the west side of the City of London, and is sandwiched between the financial sector and the West End. This area contains the Old Bailey (the most senior criminal court in the land) and the Royal Courts of Justice (home to the highest civil court and the Court of Appeal for both civil and criminal jurisdictions). Surrounding these are the four Inns of Court; Grays, Lincolns, Inner Temple and Middle Temple. All practicing barristers across England & Wales must be members of one of the Inns of Court. London’s legal centre therefore dominates the practice of law across the nation.

The Inns of Court first arose in the fourteenth century, but the area’s history stretches back beyond that. In medieval times the powerful Knights Templar order had their headquarters here, centered around a church they built as a replica to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The church still survives, and though the Knights Templar were eventually thrown out of the area, their legacy still survives in the name and the nature of this cloistered world of closed courtyards.