Steve Does Tours (2024)

29/08/2024

A big thanks to everyone who joined today’s Churchill - shopping and statues guided tour.

Churchill famously said “I have simple tastes - I like the best”and today we visited the iconic locations where Churchill shopped.

But often his spending did not match his income. In 1914 he was spending about £1,000 a month of ci**rs and had not paid his bill for 5 years!

Tour part of series of free tours funded by as part of their Inside Out festival.

**rs

13/08/2024

It was a pleasure to do a series of walks for English Language School over the summer.

Wonderful students from across the world, of all ages, with really interesting questions and enthusiasm!

Some photos from our highlights of St James’s Tour. We also had few really enjoyable wanders around Chelsea and Borough.

31/07/2024

Ok when on holiday I often book a private tour.

Had a great tour of Split’s Jewish history with the amazing Lena Altarac.

Split has had a continuous Jewish population for about 2,000 years and if you know where to look you can see the cravings in the Roman walls.

Lena took us into Split’s still working synagogue - there since the 16thC . As ever a guide tour will show you stuff simply not spot by yourself.

Great tour of a little known bit of Split history - strongly recommend.

And then we took ourselves off up the hill to the Jewish Cemetery, founded I 1573, and found the Morpurgo graves.

06/07/2024

Did you know there is an oasis of peace between Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square?

Westminster City Council reference library is on a quiet side street behind the National Gallery.

The Survey of London (and the sign on the front and entrance) will tell you this was once the home of Issac Newton. It survived until it was demolished to build the library in the early 20th Century.

Upstairs is the music library where you can play a piano or rent a ukulele! They have free concerts here too.

It includes a small collection of Scottish musical books which sure is familiar with!

A great place to rest between tours and do a bit more research.

24/06/2024

Have you noticed it’s warmed up in London in the last couple of days? 😂

A trip to to see the giant co**se flower (see photo with botanically minded middle child for scale). It unfurled on the 18th June but flower only lasts a couple of days. Sadly the distinctive smell of rotting flesh had gone. The smell attracts pollinators like flies and beetles, but a hole has been cut in the side to allow the staff at Kew to pollinate the flower.

We will need to be quicker next time!

**seflower

17/06/2024

Delighted to be doing a tour this Saturday for exploring the long history of Bankside welcoming immigrates to this amazing bit of London.

Starting in by the tour wanders around some hidden spots in the area.

Tour part of a much larger day of amazing festivities in Borough, Bankside and London Bridge. Checkout for full details.

Tour is FREE but donations very much welcome.

BOOK VIA 👇🏿
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/livingbankside/1293830

history

15/06/2024

Very pleased to be asked back for another year by the to give some summer tours.

And delighted to have on the tour the man behind the one of the Soho noses. David has owned 68 Dean Street for 30 odd years and has many tales to tell.

One thing is he is the man who put the nose up on Mead Street on the side of his house. Here he is pointing at it. Apparently where not too pleased with a new addition to a listed building and various letters where sent. But it is now a registered temporary structure and allowed to stay.

We had a good old chat including when he moved in it only had outside toilets and he uncovered the original cesspits (the kinda of chat I love).

Google 68 Dean Street to learn more about this amazing building - including Soho’s own orchard!

Love it when locals tell me their stories and this was a special one. Also in something that makes tour guides very happy I was able to point out a few things he had not spotted over his many years in Soho.

I do regular Soho tours if interested to learn more.

12/06/2024

Wander down Wardour Street in Soho and you’ll notice the kerbstones have some interesting markings on them.

Obscure ancient leyline? Or Victorian Parish boundary? The latter - but you can tell people the former.

London is thought of a a city built of Portland Limestone, but the solid granite kerbstone is doing a great job to. Often the granite shipped in from Channel Islands (so informs me) and the markings thought to note the quarryman who cut it out.

The thin pale new kerbs at junction with Meard Street sad to see but at least retained the Boundary stone.

I’ll be doing a Soho tour Saturday and a Southwark tour Sunday. And in both cases I promise not to talk about kerb stones. 😂 But there will be plenty of interesting & quirky London history.

Book at

04/06/2024

Kepple Row, Bankside. About 5 minute walk from guarded by the area’s distinctive cannon bollards marked Clink 1812.

A kepple is a piece of cloth and added what is locally known as “Spooky Man”, draped in a gold kepple.

