And Did Those Feet

Here is a series of Zepplin themed events in London. The raid on Calmington Road by Zepplin in 1917 killed 12 people and destroyed 3 houses.     http://www.bridgetonowhere.friendsofburgesspark.org.uk/the-story-of-burgess-park-heritage-trail/heritage-trail-a-l/bomb-damage/  Events Listing | Bridge to Nowhere

And here is mine and Paul Herbert's book on the history of London coming in at number 7 in the: The Best Books About Ancient London: 10 Steps to an Ultimate Knowledge of the City | Blimey I'm shocked as it was published so long ago and no one much noticed it at the time!

I spent a very humid day preparing a Walk for Elderhostel around Downe House. Its a great walk mostly following the audio guide you can find at the url in the link below. It was the day of the Biggin Hill Airshow so quite weird thinking about Darwin and being buzzed by World War 2 aeroplanes! darwinatdowne.co.uk Image - the Thinking Path

The Peasants Revolt Walk for London Walks went very well - not a huge turn out but enough to make it enjoyable. We managed to get all the way from Aldgate East to Smithfield - quite an exhausting route but it had to be done! I love doing John Ball's speech!

Yesterday I did a walk for London Walk on the archaeology of the City - the Easter Half. Not a good title but a good walk. The route was: Tower of London, Cooper's Row Wall Crutched Friars Rangoon Street Fenchurch St Lime St Lime St Passage Whittington Avenue Leadenhall Street Gracechurch Street St Peter Church St Michaels Church Lombard Street East Cheap fish Street Hill Pudding Lane I found various things out I had not realised - Customs House excavation were in the lot to the East of the Customs House. I found the site of the ankle-breaker ditches in Northumberland St and Fenchurch St. I worked out exactly where the edges of the Forums were and how the Churches fit onto the site. I found Plantation House - which I have read about but never quite pinned down - although exactly where the Boudicca compound was I'm not so sure. Great Walk - about 20 people and the alleyways around St Peters are really quite lovely - had they been in any other 2000 year old Capital City they wo...

Radical London walk - the route was St Pauls, Cheapside, Guildhall, Smithfield, St Johns, Clerkenwell I managed to get the group round right to the end - quite an achievement and did a fair look at the London people, riot and government - not so sure gave a good introduction to the development of radical politics - maybe that is another walk?

Excellent walks around Downe House darwinatdowne.co.uk

It has taken since 1990 but someone has actually posted a comment on Paul and my book, the Citisights Guide to London. Posted on amazon.com not .co.uk which is why I have not seen it before. They said, in 2004: Pretty good and pretty handy , February 18, 2004 By A Customer I actually took the "Victorian london" walk (from the older 1990 version), which was basically a "Charles Dickens' london" tour. It was really enjoyable, though, because all the major landmarks are augmented by a description from the writer! The book is about the 900,000 best seller on Amazon! I also enjoyed the "Dark Age, Saxon & Viking London" walk, all ruins, hidden plaques, ancient churches, old river markings, nascent city gates and age-old markets--very arresting!

I gave two guided walks at the weekend, one on Myths and Legends of London, the other on the archaeology of Bermondsey. I asked Alistair Douglas who has excavated extensively in the area to help me on this walk. It is another in the series of dialogue walks I first tried at the London Architectural Biennale. It works really well. We got about 50 people and despite the rain did a great walk around Bermondsey. Route, was London Bridge Station, St Olaf's, Bermondsey Street, Leathermarket Street, Long Lane, Bermondsey Square, Abbey Street.

I gave a walk for 30 Primary school children based on Roman London. We started at the Tower, walked down to Billingsgate and onto the Guildhall where we went into the Amphitheatre. Good group, interested - slightly long walk, might be better to do the Walls around the Museum of London. BBC - Romans - Roman Resources

I am doing two walks on the 8th March for London Walks These are: Myths & Archaeology - the origins of London Sunday, 8th March 10.45 am Tower Hill Tube The Archaeology of Ancient Bermondsey Sunday, 8th March 2.30 London Bridge Tooley Street Exit This walk will be done in conjunction with Alistair Douglas archaeologist who has done extensive excavations in Bermondsey and therefore should not be missed! Walks are £7 or £5 depending on whether you are a concession. I also enclose details of what looks like an interesting event at Kew Ethnobotany at Kew Kew is hosting an open day to showcase current research and practice in ethnobotany. There will be about 20 displays on topics including wild foods and medicines, pharmacognosy of British medicinal plants, Asian spices, traditional herbs, British home gardens, basket-making, the baobab tree, a large display of ethnographic textiles and fibres, and a mini-festival of ethnobotanical films. There will be ample opportunity to handle plant ...

