Welcome to our November newsletter of walks and events, and now that the clocks have changed and the nights are getting longer, we start with a twilight walk, exploring a historic graveyard:
Garden of eternal rest: twilight walk of St. Pancras Old Church graveyard
As November nights draw in and the last light fades over the old gravestones, come and discover the secrets of this quiet garden that once was a burial ground. Join Elena, an accredited Camden Tour Guide and local resident, on a twilight walking tour starting at St Pancras Old Church, with a fascinating history that goes back 1500 years.
We will uncover many hidden stories – sometimes tragic, sometimes romantic, sometimes almost unbelievable: we will hear about resurrectionists going “fishing”, discover the truth behind the myth of the legendary and much missed Hardy tree and learn how the two most famous horror characters of all times are inextricably linked to this place.
We will meet famous writers, genius architects, WW2 most unlikely hero and even a gender-fluid 18th century spy. By unearthing their stories, we will bring them back to life.
This walk takes place on the 5th of November at 3pm, and tickets can be booked by clicking here.
The Irish in Camden
Celebrate the rich history and vibrant culture of the Irish community in Camden Town! Starting at Camden Town Station, this guided walk explores the journeys of those who came to London seeking a better life, and the lasting mark they left on the city. Discover how the Irish helped build Camden’s canals, roads, and railways — and the very homes we live in today. Along the way, learn where Camden’s Irish community gathered for the craic (fun), worshipped, and found support during tough times. And, of course, enjoy a few of the funny and heartwarming stories uncovered while researching and leading this walk!
This walk takes place on the 7th of November at 10:30 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 –women as well as men — 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 that campaigners loudly supported. Slaves were given as gifts by West Indies planters to wealthy Londoners who used them as 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, many becoming beggars but others getting by and even moving up in social class. On the walk you meet Olaudah Equiano, Mary Prince, James Somerset, Granville Sharp, Sarah Parker Remond, Thomas Clarkson, Ottobah Cuguano, Elizabeth Heyrick, Samuel Johnson, Hannah More, the Fisk Jubilee Singers and more names now usually forgotten.
This walk takes place on the 9th of November at 13:00 and can be booked by clicking here.
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 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 at 13:00 and can be booked by clicking here.
Our next newsletter will be on the first Saturday in December, and we continue to have our Camden at 60 posts every Sunday morning, each post exploring a different aspect of the history of Camden.