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In January 2023 I set myself the challenge of posting a Fun London Fact on social media for each day of the year. I began the year with something like 400 followers on Instagram and ended the year with 170,000. It’s not about follower numbers obviously, but the point is that when I started, it was as much for my own benefit as anything else (having pretty much lost all of my business due to Covid). I hadn’t anticipated the videos becoming as popular as they did. Over the last couple of years, when I meet people on my London walking tours aside from saying to each other ‘He’s got the same voice!’, I have often been asked ‘Why don’t you put all these in to a book?’ or ‘When’s the book coming out?’. Some people assumed I already had one. Well, I can finally reveal, there is a book coming out this year in September (2025) entitled ‘Why is Downing Street Painted Black (and 364 other Fun London Facts)’. It’s a pretty catchy title and will be published by Mudlark, an Imprint of Harper Collins packed full of not only Fun London Facts (quite a few are new ones) but wonderfully illustrated by Ollie Mann. It would seem that ‘pre-ordering’ is a super important part of the publishing process, as it gives book retailers an idea of whether or not they should even stock a particular book themselves. Therefore, if you would like to pre-order it, then my first suggestion would be to go to your local bookshop and ask them. If you don’t have a book shop near you, then … YOU CAN PRE-ORDER IT HERE!  Also, I’d like to thank my agent Charlie Viney who steered me through the first part of the process and Imogen Gordon Clark, my editor at Harper Collins who has very ably helped me through the writing and editing process.
I hope you enjoy reading it and with a bit of luck, it might spark your enthusiasm and fascination with this weird and wonderful city.
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A few months ago I was interviewed by Tansy Harcourt for The Australian weekend magazine. It was a full page spread in their Travel section and I was asked various questions about how I came to be a tour guide, favourite spots, advice for Aussies visiting London, where I've been on holiday overseas and things like that. I also took the opportunity to 'big up' a few destinations closer to home; places we've been to in the last couple of years year like Wales, the Lake District and the Peak District in Derbyshire. I also mentioned that aside from our large museums and galleries, London has many smaller museums which are well worth a visit; such as Handel & Hendrix in London, the Charles Dickens Museum, Benjamin Franklin House and Dr Johnson's House. For the interview they wanted me to provide a portrait. The ones I sent evidently didn't cut the mustard, so whilst doing a walking tour around Hampstead, I asked the group (about 20 people) if anyone would mind taking a photo of me (not at all embarrassing). A guy called Tony, very kindly stepped up to the challenge, and the end result was accepted ...so a big thanks to Tony.   A coming of age story with a difference. Earlier this year I was contacted by a guy called Harvey Marcus of Bruise Film, telling me he’d spent the best part of a year making a documentary about the residents of Hopton’s Almshouses on Bankside. It’s called ‘Waterloo Sunset’. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in watching a bit of a rough edit of the documentary with a view to me adding an introduction. In case you are unaware, Almshouses were built for elderly residents, sometimes attached to a particular trade or guild. We would now call them retirement homes, but they were largely charitable and often founded by a wealthy member of that particular guild to help those less fortunate. Hopton’s was founded in the mid 18th century after the death of philanthropist Charles Hopton, for the ‘poor and destitute men of Southwark’. Like most almshouses, the accommodation was centred around a lovely courtyard, and for centuries, Hopton’s was surrounded by similar 18th century buildings. Now, it is dwarfed by glass and steel office buildings, luxury apartments and of course the former Bankside Power Station, the Tate Modern. I’ve passed Hopton’s many times, and (I’m sure like many others) have wondered what life is like for those living in this bucolic, gated community. When Harvey told me about his documentary I was immediately excited. What I watched, did not disappoint and I told Harvey, I’d be very happy to contribute an introduction. Last month, I was invited to the premiere of ‘Waterloo Sunset’ at the Everyman Cinema in Borough Yards, just by Borough Market. Many of the residents who appear in the film were there also and the finished film far exceeded my expectations. Harvey has made a wonderful film that is poignant, sad, funny and uplifting. He introduces us to the residents with warmth and care, coaxing from them stories of their lives up to this point. Some grew up in the area and have memories of a very different London, and a very different Southwark, living by their wits, not knowing where their next meal would come from. Others grew up in far flung corners of the world but have found themselves on this little piece of paradise by the Thames. One, pushing eighty is still chasing his dream of that elusive record deal and a number one hit. All of them ruminate on life, its highs and its lows, their place in a modern world and how the world views them, the death of loved ones, what lies ahead and much more. If you have an interest in London, and the very human stories that make it the city that it is today, I urge you to watch this film. Harvey has managed to get it on at a number of cinemas, not just in London, but up and down the country. I’ll put the dates and links below, but in the meantime time, here is the trailer and the Guardian review of ‘Waterloo Sunset’. Currently booking at:
