London's hidden interiors – in pictures

Drapers' Hall, Throgmorton Avenue: The Drapers' Company acquired this site from Henry VIII in 1543. Despite the building being destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666 and again in 1772 and being rebuilt twice in the 19th century, the interior is still the finest Victorian livery hall, with a suite of rooms that make Buckingham Palace seem homely. Indeed, the Hall and Drawing Room have been used as alternatives to the Palace in various films, including The King's Speech. The Livery room, pictured, has scenes from The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream on the ceiling and marble Corinthian columns march around the entire room
Photograph: Derek Kendall

St Christopher's Chapel, Great Ormond Street: Dedicated to the patron saint of children, this tiny exquisite neo-Byzantine chapel was designed to inculcate religious awe in impoverished and illiterate children from the surrounding slums. The central dome is painted with an orchestra of 12 angels playing musical instruments, while the columns of rare Devonshire pink marble are carved with gilded flowers, owls, squirrels and mythical beasts to inspire children's imaginations. Designed by Edward Middleton Barry in memory of his sister-in-law Caroline, it was funded by her husband William Henry Barry, the son of Sir Charles Barry who co-designed the Palace of Westminster
Photograph: Derek Kendall

2 Temple Place, Victoria Embankment: This former residence of the Viscount Astor sits in a prime location on the banks of the river Thames. It was built for William Waldorf Astor, newspaper proprietor, financier and hotelier, who opened the Waldorf Hotel in 1908. Upon the death of his father in 1890 he became the richest man in America and moved to London a year later. The only specifications he gave to architect John Loughborough were that the building should personify and celebrate literature and liberal arts. The result was one of the most opulent Victorian houses in London. The great hall, shown here, has a roof of carved Spanish mahogany, lined with a frieze of 54 portraits of characters from history and literature Photograph: Derek Kendall

Geometrical staircase and Library, St Paul's Cathedral: Hidden from the public gaze in the south-west tower of St Paul's Cathedral is one of London's most awe-inspiring spaces – the Geometrical Staircase which serves the Cathedral Library. While Inigo Jones introduced the first stone cantilevered staircase in England between 1629-35, for its colossal scale and structural ingenuity Wren's stands in a league of its own. It was built by the master mason William Kempster with delicate wrought-ironwork by Jean Tijou. Spiralling to the heavens, it swirls in two great revolutions up to the Cathedral Library, which is a veritable time capsule, untouched since its completion more than 300 years ago
Photograph: Courtesy of English Heritage

St Paul's Cathedral Library: The Library is contained in a huge stone chamber lined with the original bookcases and dark oak panelling constructed under the watchful gaze of Wren's master joiner, Sir Charles Hopson. The Great Fire destroyed tens of thousands of volumes but the library has been added to ever since and now contains 16,000 books on theology, including one of only three priceless copies of the first edition of Tyndale's New Testament believed to date to 1526. The serene atmosphere is as it was 300 years ago, with the ethereal sound of the cathedral choir singing far below Photograph: Derek Kendall

Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey: Commonly known as The Old Bailey, the court is one of London's landmark buildings. Crowning its distinctive dome, the gilt-bronze sculpture of Lady Justice by FW Pomeroy has become a London icon – yet because of restricted public access the interior is relatively little known. Inside is a huge tripartite hall with double-aisled spaces framing an Imperial staircase in cream, green and white marble. The Grand Hall on the first floor with huge domed centrepieces echoes St Paul's and friezes inscribed with elevated references run around the space, including: "The law of the wise is a fountain of life" and "London shall have its ancient rights"
Photograph: Courtesy English Heritage

The Black Friar, Queen Victoria Street: Built near the site of the Dominican Friary, established in 1279, which gave the Blackfriars area its name, the pub was once a conventional affair built in 1875. But in 1905 the interior was remodelled in high Arts and Crafts style for a publican by the name of "Petite". Sculptors Henry Poole and Frederick Callcott created a riotous medieval fantasy of "Merrie England", a secular parody of the ecclesiastical interiors of the time. Jolly fat friars cavort on ornamental friezes and carouse in a range of worldly pursuits interspersed with life-enhancing homilies
Photograph: Courtesy of English Heritage

Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret, St Thomas's Church: One of London's most intriguing historic interiors lay undiscovered for almost a century in the roof of St Thomas's Church, Southwark. In 1957 an intrepid researcher, Raymond Russell, climbed into the sealed roofspace and uncovered the remnants of the oldest surviving operating theatre in the country, once part of St Thomas's hospital. The church was completed in 1703, with a large garret. In 1822 the garret was converted into a purpose-built theatre for female patients, with a skylight added for additional light. An early 19th-century wooden operating table, complete with cut marks, sits beneath it, while in the garret, display cases house a gruesome collection of surgical instruments
Photograph: Derek Kendall

Wilton's Music Hall, Graces Alley, Tower Hamlets: Wilton's music hall is the only remaining example of a first-generation grand music hall in the world. It is hauntingly atmospheric, with a pervading aura of romantic decay, which presents a real conservation challenge. In 1850 John Wilton acquired the building – made up of a pub and concert room – and the neighbouring properties and constructed a much larger hall. It's alleged that Wilton's was the scene of the first London display of the cancan after which it was immediately banned. The entrance hall is simply the enclosed paved yard of the original tavern. A narrow staircase leads to a warren of small supper rooms tainted with the aura of scandalous liaisons. But the main hall is one of London's hidden wonders – a long, thin auditorium with an elliptical barrel-vaulted ceiling. Around three sides is a gallery carried on barley sugar columns with the balcony decorated with cartoon papier mache
Photograph: Derek Kendall

