Gin Lane: Thieves and Thief-takers in the Night-Cellars of Seven Dials

Now it's trendy and pretty, but 18th-century Seven Dials was notorious for poverty and crime. With no organised police force, thieves, highwaymen and fences bribed those hired to catch them, meeting in low-down dives where they spoke a secret language called flash. The notoriously corrupt Jonathan Wild captured thief Jack Sheppard more than once, but […]

Abolition! Anti-Slavery campaigning: Central London Landmarks

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 […]

Primrose Hill and the Navvies

Primrose Hill is now one of London's desirable areas, but it was born with the blood, sweat and toil that built the canal and railways. The neighbourhood radiates brilliant industrial solutions of Victorian engineers, but who built it? This walk puts hard-working navvies at the centre of the story and tells how the area developed […]