FORUM CINEMA, HEXHAM - JULY 22 + 24 https://forumhexham.com/ForumHexham.dll/WhatsOn?f=22520869 KESWICK ALHAMBRA - JULY 25 + AUG 1 https://keswickalhambra.co.uk/KeswickAlhambra.dll/WhatsOn?f=425991 BREWERY ARTS KENDAL - JULY 31 + AUG 1 https://www.breweryarts.co.uk/event/waterloo-sunset/ THE PALACE FELIXSTOWE - AUG 2 to AUG 8 https://palacecinemafelixstowe.savoysystems.co.uk/PalaceCinemaFelixstowe.dll/TSelectItems.waSelectItemsPrompt.TcsWebMenuItem_3302.TcsWebTab_695904.TcsProgramme_3007947 THE PALACE GORLESTON - AUG 2 to AUG 8 https://palacecinemagorleston.savoysystems.co.uk/PalaceCinemaGorleston.dll/TSelectItems.waSelectItemsPrompt.TcsWebMenuItem_5324.TcsWebTab_5325.TcsProgramme_2900974 CROUCH END ARTHOUSE, LONDON - AUG 11 https://www.arthousecrouchend.co.uk/programme/?programme_id=8511798 PECKHAMPLEX, LONDON - AUG 14 https://ticketing.eu.veezi.com/purchase/65394?siteToken=f3d16dvfdem7nzemve42hxwj68 MAC BIRMINGHAM - AUG 18 https://macbirmingham.co.uk/cinema/waterloo-sunset THE LEXI LONDON - SEP 15 HASTINGS ELECTRIC CINEMA - SEP 15 + SEP 25 CINEMA & CO, SWANSEA - SEP 20 DATES TBC: HEBDEN BRIDGE PICTUREHOUSE SOUTHPORT BIJOU CINEMA STOCKPORT PLAZA PHOENIX CINEMA, LEICESTER ART'OTEL, SHOREDITCH, LONDON  Since 1989, London’s Air Ambulance Charity has been providing a 24 hour a day, 365 days a year, advanced trauma service to London’s most injured patients, the first such service in the UK to carry a senior doctor on board, as well as paramedics. Dr. Richard Earlam founded the charity (which works alongside the NHS) in response to a report documenting the number of trauma patients that died needlessly due to the delay in getting them prompt and appropriate medical assistance. Today, London’s Air Ambulance Charity serves a population of 10 million people in Greater London, responding to an average of five patients a day and reaching any scene within 11 minutes of receiving the call. They effectively take the hospital to the patient and can perform life saving procedures such as open heart surgery and blood transfusions at the roadside; procedures normally only found in an emergency room. The quick intervention and the incredibly high level of medical assistance they provide means that the patients they attend have not only the best chance of survival, but the best quality of life after trauma.  As you can probably guess, most of the incidents that London’s Air Ambulance Charity attend to are road traffic collisions, the rail network, industrial accidents, falls from a great height unfortunately, a growing number of stabbings and shootings. The two MD902 explorer twin engine helicopters operate from 8:00am until sunset when rapid response vehicles take over the night duties. The cost of running this service is £15 million a year. The helicopters are coming to the end of their life and another £15 million is needed to replace them but have until September to raise it. London’s Air Ambulance Charity appeal is called ‘Up Against Time’ and this year I’ve decided to see if I can raise a little bit of awareness about them and what they do, but also the fact that they’re a charity. They are completely reliant on donations …from the very people they serve.  At the start of the year, I set up a subscription channel on my Bowl of Chalk Instagram page, where for a whopping 0.99p a month you get (aside from my regular Fun London Facts) other content such as explorations of different areas of London, museums you might have never heard of and a couple of different series’; one which involves my collection of vintage London postcards and another called ‘London in Lyrics’, looking at songs that have been inspired or been influenced by London. Half of the money I receive each month from the subscription is going to London’s Air Ambulance Charity, but I wanted to do a bit more. On the 27th and 28th of July, I’ll be doing 24 hours of London walking tours over the two days (because LAA are a 24-hour service). I will be starting in Victoria at 9am on the Saturday and doing a continuous route (just over 20 miles) through the capital in a series of back-to-back 1.5 hour walks (12 hours each day) which will end at approximately 10pm on the Sunday evening in Whitechapel outside the Royal London Hospital where the London’s Air Ambulance Charity have their helipad.  I’d be delighted if you could join me. There are 8 walks each day and tickets are £20 per person. Aside from a small admin fee which goes to Eventbrite, all of the money raised through ticket sales will be going to London’s Air Ambulance Charity ‘Up Against Time’ appeal. The plan is that people can join for one section of the walk (or more if you’d like), then where one walk finishes, the next will start …and so on. You can find all the walks listed using the link below, and you can book directly through Eventbrite. I look forward to meeting you at the end of July as we explore London together whilst trying to raise some funds for London’s Air Ambulance Charity.
