Camden Guides

Music and Revolution in Camden Town
2026-03-07 11:30 - 13:30 (Europe/London)
Camden Town has been a hotbed of musical scenes and counter-cultures for over 50 years!
But where did it get the grit and charm that has inspired so many musicians and writers? From open fields to steam and stench, industrial powerhouse to drinkers paradise, and from radical thinkers to musical rebellion – what is it that put this tiny area of Camden Town on the global stage and spawned cultural movements that changed the world? Join me as we look beyond the t-shirt stands and souvenir stalls to discover the places where counter cultures were born and musical history was made. Find out how Camden Town became the beating heart of Rock, Punk, Britpop and beyond! The tour will naturally end in one of Camden’s fine pubs where you can soak up the atmosphere and find some inspiration of your own 😉

Dodging the Blitz:Bloomsbury Second World War Novels
2026-03-05 14:00 - 16:00
Graham Greene’s End of the Affair and the Ministry of Fear are directly taken from his wartime experiences and love affairs in Bloomsbury as an air raid warden. Elizabeth Bowen and Muriel Spark are other writers who transposed war time events into their literary output. Pat Barker and Sarah Waters have used the period and location brilliantly in recent novels to emphasise the female experience of war. This walk highlights important events which formed the basis of these novels, and looks at some of the main landmarks of the Blitz in Bloomsbury.

All change at King's Cross
2026-02-24 11:00 - 13:00
On this guided walk, discover the fascinating history of King’s Cross, one of the most successful regeneration projects in London.
200 years ago King’s Cross was a rather desolate place, marked by brick kilns, rubbish heaps and slums. The arrival of the canal and the railways changed the area forever: join Elena’s walk to discover the traces of King’s Cross past – pioneering stations, model dwellings, splendid hotels and many historic building and structures which have been beautifully reimagined and repurposed for 21st century living. Today, King’s Cross is hailed as one of the great success stories of urban regeneration. Come and discover why!

From Prejudice to Pride
2026-02-22 11:00 - 13:00
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

Primrose Hill and the Navvies
2026-02-20 13:00 - 15:00
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.

First and Quirky Kings Cross and St Pancras
2026-02-20 11:00 - 13:00
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.

Happy 200th birthday to UCL! A medical walk round Fitzrovia
2026-02-18 13:00 - 15:00
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.

Politicians, Physicians and Philanthropists
2025-12-20 11:00 - 13:00
This walk behind Holborn’s main roads takes us through garden squares and tree-lines streets. Queen Square with its many hospitals and educational associations, Red Lion Square, laid out by the first professional, female landscape gardener. We pass architectural gems including the John Soane Museum, and through Sicilian Avenue; see monuments to social reformer Margaret MacDonald, radical politician Fenner Brockway, and the church with a king on its spire close by early social housing and the hotel that started life as a hostel for young women before finishing at the British Museum.

The Irish in Camden Town
2025-12-20 10:30 - 12:30
Celebrate the rich history & culture of the Irish community in Camden Town at this exciting event! Join us at Camden Town Station to learn about the harsh reality of journeying to London to get away from the hardships at home in Ireland. You will hear about the influence the Irish had on building the canals, roads & railways of Britain as well as its homes. Find out where the Irish went in Camden to have the Craic (Fun), where they went to church, where they were housed & supported when they were down on their luck. On a less serious note, I will relay the funny stories that I have come across during researching & delivering this walk!

London's Sex Industry and the Stage in the Long 18th Century
2025-12-15 13:00 - 15:00
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.

Cold Comfort Farm in Highgate
2025-12-06 13:30 - 15:30
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.

Abolition! Anti-Slavery Campaigning in Central London
2025-11-09 13:00 - 15:00
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.

The Irish in Camden
2025-11-07 10:30 - 12:30
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!

Garden of eternal rest: twilight walk of St. Pancras Old Church graveyard
2025-11-05 15:00 - 16:00
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.

From Art to Anarchy: Hampstead and the Spanish Civil War
2025-10-26 14:00 - 16:00
This 90-minute guided walk is led by Can Yildiz, oral historian and accredited Camden guide.
Meet outside Hampstead Heath Overground Station and uncover the hidden radical history of Hampstead on a walking tour tracing the lives of artists, writers, and exiles who fought for social change.
Explore how creativity and activism intertwined, as Hampstead became a hub for voices challenging injustice and supporting international struggles, including the Spanish Civil War. Along the way, hear stories of courage, collaboration, and intellectual ferment, discovering how exile and radicalism shaped the area’s distinctive character.
By the end of the tour, near Chalk Farm Underground Station, you’ll see Hampstead not just as a picturesque village, but as a living archive of ideas, activism, and international solidarity, quietly woven into its streets.
A fundraiser for Torriano Meeting House

Bloomsbury Festival - Ballad Walk of Dickens
2025-10-19 14:30 - 16:00, 2025-10-18 14:30 - 16:00, 2025-10-17 14:30 - 16:00
The William Miller Collection of sheet music at The Charles Dickens Museum is a treasure trove of songs inspired by Dickens, his characters and stories.
Singer and researcher Vivien Ellis takes songs from this remarkable collection to bring the world of Dickens to life in the streets he knew. Starting at the museum, home to Dickens as a young writer, this walk will end at the Foundling Museum, a route Dickens regularly took.

