As a part of marking our first 10 years, we asked our guides to come up with some of their personal memories of their time with us. Marilyn Greene is first out of the gate:

I’m a relative newcomer to Footprints of London having only been part of the organisation since 2016 (just over a year after having qualified as a City of London Guide but with many years of previous  experience guiding around the Hampstead area).

It has helped me no end from making a transition from being a museum professional to now being more of a professional guide and meant that my tours have reached a much wider audience than I had before. This has been  particularly the case over the last year when several of us have converted our walking tours to virtual tours which have been seen by virtual visitors from all over the world

Prompted by the fact that we were going to launch these last June with a virtual Dickens festival to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ death in 1870, I had already researched a walk specially for this on the Heights of Dickens, but lockdown came before it was ever aired as a real walk.

I’m extremely grateful to the support for the more technically minded Footprints of London directors who helped me prepare for my first virtual tour and I have not looked back since.

I always love it when conversations develop on the virtual tours – I’ve had people come on my Fleet Street tour who worked there in the 1950s, family members of architects featured on my tours, and  on one occasions my Hampstead Garden Suburb tour ended up as a Henrietta Barnett School old girls reunion!

I like to think that Footprints of London has and will continue to benefit the interests and well-being of visitors and guides alike for at least another 10 years.