Access All Areas: St Paul’s Cathedral

When I went to St Paul’s Cathedral they did not use to have access down to the Cypt where the shop cafe and toilets are but now they have:

The lift that is great for visitors with mobility problems and it is very smart and is different from normal lifts because you need a FOB (key) to make the lift work and also to call the lift. This is a wonderful to see that St Paul’s Cathedral is waking up to the future. But it is not ideal for people who have a shake for any reason because you need to get the FOB lined up just right or it won’t work. A member of staff will show you how to use it.

Now most of the Cathedral is wheelchair accessable, but the Whispering Gallery is not accessable due to a short staircase.

There are two disabled parking bays in the Church Yard, very near to the cathedral - please note the maximum time in the bays is 3 hours (no return in less than an hour)
You enter the cathedral by the newly opened accessible entrance through a set of automatic doors that the member of staff opens from inside. We then used the new lift which has just been put in.

Nigel took us to the Whispering Gallery entrance but I did not go up due to it being a short staircase (unsuitable for wheelchairs and walking frames) but there is going to be a Virtual Tour for visitors who can’t get up to see what it looks like. We also went to see a space that is not wheelchair accessible yet but Nigel said that they are planning to put a platform lift in so all visitors can access the gallery that will have some objects from the past collection, It also leads to the library that is not open all the time.
In this gallery Nigel took me to was a old piece of carving that was very tactile and very nice to look at . When the gallery opens it may be a good idea to take visitors with visual impairments to feel this piece of work because I think they will get a lot out of their visit if they can feel a piece of history

You can now access all the crypt area as they have made

a really ramp.

that is wide enough for wheelchairs/ scooters/frames and not forgetting pushchairs. The ramp is on the left side and on the right is four steps in the same stone work and the ramp has a wonderful iron handrail that goes all the way down and also doubles up as the handrail for the stairs.
rampWe went to every floor and I saw the main cathedral from the top looking down. Then I went to the cathedral floor itself and saw and heard the organ being played.
Nigel then showed us an iron gate at the back of the cathedral that has four steps and he told us that they are going to have a platform lift up those stairs. This will make the whole ground floor accessible all the way round.
After all that walking I needed a bite to eat so we went into ‘The Refectory’. The tables and chairs can be moved to accompany a wheelchair. They have very nice shortbread and coffee. It is not cheap but the food is good and there is also a café where you can get cakes etc if you don’t want a meal.

Right - everyone needs to go to the toilet at some stage in their visit to St Paul’s Cathedral and they have two accessible toilets that are great and clean but when I went to use the accessible toilet both times they were occupied by non disabled visitors, who could of used the normal men’s or ladies toilets.
I think it would be a good idea to add a Radar Key Lock to the door of the accessible toilet to avoid this happening again and again.
What better way to end the visit to St Paul’s Cathedral but to visit their shop where you can find a large range of items including books, cds and much more. There is a very nice book on the history of St Paul’s Cathedral and I think it is a very nice book to have as a memory of your visit.

I really enjoyed my visit to St Paul’s Cathedral. It is a wonderful building and part of London’s history and we should be proud of it.

I also found out that it is completely flat all the way from the cathedral to Tate Modern and I went over the Millennium Bridge in my mobility scooter for the first time