In celebrations of the invention of the modern railway, engineers get the credit. What about the navvies who not only dug but helped find solutions to problems and obstacles? At Primrose Hill you see what they did up close, including the Regent's Canal. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-h...

Thanks @londonist.com for listing a walk in a part of the East End few Londoners know, from Tower Hill SE to the river to hear about poor working women selling old clothes, tools, food and sex to sailors and dockworkers. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tumult-of-...

Thanks @londonist.com for listing a walk in a part of the East End few Londoners know, from Tower Hill SE to the river to hear about poor working women selling old clothes, tools, food and sex to sailors and dockworkers. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tumult-of-...

Two Years Ago Today: @nakedanthropolo.bsky.social introduces her new project: maggiemcneill.com/2023/09/04/g...

Thanks @londonist.com for listing next Saturday's migration walk in the backstreets of Holborn. You've heard about the Italians but what about the Irish and freedom-seeking slaves? Not to mention the Jewish diaspora. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/historic-w...

The always sold-out sex-industry walk is scheduled for a weekday in August: Friday the 15th. One stop is seen here in William Hogarth's picture of the Rose Tavern, showing Tom Rakewell, a lot of hookers and a woman undressing for a dance. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/londons-se...

The always sold-out sex-industry walk is scheduled for a weekday in August: Friday the 15th. One stop is seen here in William Hogarth's picture of the Rose Tavern, showing Tom Rakewell, a lot of hookers and a woman undressing for a dance. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/londons-se...

Thanks @Londonist for listing Wind in the Willows, a riverside walk that can't be bettered for beautiful houses, women's history, dreamy views and habitat for creatures of the river. Sat 19 July. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing a walk that centres the workers: navvies who solved problems on the ground as they dug canals and railways. 14 June. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-h...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing a walk that centres the workers: navvies who solved problems on the ground as they dug canals and railways. 14 June. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-h...

WH Hunt's painting shows a man who's fitted a mistress up in a garish flat in St John's Wood. Symbols include a left hand with no wedding band, a cat toying with a bird and an unraveling carpet. The moment is when her conscience of wrongdoing is awakened. Unless you think she knows what she's doing.

In St John's Wood adventurous unmarried women like George Eliot were called Disgraceful by Respectable Society. Nearby WT Stead created the 1st mediatic sex-trafficking scandal when he 'bought' Eliza Armstrong. Why were some females victims and others whores? www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/disgracefu...

Saturday's walk in Rochford and along the River Roach reveals the history of folks who didn't accept the still hierarchical C of E after the Dissolution. This was a 'hotbed of dissent' in a landscape of mud and stark fields. @robssmith.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/essex-estu...

Thank you to the Londonist for the big vote of confidence. This time the popular walk on medieval working women is in the evening - this Thursday 1800/6pm in perfect weather, it looks like. @robssmith.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scratching...

Views from this Saturday's walk. Book at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Excellent weather forecast for the Colne Valley this Saturday. Walk from once-industrial Hythe to once-shipbuilding Wivenhoe via now-quiet riverside, marsh and village. @robssmith.bsky.social @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Excellent weather forecast for the Colne Valley this Saturday. Walk from once-industrial Hythe to once-shipbuilding Wivenhoe via now-quiet riverside, marsh and village. @robssmith.bsky.social @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Small town, rich culture - Wivenhoe. Close to London. River and estuary, big skies. A good walk. @robssmith.bsky.social

Cultural highlights: Early civil partnership of 2 artists, Denis Wirth-Miller & Dicky Chopping; Martin Newell's Cleaners from Venus, James Dodds artist-boatbuilder, the Black Dog, the Essex Serpent, a great whale, Francis Bacon. Me & @robssmith.bsky.social 10 May www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/essex-estu...

Cultural highlights: Early civil partnership of 2 artists, Denis Wirth-Miller & Dicky Chopping; Martin Newell's Cleaners from Venus, James Dodds artist-boatbuilder, the Black Dog, the Essex Serpent, a great whale, Francis Bacon. Me & @robssmith.bsky.social 10 May www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/essex-estu...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing Saturday's anti-slavery walk. Those centred are not the usual parliamentary men but all the folks black and white who tried to change a culture that considered slavery essential to life and slaves less than human. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/abolition-...

Cancellations mean there are a few tickets available for this walk that centres anti-slavery campaigners you might not know and explains their strategies at a time when most English people considered slaves essential to wealth and Empire. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/abolition-...

Brixton walk a success, with walkers coming from afar to hear about an area neglected and dissed by mainstream press. Glorious colours and mixes of people, gospel singing in Windrush Sq, Nubian Jak plaques to nonwhite/nonmainstream London history-makers.

Hodge, Samuel Johnson's cat, appears on this walk, along with Francis Barber, who was 'gifted' to Johnson and became his paid servant (and friend). SJ bought Hodge's oysters and fed him himself, thinking it disrespectful to ask Barber to do it. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/abolition-...

A highlight of this weekend's #London walks is @nakedanthropolo.bsky.social 's exploration of slavery & abolition around #Holborn. @robssmith.bsky.social walks along the River Lea, we discover #Walthamstow with @westminsterwalks.bsky.social plus Van Gogh! Book at footprintsoflondon.com

Some 'minorities' are pretty big these days and deserve more history-walks. Recemt walkers were moved to stand where their grandparents took to the streets in the 1980s. Thanks to @londonist.com for listing this unusual walk with optional great pub at the end. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/black-whit...