BOOK YOUR PLACE HERE  When Horatio Nelson was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 he was brought back to London to be given a massive send off. Normally, if sailors died at sea they were thrown over board. You didn’t carry dead people around on ships. For Nelson they made an exception and stuck him in a barrel of brandy, pickling him for the journey. Legend has it, that the crew that returned on his ship, the HMS Victory drank the brandy from the barrel whilst Nelson was in it.  The Burlington Arcade is the longest covered shopping Street in the UK. It runs alongside Burlington House, originally built as a 17th country manor. When 19th early century resident Lord George Cavendish got annoyed with his neighbours throwing stuff over the wall in to his garden, he arranged for the whole street to be covered, opening it in 1819 as a super duper luxury shopping precinct, which it remains to this day.  55% of the London underground is over ground.  In 1875 these green huts started popping up. They’re called Cabmen’s Shelters and provided the drivers of horse drawn Hackney Carriages somewhere to shelter from the wind, rain and cold. A stove inside meant they could keep warm and cook food and the bar around the edge was for tying horses two. Two decades later there were sixty-one in London, but today only thirteen survive and have been given listed building status. Some provide snacks to the public, whilst the others, cab drivers still sit in them. Strand runs from Trafalgar Square to Fleet Street. A lot of Londoners call it ‘The Strand’, but there is no prefix. The word ‘strand’ in most northern European languages means beach, and Strand runs parallel to the Thames, which until the 1860s came much closer. It literally means the beach or bank of the Thames.  Construction on Tower Bridge began in 1887 and was completed in 1894. The now incredibly iconic design was chosen by way of competition, with the lucky winner being an architect called Horace Jones who also designed a number of London’s Victorian markets. It seems not much luck was involved as Jones was also one of the competition judges. He chose his own design.  New Zealand House was completed in 1963. It was the first tower block to be built in central London after WW2 and was in fact built on the site of the Carlton Hotel which was bombed during the war. This modernist high rise was a highly contentious building at the time and towering over its neighbours should have given those that worked in New Zealand House amazing views across London from their desks, but unfortunately not. For nearly 50 years they’ve had to close the blinds every day. I believe the building was loosing too much heat through the myriad of glass, known as ‘thermal flow’, and ordering the blinds to be closed, although drastic, solved this problem. Just one of the many building projects in London gone wrong.
