We take a peek behind the door of some hidden gems around the country.
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00:00Whether it's a hidden room behind a wall, easter eggs in your favourite computer game,
00:14or just discovering a hidden gem of a place in a city you thought you knew like the back
00:18of your hand, we all love finding a nice surprise behind a door we never thought to open.
00:23We've been looking behind those doors up and down the country for you, starting with
00:26Emma pulling that special book on that special bookshelf in Bristol.
00:30So I am here in what appears like a Bristol library, but I've got a sneaky suspicion
00:35it's a little bit more than that.
00:37Ooh, something's definitely happening.
00:48So the library was created for our customers to be able to have pre and post drinks originally,
00:54but thankfully the library's now turned into a staple part of Bristol hospitality, mainly
01:00due probably to the entrance and the quality of drinks we serve here, and the style of
01:06the venue which is in keeping with most of our venues that we build.
01:10Definitely focused on experience here, and it's all about the human interaction and being
01:16able to go out and try new exciting things, and a lot of what we do here is try and bring
01:21weird flavour combinations together that people wouldn't necessarily have thought to
01:24do themselves, and I think that kind of creative tasting is what brings people back out to
01:31bars and that kind of thing.
01:33So this part of Bristol is the oldest part of the Bristol, right by Castle Park, which
01:36used to be the main centre of Bristol before the Blitz.
01:40The mug shop building we have down the road is like 198 years old, so we kind of fell
01:44in love with this part of Bristol, just purely because of the age, it's stunning, and then
01:49luckily enough we were able to get hold of this venue here, the library, so all our businesses
01:54are kind of stretched on this street.
01:56I'd say we're quite unique, so the library itself is a multi-use venue, so in the day
02:04times on the later part of the week and the weekend we open up as an afternoon tea parlour.
02:09To be honest, I think it would be the same for most chefs, it's a bit of a noisy world
02:15out there, and there are very few moments where you're just fully doing what you're
02:19doing, as opposed to, you know, focused on X, Y, or Z.
02:22So this is a macaron, or macaroon, which is it?
02:27A macaron is like this, and a macaroon with an S is actually the little ones with coconut.
02:37Coconut, yeah, so it's not the same.
02:40So let's try a macaron.
02:41A macaron.
02:42A macaron.
02:43Cheers.
02:44Cheers.
02:45Hoppa.
02:49So is a margarita a popular cocktail here?
02:56Definitely, we have a lot of people that come here specifically for margaritas, which, yeah,
03:02of course, more than welcome, and then you have to have a sip to make sure that it tastes
03:06well.
03:07So you've done half a rim?
03:08Half a rim, just, yeah, to make sure that if someone doesn't want a full salt rim, they
03:13can choose to not.
03:15They are very, very nice.
03:17Happy?
03:18That is delicious.
03:20Lovely, well done, of course.
03:23Well, now I feel like I've got a cocktail qualification.
03:26Yeah, absolutely, you definitely do.
03:29Well, never mind the artisan drinks being served at the bar, the idea of a secret room
03:33behind a bookshelf might be literally one of the coolest things you'll ever see.
03:38What could outdo that?
03:39Well, I'm not sure, but we could try a secret tunnel in the middle of busy London Street.
03:44Here's Jack to tell us more.
03:46There are plenty of hidden gems in London, but on Leinster Garden, there is a secret
03:53tunnel hidden underneath these buildings.
03:56Along this beautiful street lies a little-known mystery created in the 1800s.
04:02Tucked away in Paddington in between the station and the world-famous Hyde Park is Leinster
04:07Gardens, a street that might appear normal to the average person, but those with an eagle
04:14eye will spot that two large buildings between two fancy hotels have been boarded up.
04:20And that's because they are props.
04:22Yep, that's right.
04:24Like a film set, these buildings are designed to create an illusion of a perfect street.
04:29But from the road behind, a secret is in fact revealed.
04:34No one lives inside.
04:36It's not real.
04:37And if you're taking a gander around the block through the quaint side streets and onto the
04:42road behind called Porches to Terrace, behind a big wall, everything is cleared up.
04:48Now if you're tall enough to see over the wall, which I'm not, but luckily I have a
04:52tripod, you'll find that the houses are actually an exterior to tunnels and that the London
04:58underground passes underneath where the houses should be.
05:03Although it looks like some sort of Harry Potter magic trick, this is one of London's
05:07hidden gems and makes 23 to 24 lines to gardens one of the quirkiest houses in the whole of
05:14the UK, but especially in London.
05:18I would have walked past those houses and never had a clue that she was just running
05:21through behind those facades.
05:22Amazing.
05:24Maybe not quite so hidden, but behind some impressive graffiti, Emily has found a really
05:28quirky bar with an interest in history on an unassuming Liverpool street.
05:32Hobo kiosk is quite possibly the friendliest and strangest little pub in the Baltic Triangle,
05:37with a unique design, a cosy atmosphere and a warm approach to hospitality, which Liverpool
05:43is famed for.
05:44This was an empty shell when we first started.
05:48We turned it into a shop and then we took it back to an empty shell again and we built
05:52various bits and pieces.