Sunday for the 5th time I did Sex Industry and the Stage in the Long 18th Century. It’s about cultural change when the 18-yr Puritan Protectorate was booted out and monarchy restored. The new king promoted pleasure-seeking; here's Tom Rakewell carousing as a posture-dancer strips.

Sunday for the 5th time I did Sex Industry and the Stage in the Long 18th Century. It’s about cultural change when the 18-yr Puritan Protectorate was booted out and monarchy restored. The new king promoted pleasure-seeking; here's Tom Rakewell carousing as a posture-dancer strips.

The walk has readings from the novel as we wend from Whitechapel Market through backstreets with modern estates plus remnants of Victorian life both Irish and Jewish: where Nazneen lived. We come into Brick Lane where curry houses made history. 22 Mar. eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Decolonial. Bengali migration goes back 400 years but the big push came after India/Pakistan emerged when Britain left and then Bangladesh warred for independence. The title of the novel was imposed by the publisher but the walk does take in part of Brick Lane. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Jellies were said to be favourites of certain sex workers and certain of their admirers called fops who found them in houses where they were served. When folks look doubtful I mention bubble teas. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/londons-se...

Charles II lifted the Puritan ban on theatre-going and by 1700 London was sex-capital of Europe. This walk starts at a time when all actresses were assumed to be prostitutes and theatres a place for meeting them. Highlight: Jelly Houses and fops. 30 March. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/londons-se...

Charles II lifted the Puritan ban on theatre-going and by 1700 London was sex-capital of Europe. This walk starts at a time when all actresses were assumed to be prostitutes and theatres a place for meeting them. Highlight: Jelly Houses and fops. 30 March. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/londons-se...

To bring some postcolonial history to @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social Literary Walks festival I'm doing Monica Ali's Brick Lane - Bengali migrants in the East End. Nazneen comes to Tower Hamlets in an arranged marriage and from being a shut-in emerges autonomous. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

The walk focuses on lives of working people who lived behind the barracks. As the rich moved into newly developed squares there was great demand for maidservants, stable-lads, laundresses and a raft of others who had to live somewhere. Real Upstairs Downstairs stuff. eventbrite.co.uk/e/old-knight...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing this Saturday's walk in Old Knightsbridge, where there was no Harrods but lots of horses, many ridden by women on the make. @footprintsldn www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Rotten Row teemed with the upper-class on horseback showing off, flirting, gossiping and appalled at lower-class women wearing the same clothes while scouting for friends and clients. Courtesan Skittles dressed and rode better than the richest ladies. 15 March. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/old-knight...

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing this Saturday's walk in Old Knightsbridge, where there was no Harrods but lots of horses, many ridden by women on the make. @footprintsldn www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

The rich hated the street life and cheap pleasures that catered to soldiers and their families. Music halls topped the list, and there were two famous ones behind the barracks. On the streets sex and oysters were for sale, and crowded lodginghouses. 15 March. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/old-knight...

Horsewoman and courtesan Catherine Walters rode on Rotten Row, known for discretion. Harriette Wilson on the other hand outed her rich clients if they failed to reward her adequately. Where there were officers there were professional women. eventbrite.co.uk/e/old-knight...

A walk about Knightsbridge before it was shopping destination: the Guards of Changing fame were poor workers despite ceremonial gear, their girlfriends slagged off as 'dollymops' while courtesans aimed high at officers. The backstreets of the barracks. 15 March. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/old-knight...

A walk about Knightsbridge before it was shopping destination: the Guards of Changing fame were poor workers despite ceremonial gear, their girlfriends slagged off as 'dollymops' while courtesans aimed high at officers. The backstreets of the barracks. 15 March. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/old-knight...

Footprints' Literary Festival is back in March. Book at footprintsoflondon.com for tales of #London & its authors, inc. Dickens, Woolf, Austin, Conan-Doyle & more @robssmith.bsky.social @westminsterwalks.bsky.social @nakedanthropolo.bsky.social @capitalwalks.bsky.social

Thanks to @londonist.com for listing my Historic Workingclass Migrations walk in which I show how those looking for a better life in the 17-19c lived in the backstreets of Holborn, mixing and matching. Including slaves and Jewish diaspora. This Sat the 22nd. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/historic-w...

A busy month ahead for footprintsoflondon.com eomail4.com/web-version?...

The Regent's Canal was finished in 1820 and the boom of railway-building was 1820s-30s. Navvies made this beauty with shovels and wheelbarrows and grander houses followed. Primrose Hill's dirty noisy beginnings are celebrated on this walk. www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/primrose-h...

This week's #London walks: Primrose Hill & the workers who built it, Churchill, #Marylebone, the suffragettes of #Harringay, & we go up and down the City Rd & more! BOOK AT footprintsoflondon.com @robssmith.bsky.social @nakedanthropolo.bsky.social @capitalwalks.bsky.social

Navvies built canals & railways, moving from site to site in gangs. Great moral concern arose ranging from horror at their debauchery to adulation of their strength. Come hear @ them while viewing hill, canal, machinery & houses. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

Until family historians discovered their many convict-ancestors Australian history was said to begin with 'free settlers'. This walk tells how two Islington girl thieves came to be spared death and sentenced to Botany Bay in 1825. @footprintsoflondon.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/walking-to...

I did the walking tour Black & White Resistance in Brixton today for a group of diverse young people and showed them the old Railway Hotel where the Clash sang Guns of Brixton around 1980. What style. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVVq...