Footprints of London

From the 17th century Shadwell heaved with ship-suppliers, sailors on leave, pirates, runaway slaves, lascars, opium-eaters and sex workers. Shadwell was an early centre of Docklands, developed to supply both navy and merchant ships. Trades included sail makers, instrument makers, ship chandlers, ship brokers, victuallers, rope makers, glassmakers, sugar refiners, coopers, brewers, distillers and that’s…

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…

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…

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…

From WWII Brixton is a centre for black Britons as well as South London fairies, squatters, poets, Latin American migrant entrepreneurs An innovating commercial area in the late 19th century, Brixton after World War II became a hub for arrivals of the Windrush generation. Many were initially housed in the Clapham South Deep Shelter and…

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…

Migrants from Bengal have been arriving in London for centuries. In this novel a young married woman at first shut-in emerges empowered. Monica Ali’s Brick Lane recounts the experiences of Nazneen, a young woman in Bangladesh who after an arranged marriage travels to live with her husband in Tower Hamlets. Over the course of the…

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…