Image: Jack Bass / Unsplash
Spring Term 2024:
8 January – 25 March (11 weeks)
Half term: Monday 12 February 2024
Members: £140 Non-members: £179 Spring
Concessions: £10 (call the office 020 8340 3343)
Summer Term 2024:
15 April – 1 July (10 weeks)
Spring Bank Holiday: 6 May 2024. Half Term: Monday 27 May 2024 (Bank Holiday)
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.
08/01/24
Markets, Merriment and Mayhem
Your Guide: Jen Pedler
We stroll from a fish market, to a “Bishop’s gate” through fire, fowl, markets, maypoles and murder, notwithstanding naughty nuns.
Start: Monument Station
Finish: Bishopsgate
15/01/24
Marx Lenin and Anarchism: Revolution in Fitzrovia
Your Guide: Oonagh Gay
Discover how political exiles from France, Germany and Russia developed their theories of revolution in the area north of Soho in the late 19thc. See where Marx and Lenin lectured, where French revolutionary Louise Michel ran an anarchist school and find out how the assassination of a Russian Tsar resulted in imprisonment for a German exile.
Start: Goodge Street Station
Finish: Oxford Circus
22/01/24
Woolwich Arsenal
Your Guide: Rob Smith
Woolwich Arsenal was the largest factory in London, making guns, and later ammunition, for the Royal Navy and the Royal Artillery. The MOD vacated the site in the 1990s and left behind some heritage buildings, some of which date back to the 17th century. This walk explores the Woolwich Arsenal site, looking at what went on in the buildings, the people that worked there and the weapons they made.
Start/Finish: Woolwich Elizabeth Line Station
29/01/24
The Real West End – Covent Garden Off the Beaten Track
Your Guide: Joanna Moncreiff
A walk exploring the lesser known streets and alleyways of Covent Garden from the site of a burial ground and workhouse to the site of a leper hospital and rookery.
Start: Charing Cross Station
Finish: Tottenham Court Road
05/02/24
Helping Hands in the City
Your Guide: David Charnick
This City has seen the rise of a diverse selection of ventures which still extend helping hands to those in need. Most of these ventures began with individuals who had little more to offer than their readiness to help others.
Start: Christchurch Spitalfields
Finish: Guildhall Yard
12/02/24 Half Term – no walk
19/02/24
What’s behind the South Bank?
Your Guide: Sue McCarthy
For north Londoners the South Bank is often a destination for theatre, concerts, films and exhibitions - but what lies behind? On a walk from Waterloo to Blackfriars Bridge we see new developments alongside remnants of its industrial past. We explore a conservation area loved by film makers where time has apparently stood still, see a former warehouse that became a military hospital, a cooperative housing development that thwarted the developers and finish in an area famed for hat-making.
Start: Waterloo
Finish: Blackfriars Bridge
26/02/24
Pestilence, Penitence and Pilgrims: A Tour of Medieval Clerkenwell
Your Guide: Jiff Bayliss
Clerkenwell was London's oldest boroughs north of the Thames. It was the home of four major Catholic institutions until the Reformation and the Dissolution of The Monasteries. Explore their history and what's left of them on this walk
Start: Farringdon Station
Finish: Barbican Underground Station
04/03/24
Butchers, Bakers and Candlestick Makers - London's livery companies
Your Guide: Neil Sinclair
Learn about the City of London's ancient livery companies or guilds on a walk around the heart of the City, passing several of the livery halls including the magnificent Goldsmith's Hall and its adjacent sunken gardens.
Start: Bank Station
Finish: Cannon Street
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
Remaining Autumn 23 walks:
27/11/23
Bram Stoker and the Creation of Dracula
Your Guide: Anthony Davis
The story of Bram Stoker's life in London's theatre world and how he came to write Dracula.
Start: Lyceum Theatre, Strand
Finish: Charing Cross
04/12/23
Sancho's World
Your Guide: Jen Pedler
Actor and writer Paterson Joseph's debut novel The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho (2022) is, as he says in his 'Author's Note', “an imaginative telling of the life of a black man who breathed London's air two hundred years [ago]”. In it we are transported back to Georgian London and the remarkable, often perilous, life of a man who rose from being an orphan slave to become the first black person to vote in Britain. The streets Sancho walked might be unrecognisable to him today but we will visit locations associated with his life and recreate his world and events from his life with readings from the novel.
Start: Westminster Underground Station
Finish: Covent Garden
