Welcome to the June listing of walks by Camden Guides for June 2026, and before we go to walks for the coming months, we have an announcement regarding the Camden Tour Guide Course.
Training for Tour Guiding
Applications are now open for the Camden Tour Guide Course starting in early November 2026.
For details about the course, and an application form to apply, please visit our training page at: https://camdenguides.com/training/
Guides from our last course receiving their badges from the Mayor:
During this course you will learn the general principles of tour guiding and how to guide walking tours in the Borough of Camden. You will be taught about the diverse geographical areas within the borough and their history, architecture, culture and other features. You will learn how to undertake your own research and how to design a guided walk, and you will be instructed in the necessary skills to present information in an informative and entertaining manner to different audiences.
And now to the walks for the coming months:
The Green spaces of Kings Cross
Explore the lush and hidden green spaces of Kings Cross. Once a thriving transport hub of canals, railway and road, then a derelict industrial wasteland and now a thriving modern redevelopment which is over 40% green. This compact area has an ancient church yard, a natural park where you can get lost in nature, floating gardens, chattering birds, families of geese, flowering houseboats, a green oasis in an old gasworks, community gardens and dancing fountains for children to play in when the sun comes out. Come and enjoy this profusion of nature in the heart of London.
Start: Outside German Gymnasium, 1 King’s Blvd, London N1C 4BU. Exit Kings Cross tube station at Pancras Road or Regent’s Canal exit.
This walk takes place on the 3rd of June and the 22nd of July. Click here for details and booking.
Historic Homes of Hampstead Village
Since its development from a village to an 18th Century spa town and then a Victorian suburb, Hampstead has retained its unspoilt Georgian charm with many listed townhouses and terraces. In the 19th and 20th Centuries this made it very popular with artists, intellectuals and creatives of all kinds and there are many stories of influential figures who are former residents who left their mark on the area. Join our knowledgeable guide on this walking tour to learn more about the people and buildings that have shaped Hampstead, where you will be introduced to a selection of the area’s finest historic homes.
This walk takes place on the 13th of June and the 11th of July and can be booked by clicking here.
First and Quirky Kings Cross and St Pancras
A visit around the regenerated railway lands. The walk consists of some very interesting and diverse ‘firsts’
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 John Soanes grave the inspiration for the telephone box. Like all my walks – we end with an optional drink in an interesting pub for some light refreshments
This walk takes places on the 23rd of June and can be booked by clicking here.
Historic Highlights of Highgate Village
Explore the history and architecture of Highgate on a guided walking tour. Discover the area’s famous residents, see historic buildings and enjoy views of the city. Learn about Highgate Cemetery where figures such as Karl Marx and George Eliot are buried. See the historic Highgate School and St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church and admire the architectural variety of the high street dating from the 1600s.
This walk takes place on the 27th of June and the 25th of July and 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 13th of July and can be booked by clicking here.
Historic Workingclass Migrations to London: Irish, Italian, African, Jewish
Diamond-polishing, ice-cream selling, pocket-picking, writing memoirs: Migrants to London have done them all while working to make a living.
Working-class migrants, often maligned as ‘economic migrants’, do business, make families, invent objects, bring pleasures, help each other, fight and die together. One old area of central London shows strong and sympathetic traces of the migrations of poorer folk from the late-18th to 20th centuries from near and far, including from within England itself. The walk begins in the Fleet Ditch and works its way uphill through early Italian and Irish settlements in Saffron Hill into areas of more mixing, taking note of Blacks from Africa via the West Indies and ending with Jewish migrations from numerous locations that made Hatton Garden’s Diamond Street.
On the weekend you can see traces of old migrations as well as new – it’s clearly still an area favoured for opening new small businesses.
This walk takes place on the 18th of July and can be booked by clicking here.
Our next listing of walks will be on the first weekend of July.