I took a group of 8 year old children around the City on a Tudor Walk. Problem was it was really wet and the children so small and wet! Hopefully, they got something from the talk - we walked around St Pauls to Smithfield and looked at rich and poor in Tudor London

We had 90 5 - 6 year old children to the Museum today to do a session based on invention. In the Museum they did medical invention and on a walk we looked at public health and other inventions based on Victorian London. One walk worked really well, but the second was made more difficult by need to find toilets that did not need 20p.

In my previous post, I described the beginning of the tour of Arnolfini Exhibition 'On Purpose' which took place at the Embankment Gallery. After the start outside the Gallery we went into the Book Shop. This is where the Exhibition 'On Purpose' began, the Arnolfini shop sold magazine's Frieze and Venue, in each magazine was an advert for the Arnolfini Exhibition designed by Abake and Alex Rich. Abake's advert was a printout of a plan spreadsheet, Rich's was a flow chart. So I had planted a magazine 'Move or Improve' in the Shop - I had purchased the magazine earlier choosen because it was the tackiest 'design' magazine I could find. In it I placed my Asus EEE PC - I was trying to go one further than Abake - they used a printout of a Spreadsheet I used an actual spreadsheet on a computer. I suggested that ABAKE were given away a computer with each magazine so cheap were the EEE pcs. The only problem was that the computer froze and so I co...

This is the narrative of the On Purpose Walk I did most of the preparation for the Walk on Friday night and Saturday morning although I had been thinking about it since my visit to the Arnolfini Last weekend. To recap on the idea - two design exhibitions, held in art galleries are twinned partly because of the participation of Abake. Benjamin, from Abake asked me to do a tour of the Somerset House 'Wouldn't it be nice' exhibition, but to talk about the 'On Purpose' Exhibition happening at the Arnolfini, Bristol. The idea being that another person would do the opposite at the same time. 'The experience will be disorienting' said Benjamin. The first task I set myself was to get to know the On Purpose Exhibition well enough to do a tour of it and to have a good mental picture of the exhibition and design issues behind the exhibition. Having been to Bristol, and met my doubleganger, I became convinced that I did not want to know anything about the Somerset Ho...

I am working on the tour of the Somerset House exhibition - 'Wouldn't It Be Nice Exhibition'. Brief given by Abake . Give a guided tour of the On Purpose exhibition at the Arnolfini but the tour is to take place at Somerset House at the 'Wouldn't it be Nice Exhibition.' I'm giving secrets away here but this is the brief I have set myself. 1. to do the tour as if it were a tour of the Bristol Show as straight as possible 2. But not to force the tour into absurdity - i.e. if there is an elephant in Bristol but not one in Somerset House don't keep referring to the Elephant to the confusion of the tour. (there is no elephant by the way) 3. Not to let the audience into the secret if I can help it. 4. To do the tour 'blind' i.e. not to visit the Somerset House exhibition in advance My aim is to keep my Arnolfini exhibition guided tour 'text' intact in my head and to use this to guide my tour in Somerset House. I think a prior viewing o...

Just received the final proofs of my chapter of 'London Stories' - which is to be published by Virgin Books soon. Terrible thing reading the proofs - funny how it does not seem so well written once the post-writing glow has gone! But of course at this stage the last thing they want you to do is to rewrite it all!

On Saturday I led a guided walk around Chelsea for june Bretherton's blind group. Its a great walk and it was really enjoyable trying to give the extra visual information. I think it would work as well for the sighted as the blind - it makes you need to give a more imaginative spiel. The walk has a reverse narrative - Kings Road is Chelsea today, while the work ends around Chelsea Old Church which is where Chelsea began. It has sub-themes of the Swinging 60's, City of Palaces, Henry VIII and ThomasMore, the PreRaphaelites, Literary London - Elliot and Bram Stoker and the court case of Oscar Wilde and Whistler. Have a look here for a short version of my walk . Walk back past Alpha Place - where i used to live in an Electricity Board property to find that the whole site has been cleared ready for redevelopment. It was a horrible 1960's building but a bit of my history has gone

This term I have been contacted by several schools to do a Victorian London walk as part of the A Level Curriculum. The Schools have found me from the web site. I've been doing a Dickens/Victorian London walk which starts at Borough High Street. It has been working well so far.

A short walk of mine has been published by Proboscis: Proboscis | Diffusion � Blog Archive � The Bankside Walk by Kevin Flude