Footprints of London

London Borough of Hackney has a wonderful variety of buildings from Tudor Sutton House to modern Bridge Academy This sixty minute virtual tour explores the buildings of London Borough of Hackney. For a long time Hackney was a village outside London, with its parish church, houses of the wealthy like Sutton House and its old…

During the 1780s Thomas Gainsborough painted nearly everyone who was rich and famous in London. This walk is about the people he painted.   During the 1780s Thomas Gainsborough was the leading portrait painter of his age, and his works are enjoyed by thousands of people in galleries around the world each year. This two…

Find out what you can see of Roman London on this virtual tour While the remains of Roman London might not be as spectacular as those of Rome itself, they do crop up in interesting places. This one hour virtual tour will show you where to look for Roman remains, and tell you of the…

A look at the first balloon , airship and aircraft to fly over London, and the stir this caused amongst inquisitive Londoners For years people dreamed of being able to fly over London, something which now, thousands of people do every day. This 50 minute talk on Zoom looks at some of the flights made…

Margate has long been a favourite with Londoners. This walk looks at visitors to Margate from George IV to mods and rockers.  This is the final in a series of walks along the Medway and Kent Coast. Margate reinvented itself as a fashionable seaside resort in the 18th century. Wealthy Londoners would come to enjoy…

The sad tales of ships that have met their fate on England’s treacherous North Sea Coast With so many ships having travelled up and down the East Coast of England, it is not surprising some of them have come to grief. Footprints of London guide Rob Smith will tell the story a few of the…

In the 18th century Newington Green was home to a group of religious dissenters who discussed political ideas that are still relevant today Dissenters of Newington Green For many years Newington Green was a tiny hamlet, far from London, where radical thinkers and dissenting religious groups came to escape the constricts of the City. You…

This online looks at the how Christmas was celebrated in Islington during the Victorian period with readings from newspapers of the time This Virtual Tour looks at the different ways that Christmas was celebrated in Islington during the Victorian period – whether it was a slice of the celebrated currant cake from Thomas’s or dancing…

Georgian London loved a ghost story, this walk visits places in Bloomsbury where ghosts were alleged to have been seen Ghost stories have always fascinated people but 18th century London particularly so. This walk visits the locations where ghosts have allegedly been seen and Rob will tell their strange tales. You’ll hear about The Story…

A look at how Christmas was celebrated in the 18th and early 19th centuries At the start of the Georgian period , Christmas was something of a private, polite celebration, with none of the rowdiness of the previous century. The upper classes believed in elegant entertaining at the Christmas season. Not that there weren’t traditions…