Footprints of London

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…

True history of Islington youths convicted of theft and condemned to hang who were instead shipped to Australia where they are celebrated.. 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 kinds in the…

Thief and escape-artist Jack Sheppard sparred with thief-taker Jonathan Wild in streets thronged with gin-sellers, sex workers and beggars. The Seven Dials area of St Giles is now pretty, but in the 18th century it was notorious for poverty and crime. Jack Sheppard was from Wych Street, an apprentice carpenter who gave up the straight…

An 1848 Chartist rally led government to enclose the common, denying ancient rights. But communities have battled to win back green spaces. This walk in southern Kennington (including Oval and Vauxhall) looks at open spaces — greens, gardens, parks and sporting grounds. The Chartists held their last big rally on Kennington Common in April of…

From WWII Brixton is a centre for black Britons as well as South London fairies, squatters, poets, Latin American migrant entrepreneurs. 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 the face of…

The Stour Estuary was one Ground Zero for cruel 17th-century witch-crazes. The walk focuses on which women were targeted, why and how. On t On this two-guide walk along the Stour Estuary Laura tells the story of women accused of witchcraft during a craze that played out in the three villages of Lawford, Manningtree and…