Chequer Street Wooden Paving

The lowdown

Before tarmac, many of London's busiest streets were surfaced not with stone but with thousands of small wooden blocks, set on end like cobbles. The timber muffled the deafening clatter of iron-shod hooves and cartwheels, a real boon on streets outside hospitals, churches and grand homes where quiet mattered.

Almost all were torn up long ago, but a few rare patches survive, including one near Chequer Street, often tucked in a yard or doorway. It is free to find, a humble and easily missed relic of the noisy, horse-powered city, and a reminder of just how different London once sounded.