Rivoli Ballroom, Brockley Road: This is a rare, surviving example of a full-blown 1950s conversion of a former cinema to a dance hall for the age of jazz, swing and rock and roll. Designed by Henley Attwater, it opened as the Picture Palace in 1913 and was adapted to a ballroom by local businessman Leonard Tomlin in 1917. The plush interior is an amalgamation of art deco, neo-classical and Oriental motifs to create an exotic venue for the increasingly affluent teenagers of the 1960s. The spectacular ballroom has a raised viewing dias, stage and a purpose-built sprung Canadian maple dance floor. The wonderfully kitsch decor of red velour padded walls, scallop lights, French chandeliers and Chinese lanterns has provided the backdrop for music and fashion shoots and TV series. There is nothing quite like it anywhere else in London
Photograph: Derek Kendall

Battersea Power Station, interior: Its silhouette has made it one of London's most iconic riverside landmarks, but Battersea Power Station is also its most conspicuous listed building at risk, and the largest brick building in Europe. Behind its forlorn brick shell lies one of London's most atmospheric spaces. The inside of control room A overlooking the original turbine hall, the work of J Theo Halliday, is like a vision from Fritz Lang's Metropolis. The quality of the finish is astonishing. The walls are lined with Ribbon Napoleon marble, with black Belgian marble fluting to the windows. The ceiling is divided into eight huge bays, each coffered and glazed with linear decorative lighting. The original L-shaped control panel and walnut veneer furniture all still survive in front of an intriguing array of levers and dials
Photograph: Derek Kendall

Gala Bingo Hall, Mitcham Lane: The Gala Bingo Club is the only Grade I-listed cinema in England, and one of the most lavish in Europe. It opened on 7 September 1931 as the flagship of Sydney Bernstein's Granada empire. The exterior was a fairly conventional affair but what set the Granada apart was the interior: designed by Russian theatre designer and impresario Theodore Komisarjevsky. The real climax is the colossal auditorium, designed to seat 3,000. It has an intricate coffered Gothic ceiling, arcaded walls and gabled Gothic canopies suspended over the proscenium arch. To each side are huge gables decorated with painted murals of troubadours and medieval figures. Under the stage, now a cafe, is a full-blown 14-rank Wurlitzer organ together with a four manual organ console in the old orchestra flea pit
Photograph: Derek Kendall

Peter Hone's House, Ladbroke Square: Like some latter-day incarnation of Sir John Soane, Peter Hone, connoisseur, collector, antiquarian and antique dealer, has dedicated every inch of his first floor flat to his insatiable appetite for history. The interior is an ever-changing tableau of neo-classical statuary, archeological fragments, garden ornaments and architectural details crammed into every space. For example, the front parlour, pictured, is also the "winter bedroom" with a huge canopied bed swathed in drapes from Tyttenhanger Manor. To one side is a colossal Nelson vase, commissioned to mark the death of Nelson in 1805. Squeezed behind is a plaster replica of Bernini's throne of St Peter; nearby a Hellenistic bust from 250BC and a first century head of Midas Photograph: Derek Kendall

Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, Brentfield Road: One of the more surreal pleasures of a trip to Ikea in Neasden is the sight of the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir rising serenely above the suburban houses that line the North Circular. The Mandir was the first traditional Hindu temple to be built in Europe, and the largest outside India. Designed by architect CB Sompura, the £12m Mandir was completed in 1995. It is one of the seven wonders of modern Britain and a magnificent testament to Indian craftsmanship
Photograph: Courtesy of English Heritage

Finsbury Town Hall, Islington: Designed by Charles Evans-Vaughan, the hall was built in two stages. The first, completed in 1895, faced the newly formed Rosebery Avenue. The second, beneath an elaborate pediment carved with figures of Peace and Plenty, followed on five years later in a more florid baroque style. Evans-Vaughan designed the interior, the highlight being the 'Clerkenwell Angels', draped, winged female figures adorning the pillars bearing foliage with light bulbs as flowers. The building is now home to the Urdang Dance Academy Photograph: Derek Kendall

Masonic Temple, Liverpool Street: Situated on the site of the first Bethlehem Hospital founded in 1247, the former Great Eastern Hotel (now the Andaz Liverpool Street hotel), is a rambling, red-brick gabled affair. But internally some fine spaces can be found. Up a marble staircase and through a maze of corridors is the mysterious Masonic Temple designed in Greek style and completed in 1912 at a cost of £50,000 – the equivalent of £4m today. A wood-panelled antechamber leads into the Temple, which is lined with 12 different varieties of marble beneath a blue and gold ceiling with signs of the zodiac. There's no truth in the story that the Temple was rediscovered by builders behind a false wall during the hotel's renovation in 1997 Photograph: Derek Kendall

Welsh Baptist Chapel, Eastgate Street, Westminster: A stone's throw from Oxford Circus, the Welsh Baptist Chapel is one of London's more obscure but intimate treasures. Built in 1888, the architect Owen Lewis was lavished with praise for his creation. "And what a building! It is an edifice worthy of a West-End reputation," extolled the Baptist. The interior is delightful – a beautifully preserved preaching box with a gallery around three sides enclosed by decorative iron balustrades and stained glass. Today, the chapel provides a home and social centre for the United Welsh Church in central London Photograph: Derek Kendall