The Chartists were a formidable mass movement to extend the right to vote for the working classes. They were active in Soho and there were several links with Karl Marx, who famously lived in Dean St. Other inhabitants included the poet and artist William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley, who made the phrase " Ye […]
You probably know Hampstead as a very attractive area of very posh houses and very famous people. But why is it so lovely to walk around? It's a lot to do with a hill which prevented major roads and any railways being built: so uniquely in London it preserves a Georgian village streetscape. It also […]
Join Elena to discover the fascinating history of St. Giles. 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 […]
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 […]
An almost-circular walk around King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations and the extraordinary, vibrant redevelopment of what was a semi-derelict wasteland of railway lands. The area originally had a plentiful supply of water from the now-hidden River Fleet and associated lost springs and wells, then the man-made Regent’s Canal supplied more water from the early […]
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 […]
Bloomsbury is such a lively area. On this walk through the streets and squares of Bloomsbury, Maggie Coates will tell the tale of some of the colourful humans who have helped to create it. From the people who made a "red" square to the architect of a black and white church, from Graham Greene to […]
Discover Camden Town with Elena and Mike. It's lively, it's quirky, it's cosmopolitan and it's packed full of history! Camden Town is all of these things. It's a neighbourhood that has been shaped by many communities, from the Irish to the Greek-Cypriots, each leaving an indelible mark. Charles Dickens, a very unhappy former resident, immortalised […]
An almost-circular walk around King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations and the extraordinary, vibrant redevelopment of what was a semi-derelict wasteland of railway lands. The area originally had a plentiful supply of water from the now-hidden River Fleet and associated lost springs and wells, then the man-made Regent’s Canal supplied more water from the early […]
This walk begins 200 years ago in St John’s Wood, where family arrangements routinely diverged from Victorian rules of respectability. What did it mean to be a Kept Woman? Was it only disreputable or an act of shameful immorality? Some mistresses were movers and shakers, like Harriet Howard who financed the return of Louis Napoleon […]
On this walk we will start at the impressive new developments around King’s Cross and St Pancras including two magnificent railway gateways to London. We will see impressive monuments to Victorian enterprise and engineering in the beautifully restored and revived Granary Building and the extraordinary Coal Drops now the home to London’s thriving University of […]
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 […]