Image: Laura Lugaresi / Unsplash
Summer Term 2024:
15 April – 1 July (10 weeks)
Spring Bank Holiday: 6 May 2024. Half Term: Monday 27 May 2024 (Bank Holiday)
Members: £130 Non-members: £163
Concessions: £10 (call the office 020 8340 3343)
Discover London with Footprints of London - HLSI Spring 2024 London Walks Programme
Footprints of London is delighted to partner with HLSI to bring you a programme of Monday afternoon walks and tours. We are a collective of independent, qualified and insured London tour guides. All our guides research and write their own walks and tours based on their own interests bringing unrivalled knowledge and enthusiasm to the stories they tell. We are where Londoners walk. We look forward to meeting you and helping you to love London just a little bit more with our autumn programme outlined below.
Walks will commence at 2pm and last two hours. Indicative location of the start point for each tour is shown below. The guide will send you precise details of the meeting point six days prior to the tour.
15/04/24
Walthamstow: Philanthropy, Plaques, Widows & the Workhouse
Your Guide: Joanna Moncreiff
Walthamstow joined the tube network in 1968 but has been well connected to Central London from the early 1700s; originally with stagecoach services and later with the railway arriving in 1870. Before the railways arrived the rich flocked to this area building grand houses and being buried in grand tombs.
On this walk we will visit Church End, one of the original settlements that made up the town, walk down a road formerly known as Church Common Lane and see an early 19thC house now a social club. In the 1830s this house was home to a lady who bequested vast sums of money to charities in Walthamstow and further afield and who is buried in St Mary's Churchyard close by.
We will also walk the Street of Blue Plaques and see a house where a famous botanist once lived.
We will pass two sets of old almshouses still serving the community today and the 18thC former workhouse now home to the borough's local museum.
Start/Finish: Walthamstow Central
22/04/24
Mary Wollstonecraft: Chapels and Change in Stoke Newington
Your Guide: Oonagh Gay
In the years before the French Revolution, Mary Wollstonecraft opened a school in Newington Green, Canonbury, and joined a network of radicals based around the Unitarian Chapel on the Green. She developed her ideas on female and male rights as part of this immersive experience. Follow in her footsteps to explore this historic green and the developing Victorian suburb of Canonbury, home to other radicals such as George Orwell and visited by Sylvia Pankhurst and Vladimir Lenin in the turbulent decade before the First World War
Start: Canonbury Station
Finish: Green Lanes N4 (bus to Manor House station)
29/4/24
Beautiful Downtown Croydon: the good, the bad and the ugly
Your Guide: Stephen Benton
Croydon is a story of ambition: in some ways it has been truly successful but in other ways it is a bit of a failure. Although Croydon had been a Surrey market town since 1276 and was the location of the summer palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury for centuries, things really got going in the 19th century with the coming of the railway and the gaining of borough status. And then came the boom of the 1960s.
Start: West Croydon Station
Finish: East Croydon Station
06/05/24 May Day Bank Holiday – no walk
13/05/24
Booze and the Borough
Your Guide: David Charnick
The area south of London Bridge has many connections with the world of hospitality. Once it was the focus of the English hop trade, and home to one of the world's largest breweries. Also it resounds with echoes of inns which for centuries accommodated visitors to London.
Start: London Bridge Post Office (close to London Bridge Station)
Finish: Borough Market
20/05/24
Reach for the Sky
Your Guide: Marilyn Greene
The City of London, contained within the Roman walls that largely existed until the 17th century, developed its own commercial identity. Walking through its heart, we will discover the foundations for trade and business; admire the architecture of churches, livery halls and important financial institutions and learn how major events in the City’s history have affected trade. We will learn about the 1990s IRA bombings and attempts to destroy buildings relating to its financial infrastructure. We will see how business developments and skyscrapers, competing for space and reaching for the sky are changing the City’s sky-line.
