WALKS

TO BOOK contact:  missbtakesawalk@gmail.com or text: 07963 778213

 Price £12.00 pp 

All walks are available for private groups or a special occasion - personal interests can be included within reason. 

Walbrook springs eternal ...

Photo: Steve Duncan

'Walbrook where art thou?'

Meet : Moorgate Underground Station (Brittanic House exit)

Ends: Millienium Bridge (this may vary)

Duration: 1.5 hours

In search of the one of the lost rivers of London. Learn how the Roman's adapted it. How it's course dictated the footprint of the streets  we walk  today. Why three livery companies shared its banks. Discover the harbour and enjoy the finds of the archaeological dig at Bucklersbury. Locate the end of it's journey to the Thames and decide for yourself whether it is lost or just hiding. in plain sight.  

Secret Gardens & Public Spaces

Meet: St Paul's Underground Station
Ends: New Change
Duration: 1.5 hours approx

Come walk with me and visit the familiar, unusual and hidden parks and gardens of the City. Some you may have enjoyed before but the whole story is not always immediately obvious. Come and learn about how they came into existence and why they are so important to the City of London. Hear the names and stories of special trees, garden designs and botanical explorers plus much more. 

                                                                                 The histories and stories change with the seasons!

Text in the City

Join City of London Guide Tina Baxter to explore the craft of cut lettering in the City. Starting from Blackfriars Station and finishing at the Goldsmiths’ Centre, you will be guided through the city streets, encountering the rich lettering heritage and the stories behind them and learn more about the skills required to carve, cut and engrave text.

The walk takes in memorials, maps and measures; discover a compass, a flame and a totem pole, and an ancient cuneiform slab hidden from public view, as well as several works by Richard Kindersley, and pieces by Matthew Bell, Andrew Whittle and Joanna Migdal. 

Meet: Blackfriars Station
Ends: Goldsmiths' Centre, Clerkenwell
Duration: 1.5 hours approx

  

Boris Anrep Mosaic

Chess Board to Totem Pole – The Art of Craft

A commission to celebrate craftsmanship throughout the City was the push I needed to create a walk I had been longing to do for as long as I can remember. Ever since discovering the tile cavalcade of Rupert Spira, 

One might assume this is just another Art & Sculpture walk, and you might be right. However, we also explore here the element of ‘fit for purpose’, as well as the client’s brief and how the craftsman explored this and extended the remit to create a piece that was so much more than that.

We explore how the works were created, by the tools used, for example, power tools, or an ancient kiln, as well as the use of ancient crafts and emblems to create modern epitaphs.

There is also the structure which invokes analogy which was never intended by the artist, its design purely practical. Share with me the great reveal, join me on this route of discovery.

Meet:  Blackfriars Station
Ends: Queen Victoria Street (Blackfriars Station)
Duration: 1.5 hours

City Walk - Women through time - Inspiring Change
Meet: Guildhall Yard
Ends: St Paul's Underground Station
Duration: 1.5 hours approx

The women you will meet and get to know on this walk covers a period over 1500 years, some you will have heard of, but there are others you have not. From the infamous to the little known, the royal or poor, the bright and the beautiful, each and every one of these women have left their mark, not in a physical sense necessarily, no monument, for some not even a written word, but once met not forgotten.  Their stories re-emerge time and time again, ‘gaining momentum’ and are an example to all women of how, through time and history, their ‘gender’ is their strength!

Women of Fleet Street - Against all odds!

Meet: Twinings Tea Shop, 216 The Strand, WC2R 1AP

Ends: Ludgate Hill (Blackfriars Station)
Duration: 1.5 hours approx

Kind Permission of  Museum of Docklands
Photograph : Christine Broom

The women you will meet and discover on this walk forged their careers in what was very much a man's world, some you will have heard of, but there are others you have not. From the infamous to the little known, the rich and the poor, the bright and the beautiful, each and every one of these women have left their mark, not in a physical sense necessarily, no monument, for some not even a written word, but once met not forgotten. 

Fish, Flesh, Fasting and Feasting - AD43 - 1603

Meet: London Bridge Station (Tooley Street exit)
Ends: Cheapside (New Change)
Duration: 1.5 hours approx

A food and drink walk through the centuries, what people ate and drank, how it ruled their lives, and how it got to the table, if you had one that is! Streets still keep the names of the trade which was originally carried on there, the Roman's feasted, Saxons introduced etiquette and laws were                                                      passed at Guildhall on how and who was to drink what and when!

St Mary Woolnoth and the famous clock in the distance!
 (Photo credit:  N Quentin Woolf)

The Wasteland by T S Eliot

A reading of the famous poem whilst exploring the streets of the City of London.  Seeking out the streets and places that may have been an inspiration to the poet. The walk will involve reading of parts of the poem at relevant spots in the City, particularly 'III The Fire Sermon' which uses street names and places in the Square Mile, all too familiar to T S Eliot.

Some insight and explanation of the poem, and it’s supposed meanings, will be offered and audience participation is welcome in furthering our enjoyment and understanding of this famous piece. We will of course also gain from visiting some historic sites en route.

'I wandered, O my God, too much astray from Thee my stay,

in these days of my youth and I became to myself a waste land.'

Confessions of St Augustine - Book II

A previous post, a podcast and Londonist Review you will find here

Meet: The Monument Underground Station

Ends: St Paul's Churchyard

Duration: 2 hours approx

Geoffrey Chaucer &

The Canterbury Tales

Geoffrey Chaucer,
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

From pageboy to the Duchess of Ulster, courtier to Customs Officer, well-travelled and a poet, who chose to write in English, an extraordinarily radical choice for the time, then a second language, if not the third in a French speaking court.

The Canterbury Tales and a selection of the characters will be referred to throughout the walk to compare the lives of the many who lived in the City and without, their dress, their habits, what they ate and the manners of the period. 

Also to discover why the annual pilgrimage to Canterbury was so important to the people of the time.

Starts: Bank Station

Ends: Mansion House Underground Station

Duration: 1.5 hours approx

City Sampler – Civic History – A taste of why and how the City became what it is and how it continues to evolve today. The walk to include:

Temple Bar, Paternoster Square, Greyfriars Christchurch, King Edward Street, Postman's Park, Aldersgate, Gresham Street and Goldsmiths Hall, Guildhall Yard & Guildhall, Ironmonger Lane & Poultry, Mansion House, Royal Exchange, Bank of England, Cheapside & St Mary le Bow plus New Change.

The idea of this walk is to introduce you in a simple and informative way of the many levels of history that make up the City today. Hopefully it will leave you wanting to know more, perhaps about specific elements or ALL of it! Start & End points to be arranged.

Bespoke walks available on request please contact me -
missbtakeasawalk@gmail.com