please empty your brain below
I agree with your comments about the difficulty of searching the website. The boroughs thing was maddening, and because I can’t actually go to anything on the weekend itself (it clashes with the Oval test match) I wanted to look for places to go during the week and next weekend. It involved going through millions of listings for yesterday and today before I got to the dates I could actually do. I arranged some interesting visits nevertheless, but missed out on some things next weekend, because they were booked up by the time I got there.

Baldassaro | 05.09.21 - 8:42 a.m. | #

Some of the transport assistance described is a bit woolly as well. 325, 241, 147, 474 to get to Millennium Mills would involve some very long walks. Stick to 474 if you are going.

scrumpy | 05.09.21 - 8:54 a.m. | #

We are also long-term, regular Open Housers, and a nephew wanted to come into London from darkest Essex specifically requesting some Open House content - we once took him on some visits when he was about 11. But then we tried searching ... the map was the easiest way to identify things in a given area. (But everything good was already booked). Epic fail.

MartinG | 05.09.21 - 9:24 a.m. | #

Don't worry, you didn't miss much with the Baker Street tour. At least 90% was conducted in the public areas of the station. Brief walk throughs of a couple of interesting TfL buildings at the start end end were being used primarily to get the group inside the gateline without needing tickets.

David | 05.09.21 - 9:41 a.m. | #

No 3 has me on edge now :-/

Sashina | 05.09.21 - 9:41 a.m. | #

I declined the cookie, too, and booking worked as it should. I even netted a ballot ticket for the New Museum of London building site!
Agree with MartinG that the map was easiest, but yes, you had to be quick.

commonliner | 05.09.21 - 9:46 a.m. | #

The map’s good, but the pop-ups don’t display dates, so it’s still a real slog to find out what’s on today.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 05.09.21 - 9:55 a.m. | #

Yes, really frustrating booking failure.
I’m pretty sure there’ll be slots at Holy Trinity Sloane Sq. today though...

RogerB | 05.09.21 - 9:57 a.m. | #

Do I smell a rat with number 3? Somehow the writing smells of being pulled from a promotional brochure.

Caroline | 05.09.21 - 10:08 a.m. | #

I dipped into the website several times as I wanted to book something (anything) interesting on a couple of specific dates that I'll be in London. I didn't have the perseverance to work around the weaknesses in the search/filter function you've described. A poor 'user experience' indeed.

Frank F | 05.09.21 - 10:45 a.m. | #

One day I'll get them to open the clock tower at QMUL for a visit. It's not exactly easy access, there's a narrow ladder to the top, but I live in hope.

David (@DTL) | Homepage | 05.09.21 - 11:19 a.m. | #

David, a better view than from aloft the Marble Arch mountlet. The tower is closed for repairs but with some perseverance I believe access will be possible.

Christopher | Homepage | 05.09.21 - 1:07 p.m. | #

Number 3 is a real tease. I suppose it's actually relatively likely that one of the others is a reader, but I'm not sure it would have led to your unveiling. Unless you have a particularly distinctive appearance (that third eye could be a giveaway I suppose!), I suspect most people would have trouble identifying you again by the time they read the post.

Andrew S | 05.09.21 - 3:32 p.m. | #

I was also baffled by the listings not filtering by date. I contacted Open House as I couldn't believe that functionality wasn't available, and they said it was available via 'Events' instead of 'Listings'. UX fail! But I did manage to attend a highly enjoyable city of London walk, and also, rather randomly, which is the best part of Open House, wandered into a church and ended up trying out bell-ringing! So a pretty successful day all-in-all. (And there were more than 3 people in both of those, so those are eliminated from your #3, sadly!)

Jayne | 05.09.21 - 5:03 p.m. | #

I think this was my seventeenth Open House, as there wasn't enough on last year to entice me in. I missed the buzz from previous years - talking to people while queuing for venues, people walking the streets with a green book slung under their arm. It was still worth the trip in, and hopefully will bounce back next year.

The problem for me is I have young kids now, so don't particularly want to book a long tour of a building in case they don't engage and start playing up a bit.

When the site went live I managed to get on the tour of Room (the Anthony Gormley hotel room in a pice of art), given it was likely to be short. Spotted some others but as they were tours I decided to pass on them. It's well worth visiting if you get the chance.

Spent Friday evening fishing around on the map trying to find other things to see on Saturday, which as you said could be frustrating as you had to open up anything to find out what day and whether it was still available or not. Some places were good at declaring up front they were online only, while others it only became apparent when I went to book.

In the end we also did Royal Opera House, which followed my favourite format for Open House. You're free to walk at your own leisure, there was some helpful information boards, and a few events on during the day (Opera performances, a harpist).

Thanks to the time I'd booked the Room tour at, we didn't quite manage to fit in some other buildings in Bloomsbury that looked good and you could turn up on the day for. We instead did some other non-Open House activities up near Marble Arch for a couple of hours.

Peter of London | 05.09.21 - 5:17 p.m. | #

Christopher, that's good to know. I did get a look inside a few years back when an event on the front lawn was taking power (I think) from the tower.

I'll get up there before I retire. I'll keep trying.

David (@DTL) | Homepage | 05.09.21 - 5:58 p.m. | #

I suppose it's appropriate that Location Number Three was third, pun-wise.

Lux | 06.09.21 - 1:57 p.m. | #

I feel your pain with the website. As I was only in London for the one weekend it was frustrating not being able to search it properly by date.

Despite that, I had a good Open House weekend but when I look back on previous years I realise how underwhelming my selections were this year in comparison. Hopefully it's a Covid hangover and things will return to normal.

I did go to Baker Street which I assumed from the description would be largely above ground buildings, but turned out to be mainly the station. It was however the best visit I did and the guide Ann was superb.

Anders | 07.09.21 - 11:01 a.m. | #

I really like "digital brantub" as a description for websites for this kind of multi-location/date/event festival.

James Matcham | 07.09.21 - 11:03 a.m. | #

A footnote - on Tuesday 8th I was returning from a lunchtime stroll to the Grade II listed sheltered housing scheme where I live, and was asked whether I was anything to do with Open House. Later I visited the web site and found (after frustration with the user interface - perhaps it works better on a smart phone than my laptop) that 2 guided tours were scheduled for that day. We residents were unaware of this, and so was the scheme supervisor when I related this to her on Wednesday morning.

Ian Paton | 08.09.21 - 11:10 a.m. | #











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