Bloomsbury Festival - Ballad Walk of St Giles and Seven Dials
2025-10-19 11:00 - 12:30, 2025-10-18 11:00 - 12:30, 2025-10-17 11:00 - 12:30
Discover dramatic stories of 17th to 19th century St Giles-in-the-Fields and the trades and printing industry of Seven Dials. Through song and ballads this walk brings first-hand experience of street life in the area during the times of Pepys and Dickens.
Singer and researcher Vivien Ellis with Camden Guides lead you through a ballad walk which provides a direct connection to the characters and stories of the past.
The ballads have been researched and gathered by Vivien with a group of volunteers and the support of the University of Cambridge Rare Books Library, British Library, Charles Dickens Museum and Camden Archives.
Enter the dates of your walk (Format day, date and month, example Saurday 245th March): 17th, 18th and 19th October 2025

Rebels and Blue Stockings: The New Woman in Bloomsbury
2025-10-12 14:00 - 15:30
Free-spirited and independent, educated and uninterested in marriage and children, the figure of the New Woman threatened conventional ideas about ideal Victorian womanhood. On this walk we will discover how Kate Greenaway, a female artist from a working class background, Eleanor Marx, a regular at the British Library Reading Room and the archeologist Mary Brodrick found a life outside conventional Victorian norms. The founding of Bedford College, led to higher education for women, and the creation of College Hall enabled women students to study independently. Discover these fascinating women in a stroll through Bloomsbury

Gin Lane: Thieves and Thief-takers in the Night-Cellars of St Giles
2025-10-11 13:00 - 15:00
The Seven Dials area of St Giles is now pretty, but in the 18th century it 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. Notoriously corrupt thief-taker Jonathan Wild captured popular thief Jack Sheppard more than once, but Jack made dramatic escapes from prison aided by his sexworker-partner Edgworth Bess.
With gin selling at a penny a glass, carousing was full-on in areas called, by outsiders, rookeries, thieves’ kitchens, the Holy Land (because of the Irish presence) and, for Drury Lane’s red-light zone, Little Sodom. A range of middle-class spies, social investigators, reporters and slum-tourists came to look and sometimes join in goings-on they found both appalling and titillating. John Gay portrayed Jack Sheppard and Jonathan Wild in the characters of Captain MacHeath and Mr Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera, London’s favourite play throughout the 18th century.

From Old St Pancras to New St Pancras: a historic walk
2025-10-10 11:00 - 13:00
We all know about St Pancras Station.
But what is the history of the area we call St Pancras? Was there just a church?
We will begin our walk inside St Pancras mainline station on the upper level. Take the stairs or the escalator up from the area with all the shops. Near the front of the station, inside, you’ll find a very big statue of two people embracing. It’s called….The Lovers statue. That’s where we’ll meet.
From here we’ll start by exploring the area where the OLD St Pancras church can be found. By the last century it was known as Old Saint Pancras, because a NEW Church – “New Saint Pancras” – had been built.
Our walk will then take us through the area of SOMERS TOWN, where we will explore the amazing examples of social housing and uncover the history of two other churches along the way. Finally we’ll arrive at the NEW St Pancras Church where our walk will end, just opposite Euston Station.

Secrets of St. Giles and Seven Dials: a walk through London's dark past
2025-09-26 11:00 - 13:00
Join Elena to discover a fascinating neighbourhood that not many people know.
We will delve into the darker chapters of London’s past as we uncover the secrets of this infamous neighbourhood.
We will wander through the alleys where tales of poverty and crime once echoed (Dickens will get a mention or two, of course…) and discover the remnants of centuries-old buildings that bear witness to St Giles’ tumultuous history.
As we wind our way from the ancient church built on the site of a leper colony to the site of the infamous rookeries and gallows, now replaced by some of the most striking modern architecture in London, we’ll talk music, pubs, executions and developers’ greed. There is something for everyone!

Primrose Hill and the Navvies Who Built the Railways
2025-09-21 13:00 - 15:00
The neighbourhood radiates brilliant industrial solutions of Victorian engineers, but who built it? This walk celebrates Railway 200, the 200th anniversary of the modern railway, putting hard-living navvies at the centre of the story. Plans for the development of Primrose Hill area changed drastically 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 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 — also dug by hand by navvies — 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.

Historic Homes of Hampstead Village
2025-09-20 11:00 - 12:30
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.
This includes several generations of architects, such as Norman Shaw, Ewan Christian and Erno Goldfinger, many of whom built their own homes there, adding to its architectural variety. Furthermore, in the 20th Century the area gained a reputation as the location of several modernist architects’ experimental housing projects for wealthy clients, including Hopkins House and Maxwell Fry’s Sun House.
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 architects’ homes, historic houses, and modernist masterpieces.

Highlights of Historic Highgate
2025-08-31 11:00 - 12:30, 2025-08-24 11:00 - 12:30, 2025-08-17 11:00 - 12:30
Discover the history and architecture of Highgate, one of London’s most attractive neighbourhoods.
From the tranquillity of Tudor Lauderdale House and the architectural variety of its historic high street dating from the late 1600s, to the grandeur of its 18th Century mansions, the elegance of its churches and the heritage of its historic pubs, Highgate is a beautiful area with a rich history.
Famous for Highgate Cemetery, the final resting place of many notable figures including George Eliot and Karl Marx, the area gets its name from its lofty location – which still provides fantastic views of the city – and the fact that it was an historic gateway into London, the location of a toll gate used by drovers herding cattle, sheep, pigs, geese and other livestock down to the Smithfield meat market.
On this walk you will hear more about this fascinating urban history as well as stories of many of its famous past residents including William Murray, who was Lord Chief Justice in the 18th century, poet Samuel Taylor-Coleridge and pop star George Michael.
Starting and finishing at Lauderdale House, the tour will take in a range of local architectural treasures including Highgate School and St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church and will last approximately 90 minutes. Meet Lettie your tour guide at the East Entrance of the House (directly off Highgate Hill) at 10.45am for a prompt start at 11am.