05:53I found the counter out on the streets.
05:57It was an old wardrobe.
05:59Three days after Tristan moved to the city, he met Delia and they've been together ever
06:03since.
06:04We were going to take it as an art shop for two years.
06:08We were going to walk away and it was the boys from Golf Fang who both individually
06:15said this would make a great micro pub.
06:19It's all about micro pubs.
06:20We were like, well, come again?
06:22We have no idea what they were.
06:24The couple both worked in community art for 40 years before opening the space.
06:28Delia and I, Mrs Hobo, we were both community artists working in a variety of situations
06:37on the streets, in prisons, hospitals, with kids with locked in autism, every possible
06:43marginalised community.
06:45And come the credit crunch back in 2010, unfortunately, first out the door were us artists.
06:53As well as serving up a curated selection of drinks from the likes of local breweries,
06:57the place is also a feast for the eyes with its distinctive design.
07:01We have a house that's very like this, in fact more so.
07:04We often say this pub is like a minimalist Japanese stripped vac version of our house.
07:12Its walls are adorned with vintage prints, signs, paintings and it seems every spare
07:17space is taken up by unusual objects, from mannequins to a mariachi hat.
07:22We populated this space with our art and attracted other people that have been giving
07:29us some really interesting things.
07:32And it's then that we began to notice that people responded to the space.
07:38The European Bar Guide, which visits and profiles pubs and bars around the continent, recently
07:43named the establishment Joint Toff in the City alongside Peter Cavanagh's.
07:48The guide described it as unique with a distinctive identity and character, a basement bar with
07:53local beers and fabulous hospitality.
07:56We realised as we went along was that far from this being frankly our pension, something
08:01we could do and then get the heck out of Dodge.
08:05We enjoyed it, it gave us something exciting and something of value ourselves.
08:12But also, we saw what people were getting from the kiosk, the Hobo kiosk itself.
08:19It can be tricky to find and you have to get your timings right to get in the door.
08:24When you come in here, if you're being a little rowdy, Mrs Hobo will show you the rules.
08:32That's the sort of venue you could spend hours looking around.
08:36From one bar in Liverpool to Urban Regeneration and a little known tunnel that stretches for
08:41miles under Newcastle.
08:42So we're currently in the Ouseburn Trust office.
08:46We are a regeneration charity, a development trust, and we were set up in the 90s to spearhead
08:53the regeneration of Ouseburn, so it was quite a derelict, run-down, old industrial area.
08:59And if you've been down here, you will have seen it's changed hugely even over the last
09:03five years.
09:04And we did a lot of work towards that and were heavily involved in that side of things.
09:09Nowadays we look after the Victoria Tunnel, which is a heritage spot, and we also look
09:16after all of the green spaces in the Ouseburn.
09:19So the Victoria Tunnel, it was built in 1842 as a way to transport the coal from, there's
09:25a mine over at Spittletongues and they needed to transport it down to the river, and instead
09:29of taking it through the town and spreading all of the coal dust, they built this tunnel
09:34underground to transport it.
09:36So it was down there, it wasn't actually open that long, I won't give too much away because
09:42you find out on the tour, but it wasn't open that long, and then it got a new lease of
09:46life in the Second World War, so it was used as an air raid shelter.
09:49So we run 15 public tours a week, so it's every day apart from Tuesday, we're running
09:54tours, which gives you a history and an overview of what the tunnel was used for.
10:01We also have a lot of school groups come and visit, so twice a week we have schools in
10:06and they get a shorter version of the history and they get a classroom session on what it
10:13was like to live either in Victorian times or during World War II, and then they get
10:16taken into the tunnel and they get to learn about that.
10:21We also do special events, so we do a wine tasting in the tunnel, which is really cool,
10:25very atmospheric, and that's a collaboration with Hotel Duvin, and we also do gigs in the
10:31tunnel, which is, we call it Sounds of the Underground, which I like as a Girls Aloud fan.
10:37Yeah, it's a really interesting space to see gigs.
10:41But the primary thing is the public tours, which is a historical insight into what it
10:47was used for and its story.
10:53Ouseburn especially was such an industrial area, it was mainly factories, and I think
10:59a lot of the stories of people who worked in those situations are lost over time, because
11:03it was more working class.
11:06So I think a huge goal of ours is to keep that heritage alive and keep those stories
11:11going, and also in the way that Ouseburn looks, it's really important to us to keep those
11:17historical buildings going, so you'll see kind of like, I don't know, things that remind
11:22you that it was once a mill or it was once a factory, those elements are still kept in
11:26the buildings.
11:29And we also work quite a lot with developers to try and make sure they hang on to that
11:35heritage.
11:36Yeah, I think Ouseburn has a real charm, and that's because of the heritage being kept
11:41alive here.
11:42It's nice to see that even after regeneration, the history of the Ouseburn area of Newcastle
11:47has still been kept intact, and I do like the idea of an Underground gig.
11:51Well, that's all we've got behind our doors for now, but hopefully it's given you a thirst
11:55to try and peek behind the doors of some hidden gems in your town.