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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…