Footprints of London

In St John’s Wood Alternative Lifestyles were the norm, but nearby Lisson Grove saw the first sex-slave scandal, of young Eliza Armstrong. 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…

East of the Tower rag-sellers, sex workers, thieves and so-called witches held sway in an area flattened by building the 1805 dock. Women reigned in Rag Fair, which extended from Tower Hill along Rosemary Lane into Cable Street in the 17th- to 19th-century parish of Stepney. The permanent market centred near Wellclose Square, but many…

Runaway slaves, free blacks and white women and men campaigned for a century to abolish slavery and slave-trading, against strong opposition 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…

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…

History of working people in 18th-19th century Knightsbridge: Horse Guards, lodginghouse keepers, famous courtesans and Champagne Charlie. You’ll see the Hyde Park barracks from behind and from the front, where the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment leave for Changing the Guard ceremonies. Rotten Row was long the scene of high-society socialising, and you’ll hear about Skittles,…

Diamond-polishing, ice-cream selling, pocket-picking, writing memoirs: Migrants to London have done them all while working to make a living. Often maligned as ‘economic migrants’, working-class people have always come to London to do business, make families, invent objects, bring pleasures, help each other and sometimes fight each othher. One old area of central London shows…

Richmond is Sir David Attenborough’s favourite place on the planet, and the stretch of the river to Twickenham is the very best part. Your fantasy of classic English countryside come true in the city. This stretch of the River Thames will put you in mind of boating holidays with Mole and Ratty, unless your first…

Primrose Hill is now one of London’s desirable areas, but it was born with the blood, sweat and toil that built canals 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 in…

History of two girls condemned for theft in Goswell Road, jailed in Newgate, spared death and sent on a convict ship to Australia. And then? From 1821 English courts began to sentence convicted criminals to penal servitude in Australia, for a set term or for life. Most never returned to England, becoming settlers of different…

How do we know how poor women lived in the Middle Ages when historians have ignored them? Walk the Thames and meet 6 medieval working women. Written history records only the rich and famous, because poor women do nothing interesting – right? No! Ordinary working women had interesting, varied lives in the Middle Ages, and…