On this walk along part of the Stour Estuary Laura will tell the story of women accused of witchcraft during a 17th-century craze that played out in the three villages of Lawford, Manningtree and Mistley. She'll reveal what kinds of women were targeted and talk about why, including the opportunism of men like Matthew Hopkins. […]
From WWII Brixton is a centre for black Britons as well as South London fairies, squatters, poets, Latin American migrant entrepreneurs. An innovating commercial area in the late 19th century, Brixton after World War II became a hub for arrivals of the Windrush generation. Many were initially housed in the Clapham South Deep Shelter and […]
This walk reveals where many key London events took place in British campaigns against slavery and slave-trading between the mid-1700s and mid-1800s. Fugitive and former slaves, white lawyers, activists and orators along with black activists, authors and musicians come alive in a walk from Chancery Lane to Fleet Street, Lincoln’s Inn and Covent Garden, ending […]
The River Colne runs through Colchester, emptying into the Blackwater at Brightlingsea and Mersea Island. Starting at Hythe we go south past an industrial area on one side of the river, and on the other new riverside housing and the plate-glass University of Essex. A long stretch of the path passes through marsh, woods and […]
East of the Tower rag-sellers, sex workers, thieves and so-called witches held sway in an area flattened by building the 1805 dock. Rag Fairextended from Tower Hill along Rosemary Lane into Cable Street in the 17th- to 19th-century parish of Stepney. The permanent market centred near Wellclose Square, but many vendors were mobile, locating anywhere […]
This tour around Rochford and the River Roach will pass Rochford Hall, once owned by oft-maligned Tudor courtier Richard Rich. It's now part of a golf course, as is the old parish church. But Rochford was a hotbed of Protestantism, and we'll talk about how Nonconformists and Dissenters differed, from Congregationalists to Puritans, Methodists and […]
This walk begins 200 years ago in St John’s Wood, where family arrangements routinely diverged from Victorian rules of respectability. What did it mean to be a Kept Woman? Was it only disreputable or an act of shameful immorality? Some mistresses were movers and shakers, like Harriet Howard who financed the return of Louis Napoleon […]
Shadwell was an early centre of Docklands, developed to supply both navy and merchant ships. Trades included sail makers, instrument makers, ship chandlers, ship brokers, victuallers, rope makers, glassmakers, sugar refiners, coopers, brewers, distillers and that's not all. It was a multicultural hub where escaping slaves hid out, fed-up sailors started new lives, river pirates […]