Welcome to the February listing of walks by Camden Guides for February 2026, where we start with:
Happy 200th birthday to UCL! A medical walk round Fitzrovia
Meet opposite one of London’s finest hospitals and end at the chapel of a rival hospital that has been razed to the ground. Learn about the medical discoveries at University College Hospital and at the now extinct Middlesex Hospital on the other side of Tottenham Court Road. We’ll talk about the discovery of the hormone aldosterone, early identification of HIV, novel cancer therapies and some of the amazing characters who have shaped the practice of medicine over the past 200 years.
This walk takes place on the 18th of February, click here for details and booking.
First and Quirky Kings Cross and St Pancras
A visit around the recently regenerated railway lands. The walk consists of some very interesting ‘firsts’, a lot are transport based, but also about the contrast in the life styles of the inhabitants. The area has recently undergone a massive transformation and is very much a ‘destination’ with so many new companies moving into the area. It is also a walk about the lives of the poor as well as the home of some iconic inventions and well-known traditions. We visit the old coal drops yard, now completely transformed and St Pancras Old Church graveyard, which includes Sir John Soanes grave the inspiration for the telephone box.
This walk takes place on the 20th of February, click here for details and booking.
Primrose Hill and the Navvies
Primrose Hill was born when navvies dug out the land by hand, bringing grime, racket, hard drinking and what some called Moral Depravity.
The neighbourhood radiates brilliant industrial solutions of Victorian engineers, but who built it? This walk puts hard-living navvies at the centre of the story and tells how the area developed in the face of the railway’s smoke, grit and noise. Camden railway landmarks include an Hydraulic Accumulator Tower, a roundhouse, the tunnels that working horses used to get to and from the Goods Yard, the site of the Stationary Winding Engine and numerous street details. The story of Primrose Hill’s creation also takes us to a beautiful stretch of the Regent’s Canal and the top of the famous hill with its superb views, as well as artists’ studios and pastel-painted streets. We end at a high street free of chain shops where good pubs abound, and it’s all minutes from Camden Market.
This walk takes place on the 20th of February, click here for details and booking.
From Prejudice to Pride
Celebrate LGBT+ History Month 2026 by walking the streets where history was made. Join this guided walk through Bloomsbury and King’s Cross and walk in the footsteps of the trailblazers who dared to live, love and resist openly.
With longstanding local resident and Camden tour guide Richard Cohen, you’ll uncover Camden’s deep and rich heritage of sexual diversity.
Learn about the extraordinary range of people and places that are part of Camden’s LGBT+ heritage. Hear about the Molly Houses, the Victorian cross-dressers and the notorious and much policed watering holes of the Bohemian demimonde of the 1920s and 30s. Learn about the theatre which was the vanguard of lesbian and gay drama and pass London’s first LGBTQ+ bookshop.
Meet the Bloomsbury Set who challenged Victorian codes of behaviour and Kenneth Williams the great genius of Polari. Hear the inspiring story of how the LGBT+ community rallied together to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
Witness the struggle against the hated Section 28 and the joyous celebrations of the first Same Sex weddings at Camden Town Hall.
Don’t miss this inspiring walk, visiting the sites where history was made and honouring those who came before.
Part of Camden Council’s LGBT+ History Month programme
This walk takes place on the 22nd of February, click here for details and booking.
MADNESS The Nutty Camden Walk
Conducted by official Camden Tour Guide and Madness fan Frank K Molloy, this walk explores the story of Madness, the ever-popular UK band. This year, they are celebrating 50 years since the first Nutty sound developed into an enduring musical legacy. So join us as we go One Step Beyond in commemorating a national treasure.
It’s incredible to think that the first seeds of this band were planted way back in 1976, when early members got together in a north London house with the idea of making music. But how did they originate? Who were their influences? And how did that famous ‘Nutty Sound’ evolve?
Your guide will provide the answers by leading you through the various locations around Camden Town. These were the stomping grounds of Madness during the 1970s and 80s, and we will also examine why these streets became so inspirational to their music.
The first walk takes place on Sun Mar 15, 2026, at 10:30am from outside Chalk Farm Underground Station. It will take approximately two hours and finish about 12:30pm close to Camden Town Underground. This walk is limited to ticket holders who have booked through Eventbrite only. Further walks are scheduled later in 2026.
This walk takes place on the 15th of March, click here for details and booking.
The Trollopes of Bloomsbury
Both Anthony Trollope and his mother Fanny were proliflc and successful writers.
Anthony, born in Bloomsbury is best known for the Barchester Chronicles and Paliser novels where Catherdral towns and country houses often overshadow the place of Bloomsbury. But this area which “cannot be called fashionable” and is “not much overlooked by nobility” offers lodgings and temptation to young clerks like Johnny Eade and affordable accomodation for impoverished women like Lady Anna.
Join Sue to follow the links between Anthony Trollope’s own life as a civil servant at the Post Office, his fiction with its Bloomsbury locations and the influence of Fanny Trollope’s writing on her son’s work.
This walk takes place on the 23rd of March, click here for details and booking.
Our next newsletter will be on the first weekend of March, and the listing of walks is updated on our website during the month, click here for the list.