Join us for our Autumn-Winter 2017-2018 Walks
We are delighted to launch Camden Saturdays. From Autumn 2017 we will be scheduling a walk on Saturday mornings at 11am and duration will be between 90 minutes and 2 hours. They may be well-known topics or more unusual things. All walks will be led around somewhere in Camden by a qualified Camden Tour Guide. Check back here for regular updates.
Diamonds and Delinquents round Hatton Garden
Hatton Garden is one of the few remaining areas in London which hosts a concentration of a particular trade. But there is so much more to it than the diamonds. Once an area of great poverty, it contained the fictional Fagin’s den and the real life Sabini gang. And it has a mediaeval church, the site of a Bishop’s palace, one of London’s best hidden pubs. Slightly off the beaten track for most tourists it is an area well worth exploring which we will do on our walk.
Meet outside Farringdon underground/Thameslink station.
Ten Bloomsbury Trailblaizers
Wednesday 18 October at 12:00pm
Saturday 21 October at 11:00 am
Sunday 22 October at 11:00 am
This walk with Paul Guest features ten amazing pioneers, linked with Bloomsbury between 1741 and 1977. Between them they worked in nine different fields. You will hear, for instance, about champions of child care and popular education, Britain’s first female surgeon, a highly influential economist, two great English writers and a world-famous Indian honoured with a title meaning ‘Great Soul’. They are commemorated in five different forms, including a street name and a café, all within one small area of Bloomsbury.
FREE – but pre-booking is recommended
From Prejudice to Pride: Exploring Camden’s LGBT Heritage
Sunday 22 October at 2:00pm
Starting at Goodge Street Station this walk led by Richard Cohen and Jo Wilkinson, Camden Guides and local residents, takes in places in Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury which are part of Camden’s rich heritage of sexual diversity. We will visit pubs which were notorious watering holes for the Bohemian demimonde of the 1920s and 1930s. We will pass the vanguard of lesbian and gay theatre and a bookshop which has been at the heart of the LGBT community since 1979. We will visit the homes of the writers and artists of the Bloomsbury Set who challenged Victorian codes of behaviour and see the house where the great genius of polari Kenneth Williams was brought up. We will hear about how the LGBT community rallied together to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s and end our walk at Camden Town Hall where the first Same Sex weddings were joyously celebrated.
Meet outside Goodge Street Station.
FREE – But pre-booking is recommended
50 Shades of Gray’s Inn Road
Explore this fascinating area, which is far from grey! From explosions and epidemics to gardens and graves you will be amazed at the variety of things that have happened along just one London street.
Meet doctors and dentists, lawyers and ladies of the night – and an 18th century cross dresser. (And despite the title, you can safely bring your granny along!)
Not the Bloomsbury Group
Bloomsbury is well known as the home of the writers and artists who made up the Bloomsbury group which included Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant to name but a few.
On this walk we are going to meet some of the other literary and artistic geniuses who have lived and worked in the area.
Come and find out who could hear his neighbours’ love life through the wall, why a detective writer decided she had to move out and how the director of Bedlam encouraged a local artist.
Meet an inspirational feminist, see some trail blazing bookshops and encounter a naked poet. Just for starters…
Guide: Jo Wilkinson
Artful Camden
Art is all around in Camden Town so there’s plenty of colourful images, iconic signs and statues in its streets and markets, all with their own story to tell on this walk.See a mural which tells a historic story, meet a couple of famous four-legged friends, spot the mark of a saint and interesting mosaics, admire art tributes to one of Camden Towns very own, plus some vintage street art which still isn’t finished!
Meet outside the entrance to Chalk Farm underground station (Edgware Branch of the Northern Line) .
Walk finishes at Mornington Crescent underground station
Walking the Hidden Lower Tyburn River
Saturday 25 November at 10:30 am (as you may wish to also walk the Hidden Lower Tyburn River from Baker Street to the Thames in the afternoon this Saturday walk will start earlier – at 10.30am)
What does the name Tyburn mean to you? A hidden river or a hanging tree? The infamous gallows were at Marble Arch, some distance from the Tyburn and you’ll struggle to find Tyburn on a modern map – but it has left its mark on the urban landscape. We can trace the course of the river on the gentle curves of roads and in street names – sometimes we can even hear it running below gratings and below our feet within a bridge over the Regent’s Canal!
This walk starts at Hampstead underground station and traces the upper section of the route of the underground River Tyburn. The River has two sources – one is on Shepherds Hill in Hampstead, and the second is behind the old Hampstead Town Hall. We’ll follow its course through Belsize Park, Swiss Cottage and the edge of St John’s Wood, down to where it passes through Regent’s Park. While the Tyburn was never a large river, it did represent was an important boundary between land holdings and was a very important source of drinking water for London.
This walk gives you the opportunity if you wish to walk the entire route of the River – after a break for lunch in Regent’s Park we will be walking from Baker Street to Pimlico. If you wish to do this, you also need to book the second walk Walking the Hidden Lower Tyburn River, which commences from Baker Street Station at 2pm. You can book the afternoon section on this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/edit?eid=374235859
The morning walk will start at 10.30am and finish at approximately 1.00pm. Please check the Transport for London Journey Planner site for travel details.
Guide: Jenni Bowley
Booking your place on a walk:
*All walks must be booked in advance, please do not turn up unless you have booked a walk and received a confirmation. Click on the title of the walk to go to the booking link.
**If there is not a booking link, and instructions are to “turn up & pay”, please follow instructions per that walk.