Start: St Paul's Underground Station
Finish: Liverpool Street
27/05/24 Half term - no walk
03/06/24
Dickens in Southwark
Your Guide: Neil Sinclair
Trace the steps taken by Charles Dickens as a young boy in Southwark. The poverty, deprivation, crime and cruelty he observed there helped shape his social conscience and provided the inspiration for a host of characters that populate many of his best-known novels including Oliver Twist, Pickwick Papers and Little Dorrit.
Start: Southwark Cathedral
Finish: Borough High Street
10/06/24
Women in the City
Your Guide: Jill Finch
Virginia Woolf is said to have commented ‘for most of history Anonymous was a woman’ - well, there have always been women in the City – even if we didn’t always see or hear them. This walk looks at how different women coped with life in the Square Mile over the years.
Start: Blackfriars Station
Finish: Bank Station
17/06/24
Chelsea's Literary Women – Writers, Mistresses and Abandoned wives
Your Guide: Anthony Davis
This walk focuses on some of the famous women who are associated with the literary and artistic life of leafy Chelsea – women writers and the often unsung and unappreciated wives and mistresses of their male counterparts. There is a poetess whose brother kept a zoo, a novelist who died three weeks after her honeymoon, a botanical illustrator who married a villain and another lady whose kiss inspired a famous poem. We also discover some shocking things about the relationship of a respectable Victorian writer and clergyman. On the way we learn about the development of the area and its history and admire some lovely buildings.
Start: Sloane Square
Finish: King's Road
24/06/24
Newham's Hidden Gems
Your Guide: Sue McCarthy
Crossing some of the Bow Back Rivers, tributaries of the River Lea, we travel through an area that passed from Abbey lands to industry and is now rapidly developing into new residential and leisure use. We see Bazalgette’s magnificent Pumping Station dubbed the “Cathedral of Sewage”, the unspoilt Three Mills area, including the world’s largest surviving tidal mill, a touching monument to an industrial accident and cross one of London’s newest bridges.
Start: Abbey Road (DLR)
Finish: Pudding Mill Lane (DLR)
01/07/24
Barnaby Rudge and the Gordon Riots
Your Guide: Jen Pedler
‘Barnaby Rudge: A Tale of the Riots of 'Eighty ‘ tells the story of simpleton Barnaby Rudge and his pet raven Grip who were caught up in the anti-Catholic riots that spread terror and destruction throughout London in 1780. This, the first of Dickens's two historical novels, is probably one of his least read books although it contains some of his most dramatic writing.
On this walk we will discover the London of the Riots and relive some of the dramatic and terrifying events Dickens recounts.
Start: Farringdon Station
Finish: Bank Station
Remaining Spring 24 walks
11/03/24
Woods, Parades and Panoramas
Your Guide: Marilyn Greene
Starting at the Modernist East Finchley tube station we learn about the origins of East Finchley and view some highlights and developments in the High Street including the Phoenix Cinema, the pubs and Edwardian parade of shops. Continuing through Cherry Tree Wood and into Highgate Wood we learn of their histories and then walk along part of the old railway line which ran from Highgate to Alexandra Palace. We will leave this near where the original Muswell Hill station was to explore the history and impressive architecture of Muswell Hill Broadway. We will finish by the Everyman Cinema, one of the most impressive art deco Cinemas in London
Start: East Finchley Station
Finish: Muswell Hill Broadway
18/03/24
Underground, Overground - a wander through Wimbledon
Your Guide: Stephen Benton
Wimbledon is famous for the tennis and the Wombles. but there is much more than that. Some people associated with Wimbledon include the writers Robert Graves and Wilfred Owen, the actress Margaret Rutherford and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. It has two very different theatres and one of London's few surviving independent department stores. And then there's Merton Council's joking acknowledgement of the Wombles.
Start: South Wimbledon Underground Station
Finish: Wimbledon Overground Station
25/03/24
Mayfair's Literary Figures
Your Guide: Anthony Davis
A light-hearted walk round the streets of Mayfair seeing some unexpected architecture and looking at places associated with writers, book collectors and the book trade over three centuries. Start: Bond Street tube
Finish: Piccadilly