 The word Trafalgar, as in Trafalgar Square is actually of Arabic origin. The Battle of Trafalgar took place in 1805 off the south coast of Spain near Cabo de Trafalgar (Cape Trafalgar) which was itself taken from the Arabic ‘Taraf-al-ghar’ which has a number of possible meanings, one being rocky outcrop.  The Heron Tower on Bishopsgate has in its lobby the largest privately owned aquarium in the UK. The aquarium holds 70,000 litres of water and over 60 species of fish.  Houndsditch is a street in the City of London and is so called because (according to Elizabethan historian John Stow at least) it was once a ditch that ran along the outside of the old city wall and Londoners literally used to throw dead dogs over the wall in to the ditch. Houndsditch.  St Paul’s cathedral completed in 1711 is 365ft tall. Architect Christopher Wren who designed it was at the time professor of Astronomy at Oxford University and it represents each day of the year. He liked doing stuff like that.  If it’s sunny, at certain times of day, the shadows cast by Westminster Bridge create penises on the pavement.  There have been pelicans in St James’s Park since 1664 after they were given as a gift to King Charles II from the Russian ambassador. By the 1980s the pelicans had stopped breeding and there was only one left so someone in the UK government wrote to the Russians asking for some more. They duly sent some over and were installed in the park but stories were soon circling that these new pelicans were eating the other birds in the park. The stories were dismissed on account of the fact that pelicans don’t eat other birds, then someone filmed a pelican eating an entire pigeon. It became headline news that those pesky Russians had deliberately sent over killer pelicans to ruin our park.  Egyptologist and archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (born 1853) was a Hampstead resident. In 1933 he moved with his wife to Jerusalem where he died in 1942. For some reason Petrie had made provision for his head to be returned to the Royal College of Surgeons in London, but as there was a war on, it wasn’t top of anyone’s ‘to do’ list. Eventually, Petrie’s head made it back but at some point the label fell off and it spent many years languishing on a shelf in the Royal College of Surgeons with no one knowing who’s head it was.
Happily, Petrie’s head has now been identified. I'll undoubtedly regret this, but I've set myself the challenge of posting a fun London fact every day for the whole of 2023. That's 365 facts! (I know you knew that). I'm posting them over on Twitter and Instagram each day, then every week I'll do a round up here. So here are my fun London facts for the first week.  On the 23rd October 1843, the 14 stonemasons who built Nelson’s Column had a dinner party at the top before the statue of Horatio Nelson was hoisted up.  When Sam Wanamaker was raising funds for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the 1990s, he was reliant on private donations, with each individual or organisation rewarded with their name engraved on a paving stone around the theatre. John Cleese phoned up and said “If you spell Michael Palin’s name wrong, I’ll give you double.” And so it is, that next to John Cleese is the larger paving stone of 'Michael Pallin'.  William Fortnum was a footman for Queen Anne in the early 18th century. One of his jobs was to replenish the palace candles each evening, but the Queen apparently insisted on new candles each day. William sold on the used candles, making a tidy profit which he used to set up his grocery shop with Hugh Fortnum in 1707. This is why candles are a motif in Fortnum & Mason today.  Elizabethan playwright Ben Jonson (1572 – 1637) is the only person in Westminster Abbey buried standing up. The reason? By the end of his life he’d spunked most of his money, so before he died, negotiated a deal to be buried standing up. It took up less space and was therefore much cheaper. Clever chap.  The famous bronze lions at the base of Nelson’s Column are anatomically incorrect. Lions can’t actually sit with their back legs like this. Edwin Landseer who made them was a Victorian water-colour painter and had never made a sculpture in his life. He based the back of them on his own dogs.  Rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix and German born composer George Frideric Handel were nextdoor neighbours …albeit 200 years apart. Handel moved to Brook Street, Mayfair in 1723 and spent 40-years living there. In 1970, Hendrix moved in with his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham to the top floor room at 23 Brook Street. When Hendrix learned of his famous old neighbour he went out and bought ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’ and ‘Messiah’ which incidentally Handel wrote next door. The two buildings have been transformed in to the rather brilliant Handel & Hendrix in London museum. It’s currently closed for refurbishment, re-opening in May 2023. Well worth a visit.  Built by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke, The Monument is a monument to the Great Fire of London in 1666. Completed in 1677 it stands 202ft tall because if it were to fall eastwards (which it hasn’t yet) the top of it would touch the spot where the fire started in Thomas Farrinor’s bakery on Pudding Lane, 202 feet away.
