Four walks make up our final newsletter for 2025, with the first taking place on the afternoon of the newsletter’s publication, so if you would like to explore the life of Stella Gibbons, and are free this afternoon, then our first walk may be of interest:
Cold Comfort Farm in Highgate
Discover the life of Stella Gibbons, who published over 20 novels as well as Cold Comfort Farm, her first novel, which achieved widespread success. She lived on the Holly Lodge Estate, Highgate, which had been built on land once owned by Angela Burdett-Coutt. John Betjmann and J.B. Priestley lived nearby, both of whom wrote about single professional women making their own way, often in flats like those on Holly Lodge Estate. Walk ends near Parliament Hill Fields.
This walk takes place on the 6th of December at 13:30, and tickets can be booked by clicking here.
London’s Sex Industry and the Stage in the Long 18th Century
When the Puritan Protectorate ended in 1660, London’s sex industry grew wildly public and was linked to both theatres and the underworld.
Charles II lifted the Puritan ban on theatre-going, and by 1700 London was sex-capital of Europe. This walk starts with the stage at a time when all actresses were assumed to be prostitutes and theatres a place for clients to find them. We pass through areas where street-walkers and bawdy houses were closely linked with playhouses, and we hear about high-class masquerades where actress-courtesans like Sophia Baddeley might appear. There are the bawds who kept houses, the women who worked in them, like Sally Salisbury, and Harris’s List, where they might advertise. We hear about homosexual Molly Houses as well as Jelly Houses, Coffee Houses and Bagnios.
Links between corrupt government officials and criminals formed the plot of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728, with its cast of thief-takers, highwaymen, pickpockets and sex workers like Jenny Diver, who met in flash houses where they spoke a secret language. The unscrupulous Society for the Reform of Manners tried to close down vice, but things began to change when Social Reformers said women selling sex were victims needing rescue.
The walk starts in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and passes through Covent Garden and surrounding streets like Drury Lane, where ordinary folks lived who sold sex – orange-girls like Nell Gwyn, flower girls and all women unable to make ends meet on very low incomes. The underworld called this red-light area the Hundreds of Drury.
This walk takes place on the 15th of December and can be booked by clicking here.
The Irish in Camden Town
Celebrate the rich history & culture of the Irish community in Camden Town at this exciting event! Join us at Camden Town Station to learn about the harsh reality of journeying to London to get away from the hardships at home in Ireland. You will hear about the influence the Irish had on building the canals, roads & railways of Britain as well as its homes. Find out where the Irish went in Camden to have the Craic (Fun), where they went to church, where they were housed & supported when they were down on their luck. On a less serious note, I will relay the funny stories that I have come across during researching & delivering this walk!
This walk takes place on the 20th of December and can be booked by clicking here.
Politicians, Physicians and Philanthropists
This walk behind Holborn’s main roads takes us through garden squares and tree-lines streets. Queen Square with its many hospitals and educational associations, Red Lion Square, laid out by the first professional, female landscape gardener. We pass architectural gems including the John Soane Museum, and through Sicilian Avenue; see monuments to social reformer Margaret MacDonald, radical politician Fenner Brockway, and the church with a king on its spire close by early social housing and the hotel that started life as a hostel for young women before finishing at the British Museum.
This walk takes place on the 20th of December and can be booked by clicking here.
Our next newsletter will be on the first Saturday of 2026, and in the meantime, our Camden at 60 blog posts will continue to be published on Sunday mornings.