London Liverpool Street station - Shoreditch area question

You must have been rather lost.

There's no underpass on the straight route from Liverpool St to Brick Lane. In fact there are no real underpasses in the area. Though I suppose there might have been something that felt a bit underpassy at some point of the reconstruction and archaeological excavations that seem to have been going on round Spitalfields for the past decade. You probably walked through this on the way to Christ Church.

There are threee places that you might be thinking of.

The walk to Brick Lane, past Christ Church, doesn't take you through Shoreditch, which is north-west of Christ Church. Old Street tube station is off your route (at the intersecetion of Old St and City Road) but is the main station for Shoreditch, and is in a slightly frightening subterranean area with a number of businesses in it. I can't recall there ever being a health club there, but it's certainly a place you could convince yourself you were being followed.

A mile or so west of Liverpool St station, at Barbican tube, Beech St runs off Aldersgate and buildings have been constructed over the road. The first thing you pass as you go into Beech St is a health club. This is the only place for a couple of miles in any direction where a normal City street goes under buildings.

Third, immediately next to Liverpool St, there's a large amount of recent development, much of which involves pedestrian-only areas with a wide range of businesses fully covered by all manner of other buildings. Some bits of this are covered access routes for buses and taxis and might also feel underpassy.

Get yourself a street map from multimap.com and work out which of these is likeliest. But only Old Steet is in the old Borough of Shoreditch.

You might have found yourself in one of the underpasses around Aldgate/Whitechapel (rather than Shoreditch), which would be at the bottom end of the Brick Lane/Petticoat Lane area. There is a small shopping centre in one of them (Aldgate Barrs); it's possible there was a health club thereabouts but there isn't one listed at the moment.

Another possibility might be that at the top end of Brick Lane, near Shoreditch underground station, there are the Bishopsgate railway arches, which have been used for a variety of purposes, but I don't think there's a health club thereabouts.

I was also thinking of Bishopsgate good yard. Unfortunatly it was demolished last year.

Thanks for your help. I'm not sure now whether I wandered North (Shoreditch) or South toward Whitechapel, before I stopped to ask directions and was re-routed. But this has been helpful.

looking at the map, I wonder if I turned north near Christ Church and meandered up to Grey Eagle (which appears to go under the tracks), then maybe went right at Solater/Cheshire and then right again back onto Brick Lane.

I stayed at St Gregory Hotel last November in Shoreditch. If you come out of Liverpool Station and turn left on Shoreditch High Street (you will pass the Truman Brewery on the right) about a 10 minute walk past a petrol station, there are a couple of lanes on the left, which go under a rail under pass. I think the first one comes onto the Health Club. I took my luggage to the Health Club to check the weight.
It is definitely before St Gregory. I was amazed by the area because all the shops on Shoreditch were closed and shuttered (it was a Sunday)when I arrived and it looked very desolate but you walk through those underpasses and it is a totally different world - art galleries, cafes, night clubas and lots of architects.