Here's a handy guide to what you'll see en route. You'll begin queuing in Southwark Park, south east London. When I was there earlier, the sign was warning of a 14 hour queue. You'll have lots of time to take in what's around you. Here are a few highlights and fun facts.  After about 10 minutes you'll find yourself down by the river at Bermondsey. You'll be walking alongside the river Thames for the entire route. The River Thames The Thames is the entire reason why London exists and the Roman's settled here over 2000 years ago. It's 215 miles long and flows through 9 counties, its source being in Kemble, Gloucestershire. A few years ago I walked the whole thing from the 'Sea to the Source'. It was once a tributary river of the Rhine in Germany (when we were still landlocked to the rest of Europe). In central London the Thames has a tidal change of about 23ft, so see if you can see any 'mudlarks' looking for things that have washed up. It's basically a massive archaeological site and in the 19th century a politician called John Burns referred to it as 'liquid history'. The City of London From this point on the river you'll see the City of London opposite. It looks very modern but was the Roman city of Londinium founded in about 48AD. It's the original financial district. You'll see a number of tall buildings including 'the Gherkin' (No. 30 St Mary's Axe) and the 'Walkie Talkie' (20 Fenchurch Street). Fun Fact - During the hot summer of 2013 (a year before completion) the 'Walkie Talkie' acted as a massive magnifying glass and was melting and scorching things including a car parked on the street below. The architect Rafael Vinoly said "it's not my fault, the sun was in the wrong place". You'll also get your first glimpse of: Tower Bridge Undoubtedly one of the most iconic structures in London, Tower Bridge was completed in 1894. It's a 'bascule' bridge allowing the road to lift to allow ships through and is actually a steel structure with stone cladding. Fun Fact - The winning design was chosen as part of a competition, judged by architect Horace Jones. He chose his own design as the winner.  St Saviour's Dock You'll pass around where one of London's subterranean rivers, the Neckinger meets the Thames. In the 17th and 18th century it became known as Jacob's Island, a notorious place of execution. In 1838, Charles Dickens described the area as "the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities hidden in London". Fun Fact - The name is thought to derive from 'devil's neckcloth' in reference to the nooses used to hang people here. Shad Thames Next you'll pass through old riverside warehouses, once used to unload the myriad of goods that arrived in London from across the globe and now turned in to super duper apartments. You'll pass beneath the south side of Tower Bridge which is where all the engine rooms are housed, as originally the bridge was powered by coal furnaces. Fun Fact - Tower Bridge has its own mortuary on the north side of the river, where bodies from the river were pulled out.  Tower of London As you pass City Hall, on the other side of the river you'll see the Tower of London. It's actually 21 separate towers, but the White Tower in the centre dates back to 1090, a couple of decades after the Norman conquest. Fun Fact - The Tower was London's first zoo. From the 1200s until 1835, animals given to monarchs as gifts were housed there, with the public paying to see them. HMS Belfast A WW2 ship that was used during D-Day in 1944. It has been a museum open to the public for over 50 years. Fun Fact - If the guns on the front were to fire they'd hit a service station on the M1 motorway (over 12 miles away).  London Bridge The original London Bridge opened in 1209 and was the longest inhabited bridge in the world. It remained there until the early 1800s. The bridge you're passing is the third on the site and opened by the Queen in the early 1970s. Fun Fact - The 2nd London Bridge was sold to an American called Robert P. McCulloch who shipped it over to Arizona and created a man-made lake around it called Lake Havasu and made it into a tourist attraction.  Southwark Cathedral Next you'll pass Southwark cathedral which was founded in the early 12th century. It's a beautiful church, originally called the Collegiate Church of St. Saviour and Mary Overie. The 'Overie' was short for 'church over the river'. Fun Fact - William Shakespeare's younger brother Edmund was buried there in 1607. Golden Hind You'll pass by a replica of Francis Drake's galleon, the 'Golden Hind' which left to circumnavigate the world in 1577, returning to Deptford (near where you started queuing) in 1580. They were really pirates, but we called them privateers to make us feel better. Fun Fact - The ship was originally called 'the Pelican' but its name changed during the journey in honour of one of the main financiers, Christopher Hatton whose family emblem was the golden hind (a female red deer).  