Before exploring St. Giles, applications are now open for our next Camden Tour Guide Course, starting in September 2025.
Details about the course can be found on our training page, click here.
We also have a two meet the guides events coming up on the 18th of June and 2nd of July.
These FREE walks are aimed at anyone who is interested in learning about becoming a qualified Camden Tour Guide, offering an opportunity to meet existing Camden Guides, go with them on a tour around the King’s Cross area and have a chance to talk to them about the course and what it’s like to be a tour guide in Camden today.
For details and free booking, click one of the following links for your preferred date:
Now, to St. Giles:
St Giles is one of London’s most fascinating – and once notorious – neighbourhoods: tucked just behind the bustle of Tottenham Court Road, this area may seem like just another corner of central London, but there are surprising stories to be uncovered everywhere.
St Giles-in-the-Fields church, a striking 18th-century building that stands on the site of a medieval leper hospital founded in the 12th century, is still going strong. 900 years ago, this area was well beyond the city limits, a place to isolate the sick and dying from the healthy, and its graveyard is the final resting place of thousands of plague victims. Today, the church is a vibrant and inclusive hub at the centre of the community.
The church is on the edges of what was once one of London’s most infamous slums: the St Giles Rookery. This warren of twisting alleyways, crumbling buildings, and overcrowded tenements was a place where the city’s poor were crammed in appalling conditions. The area was so infamous that it became a symbol of urban poverty throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Charles Dickens knew it well, and references to St Giles appear in several of his works, including Oliver Twist and Sketches by Boz.
Wandering through these former rookeries – now transformed into shiny developments – it’s hard to imagine that, in eras gone by, at the Angel pub condemned prisoners were offered a final drink – aptly named the “St Giles Bowl” – as they were paraded to the gallows at Tyburn.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. St Giles also boasts a vibrant cultural history, with sites associated with Britain’s musical legacy, including Denmark Street (once dubbed “Britain’s Tin Pan Alley”), where giants of music like David Bowie and The Rolling Stones first let their creative juices flow (and the Sex Pistols scribbled some dubious graffiti on a wall which have now been granted historic protection!).
And then there is the modern face of St Giles. Towering glass developments now stand where squalor once reigned. The contrast is stark and tells a story of regeneration, but also of loss, as the character of this historic district is reshaped by developers’ ambitions.
Whether you’re a history buff, a lover of Dickens, or just curious about lesser-known stories, St Giles is one of London’s most fascinating forgotten corners.