Welcome to the March newsletter from Camden Guides, and as usual we have a selection of walks for the coming months, and a reminder that our full programme of walks by our guides is available on our website, reached by clicking here.
As the days get longer, and the weather improves, we start with two dates for a walk that looks at one of London’s unique villages:
A history walk in Hampstead, the quaintest of urban villages
Perched on a North London hilltop, Hampstead has retained the charm of a country village with wisteria covered cottages, atmospheric pubs, cobbled street and a history that goes back centuries. This “urban village” attracted, and continues to attract, artists, actors, writers, musicians and glitterati of all kinds: indulge in a bit of celebrity spotting while walking up and down its quiet streets lined by pretty houses from all architectural eras. It feels a bit like finding yourself on a film set!
We will admire the grand Burgh House, and Fenton House, the oldest surviving mansion in Hampstead. We will be walking in the footsteps of famous thespians, like Dame Judy Dench, bestselling authors like HG Wells and Daphne Du Maurier, and world renowned painters like John Constable, who was inspired by the Heath and painted his view of St Paul’s Cathedral from here. And we will visit a back-to-front church and an old graveyard which is the last resting place of many celebrities.
This walk takes place on the 7th of March, and can be booked by clicking here, and also on the 11th of March, which can be booked by clicking here.
Radical Theatre Kings Cross to Kingsway
This walk explores some of Camden’s rich history of radical theatre over the last 100 years from the propaganda plays of the Actresses Franchise League, through pacifist plays of WW1, agitprop and “alternative” theatre of the 1970s and more. We start at Kings’ Cross and finish near Holborn station.
This walk takes place on the 23rd of March, and can be booked by clicking here.
London’s Sex Industry and the Stage in the Long 18th Century
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, Bagnios and Masquerades. 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 patrons of dance halls. The underworld called this red-light area where you might meet thief Jack Sheppard’s partner Edgworth Bess the Hundreds of Drury.
This walk takes place on the 30th of March, and can be booked by clicking here.
Abolition! Anti-Slavery Campaigning in Central London
This walk reveals where many key London events took place in British campaigns against slavery and slave-trading between the mid-1700s and mid-1800s. Fugitive and former slaves, white lawyers, activists and orators along with black activists, authors and musicians come alive in a walk from Chancery Lane to Fleet Street, Lincoln’s Inn and Covent Garden, ending at Embankment Gardens. The capture in London of escaped slaves led to legal cases campaigners loudly supported. Slaves were given as gifts by West Indies slave-owners to wealthy Londoners who considered them fashion-accessories. There were small communities of free blacks, many working as servants. Blacks made free by fighting on the British side during wars thronged to London, some becoming beggars but others getting by and even moving into the middle class. On the walk you meet Olaudah Equiano, James Somerset, Granville Sharp, Billy Waters, Sarah Parker Remond, Thomas Clarkson, Mary Prince, Ottobah Cuguano, Elizabeth Heyrick, Samuel Johnson, the Fisk Jubilee Singers and more names now usually forgotten.
This walk takes place on the 26th of April and can be booked by clicking here.
Our next newsletter will be on the first Saturday in April.