Winchester Palace You'll pass the remains of the 14th century palace of the Bishop of Winchester who once had jurisdiction over the area. The imposing wall and its rose window were discovered after a warehouse fire in the 19th century. Fun Fact - The area of Bankside in the Elizabethan period was known as the 'City of Sin' as it housed the brothels and theatres. The church made money from the prostitutes and the women were known collectively as 'the Bishop of Winchester's Geese'. To be 'bitten by a Winchester Goose' meant you had contracted a sexually transmitted disease on Bankside and features in one of Shakespeare's plays.  Shakespeare's Globe Theatre Finished in the late 1990s by American Sam Wanamaker, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is a recreation of an Elizabethan Theatre and memorial to the bard. The original site is actually on the street behind. Fun Fact - It has the only thatched roof in central London (after thatch was banned following the Great Fire of London in 1666).  Tate Modern and Millennium Bridge The Tate Modern was a 1960s power station built by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed the now iconic red telephone boxes. It's now a modern art gallery. The Millennium Bridge opened in the year 2000 and is a pedestrian foot bridge that joins the Tate Modern to St Paul's cathedral in the City. Fun Fact - The Millennium bridge was open for 2 days and closed for 2 years because it had a massive wobble. It will be forever known as 'the wobbly bridge'. Blackfriars Bridge & Blackfriars Railway Bridge The Victorian pedestrian and traffic bridge gets its name from the monastery that stood on the north side until the 16th century. It was run by Dominican monks who wore black, hence the 'blackfriars'. The railway bridge leads in to Blackfriars station and Underground station which is the only underground station in London to have exits on either side of the Thames. Fun Fact - The railway bridge has solar panels on the roof which generates half the electricity for the station. It's the largest solar powered bridge in the world.  The National Theatre Founded in 1963 by Sir Lawrence Olivier (you'll pass a statue of him outside), the current brutalist building opened on this site in the late 1970s. The new King Charles III once said "it's a clever way of hiding a nuclear power station in the middle of London without anyone objecting." Waterloo Bridge Waterloo Bridge was bombed at the beginning of WW2, rebuilt largely by women and therefore nicknamed 'the ladies bridge'.  The Southbank The area now known has the Southbank was destroyed in WW2. It was rebuilt to house arts venues such as the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the Hayward Gallery and the Royal Festival Hall, the first building to open here in 1951.  The London Eye Opened as 'the Millennium Wheel' in the year 2000 and renamed the 'London Eye'. It takes 30 minutes to go all the way around. Fun Fact - It has 32 pods. Each one represents one of London's 32 boroughs.  Westminster Bridge and the Royal Palace of Westminster Westminster Bridge is painted green, the same colour as the benches in the House of Commons. The medieval Palace of Westminster burnt down in 1834. A few bits survived including the Great Hall, where the Queen is Lying-in-State. It was rebuilt by architect Charles Barry and completed in 1870. 'Big Ben' is actually called the Elizabeth Tower and the tower on the opposite end is called the Victoria Tower which houses documents and bills of parliament dating back to the 14th century. Fun Fact - Big Ben is the name of the 14 tonne hour bell, not the tower.  Lambeth Palace
Lambeth Palace has been home to the Archbishop of Canterbury since the 1200s. The oldest part of the current building dates back to the 15th century. Fun Fact - Behind those walls is a garden of just over 10 acres, making it one of the oldest and largest private gardens in London. Lambeth Bridge Lambeth Bridge was completed in 1932 to replace a Victorian Bridge. It had originally been the site of a ferry that took horses across the Thames, which is why the road on the opposite bank is called Horseferry Road. You'll notice the paintwork is largely red, the same as the benches in the House of Lords. Once you've crossed Lambeth Bridge, you'll be on the final stretch before you enter the Great Hall to see the Queen Lying-in-State. This coming Sunday (10th July at 4pm) I'll be running my first ever 'Hampstead' walk.If you're unfamiliar with the area, Hampstead was once a small country village, which although only 4 miles from central London stands about 440ft (134 metres) above sea level. It remained largely undeveloped until well in to the 18th century when people were drawn there by the clean air, large open spaces and abundance of springs. It became known as the 'Vale of Health'. It has managed to retain its village feel and stands next to 800 acres of heathland which is open to the public and enjoyed by Londoners, especially the fantastic views of the capital from Parliament Hill. Hampstead attracted a huge amount of writers, artists and well known historical characters, and as such has about 75 commemorative plaques on their former homes. We'll pass by quite a number, including the houses of H.G Wells, Peter Cook, John Constable, Daphne du Maurier, Marie Stopes, Robert Louis Stevenson and John Keats to name but a few. Today's residents of Hampstead include the likes of Ricky Gervais, Liam Gallagher, Helena Bonham Carter and Jonathan Ross.    