On a cold and foggy New Year’s Eve in 2016, I walked from the South Bank to Westminster to see London preparing for the arrival of 2017. The destination was Big Ben, where the clock would strike twelve at noon for the final time that year before doing so again at midnight.
This was London in the hours before the barriers, road closures and evening crowds transformed the centre of the city. The film captures the London Eye, Westminster Bridge, the Palace of Westminster and the gathering around Parliament Square, together with a look back at older London New Year traditions and the plans then taking shape for Roberts London.
From the London Eye to Westminster
The walk begins in the shadow of the London Eye. Although viewers would see the film in 2017, it was recorded on the final morning of 2016—a small piece of time travel that runs through the commentary.
Across the river stood the Palace of Westminster and the Elizabeth Tower. In everyday London speech, “Big Ben” is often used for the whole landmark, although the name properly belongs to the Great Bell inside the tower.
The riverside was already busy, but it was still calm compared with the crowds expected that evening. Camera positions were being prepared and stacks of metal barriers waited to be placed across streets and bridges.
London’s New Year focal point
Before the large Thames fireworks display became established, Trafalgar Square was one of London’s familiar New Year gathering places. In the film I remember crowds trying to hear midnight from Westminster and singing the first recognisable lines of “Auld Lang Syne” before becoming less certain of the rest.
By 2016, the focus had shifted firmly towards the river, the London Eye and Big Ben. The event had become ticketed, with closures and controlled access needed to manage the number of people arriving in central London.
A Roberts London note from 2016
The quieter part of the walk offered a chance to look ahead. The plan for Roberts London in 2017 was to continue documenting life in the city while adding more neighbourhood tours, practical London guides and cooking films.
Seen from the present, that section is useful beyond its immediate New Year message. It records the programme at an earlier stage, when the mix of London walks, food, shops and everyday observation was still being defined on camera.
Westminster at twelve
Near Parliament Square, the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey and the clock tower form one of London’s most recognisable groups of buildings. Tourists moved slowly through the area as the clock approached noon.
The Westminster chimes began shortly after the nine-minute point in the film. Big Ben then sounded twelve, each strike carrying across the damp air. Twelve hours later the same bell would mark the end of 2016 amid the fireworks and the much larger midnight crowd.
Iconic London in one frame
After the chimes, the walk continued through Westminster. A black cab passed the Palace, red buses moved through the traffic and visitors queued near the telephone boxes to photograph themselves with Big Ben behind them.
The telephone had become almost incidental. The box survived as a piece of London scenery: red paint, the clock tower, a passing bus and, with fortunate timing, a black cab all brought together in one picture.
The final streets also produced an unexpected reminder of YouTube’s growing physical presence in 2016: a branded bus moving through Westminster. It prompted the optimistic suggestion that enough likes and subscriptions might one day put Roberts London on the side—or at least the back—of one.
The end of 2016
This was not a film of the midnight fireworks. It was a record of the hours before them: fog over Westminster, preparations on the streets, visitors collecting their photographs and Big Ben striking twelve for the final daytime occasion of the year.
The film closes with a deliberately less ceremonial London detail—a final New Year’s Eve cheeseburger before the January resolutions began. It is an appropriately ordinary ending to a walk through one of the city’s largest public occasions.