As well as a fine array of 18th century houses, winding streets and also the impressive Fenton House built in the late 17th century, Hampstead also has quite a number of modernist houses built in the 1930s, including 66 Frognal, the 'sun house' (the first modernist concrete house to be built in London) and No.2 Willow Road which is now a National Trust property. We'll also pass Admiral's House, which was not only painted by local artist John Constable but is said to have been P.L Traver's inspiration for 'Admiral Boom' in her Mary Poppins stories. You'll have to come on the walk to find out the whole story.    Although we won't be breaking out on to Hampstead Heath itself, we will have the opportunity to glimpse a small part of the Heath as we walk up 'Judges Walk' to Whitestone Pond, the highest point in Hampstead. If you would like to join one of my Hampstead walks, please check the schedule on the Home Page for upcoming dates. I'll be running them on Sunday afternoons so you can combine it with a visit and perhaps Sunday Roast in one of Hampstead's many gorgeous pubs, or perhaps a visit to the nearby Kenwood House or maybe just a stroll around Hampstead Heath. If you're brave enough, you could go for an outdoor dip in one of the Hampstead Ponds.      I'm running new regular 'pay what you want' weekend walks around London including 'Holborn, Smithfield & Clerkenwell', 'The Great Fire', 'King's Cross' and many others. You'll find them all listed on my Weekend Walks page. If you'd like to join one, please send me a message using the Contact Form.
This coming weekend I'll be starting my new regime of Weekend London Walks, including some entirely new adventures in parts of London I've not previously covered on group 'pay what you want' walks. This coming Sunday (3rd July) at 3pm I'll be doing my inaugural 'Holborn, Clerkenwell & Smithfield' tour, so thought I'd write a brief post describing a little bit about what you can expect. Holborn If you've been on walks with me before you'll know I'm quite keen on the etymology of words and place names, so we'll talk about 'Chancery' (we'll meet outside Chancery Lane underground station) and the legal 'Inns' that used to be in the area. We'll meet right by the impressive Staple Inn, a black and white Tudor building which is still standing and dates back to 1585. We'll pass by the gothic Victorian Holborn Bars, which was once Furnival's Inn, where Charles Dickens lived when he began writing the Pickwick Papers. We'll move on to Hatton Garden, today, London's 'jewellery quarter', once London residence of the Bishop's of Ely from the 13th century and part of which was grant to Christopher Hatton in the 16th century. We'll pass through a little alley way to discover a lovely little pub, Ye Olde Mitre, the origins of which date back to 1546 and a delightful little church which has managed to survive from the reign of Edward I (1272 - 1307). From there we'll move on to Smithfield.      Smithfield Smithfield has an intriguing, gruesome and varied history as a jousting ground, the site of a yearly fair which began in the 12th century, St Bartholomew's Hospital and a monastery founded in 1123, part of which the church of St Bartholomew-the-Great survives today, a meat market which has been on the site for 900 years and amongst other things ...executions. Queen Mary I ('Bloody Mary' had over 200 Protestants executed there, many of whom were burned at the stake. Perhaps the most famous execution at Smithfield was Scottish patriot William Wallace in 1305. We'll pass by the 'oldest house in London', walk over a Black Death burial site, stop outside another ancient monastery, which gets used regularly as a film set and currently houses about 45 'brothers'. We'll also talk about the meat market and its changing fortunes over the years before heading on to Clerkenwell.      Clerkenwell There was another 12th century monastery in Clerkenwell, parts of which still survive today, not just physically, but in an organisation that everyone will be very familiar with. We'll pass through the Tudor gatehouse and by the old Norman church to Clerkenwell Green which features in Charles Dickens 'Oliver Twist' and take a look at some of the buildings, old and new. At the end we'll go in search of the original 'Clerk's Well' which gives its name to the area.   Please Note - This walk might change a bit. The purpose of this blog post is to just give you a taster of what you can expect.
This weekend on Sat 2nd July I'll also be doing 'The Great Fire' walk, 'Around St Paul's cathedral' and 'Fleet Street'. If you'd like to join the walk listed here, or any of my other walks, please book first, by sending me a message via the Contact Form. Thank you. |
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