HOWEVER! Next road is America Street, which appears first on a map in 1799, with Kepple Street. This is not long after Britain loses the colonies in American War of Independence. The British Navy in the war was lead by Admiral Keppel - who in my theory gives his name to the street (I have no idea how to prove this). He wanted the ships’ hulls to be copper stealthed to make them faster and stronger. He was overruled by political enemy Lord Sandwich. And hence we lost the 13 colonies!

18/05/2024

A day off so went on a guided tour - obviously.

To Kensington and the wonderful Leighton House museum.

The artist Lord Leighton travelled widely including the Middle East, which clearly influenced his interior design tastes. Amazing tiles from Damascus and wood work from Cairo.

Upstairs is his studio and the whole house is full of his art work.

Well worth a visit & nice cafe and garden.

06/05/2024

Suspended States exhibition by Londoner

I love an Imperial statue and it was really interesting to see their reinvention at this exhibition.

Decolonised Statues includes Kitchener, Clive and of course Churchill.

Especially pleased to see Sir Henry Bartle Frere there whose huge (and mean huge) statue is just by the Embankment & Earl Roberts (only one of two non-monarchs to get a state funeral) whose statue is on Horse Guards Parade.

The exhibition is on until September and well worth a visit.

My White Noise - the imperial statues we fail to notice tour - details at https://londonguidedwalks.co.uk/guidedwalk/british-empire/

05/05/2024

You know you can go fossil hunting at ?

Some very nice ammonite cross sections. However advise you NOT to bring a hammer and try and take them home as apparently this is frowned on.

01/05/2024

Sunshine predicted and at last beginning to warm up 🌞🌞🌞

Lots of bookable public guided tours through May, June and July in Soho, Clapham Common, Borough, Chelsea and Royal London.

Including:
Britain’s imperial history via Whitehall’s statues
Scientists & Monsters of Mayfair and Soho
New Changing of the Guards 💂 tour
New Chelsea literary secrets

Hope you can join us 😀

All details
👇🏿👇🏿👇🏿
https://londonguidedwalks.co.uk/guide/dr-stephen-king/

23/04/2024

My favourite St George in London - the Cavalry of Empire memorial in Hyde Park.

I mainly like the rather dejected dragon with its Germanic moustache.

Worth hunting him out, hiding in the trees towards Hyde Park Corner.

🌹

21/04/2024

While taking photos of Chelsea’s currently amazing wisteria I happen to spot the Belisha beacon on the Zebra Crossing. By coincidence I had earlier spotted the plaque to Hore-Belisha (just by Buckingham Palace).

While transport minister he was responsible for the introduction of the Belisha beacon. I love Zebra Crossings, such a wonderful idea that pedestrians simply get priority over cars. Wonder if in these culture war days where people get triggered over Low Traffic Neighbours Belisha would have been able to introduce the Zebra Crossing?

Many years ago I was in the Moroccan coastal town of Essaouria, when a local proudly told me the town was responsible for the man who gave us the Belisha beacon. Born Issac Belisha in Hampstead, he had Jewish Moroccan heritage. He added the Hora after his widowed mother remarried. He survived Flanders battlefield and rose to the rank of major.

Fact to add to the next Abbey Road crossing tour?

15/04/2024

Sometimes when you’re researching a tour you getting sucked into a subject and do not know when to stop!

John Hunter the famous Georgian surgeon pops up in my Scientists & Monsters tour as an inspiration for Dr Jekyll.

However just finished Wendy Moore’s great biography of the man and wondering what to add to the tour!

How he injected himself with syphilis puss (yes there) to study the disease
How he bribed an undertaker to steal the bones of giant
How he embalmed the King’s Aunt like an Egyptian mummy
Or that the great economist Adam Smith travelled weeks down from Edinburgh to have him treat his piles!

This and much much more!

If you hear of 4 hour tour on Georgian body parts you will know who to blame!

Do visit the amazing in the meantime.

10/04/2024

A family visit to the wonderful - Zoology museum.

It was closed for a year for a refit but pleased to report hardly changed! New improved and better lit cabinets.

Well worth a visit and look out for the famous jar of moles and the walrus p***s bone.

Grant was a good friend of Darwin and started UCLs amazing collection with now tens of thousands of specimens.

29/03/2024

Took the youngest to the wonderful

He really enjoyed it.

While Soane was very much an architect in the classical style his collection feels pretty gothic.

If you’ve not been to the Soane Museum well worth the trip.

25/03/2024

I did my first Churchill tour for this weekend.

Whatever you think of Winston Churchill there is no shortage of material.

Just take his mother. Lord Randolph Churchill died young (syphilis?) and Lady Churchill goes and marries twice more.

Her 3rd marriage is to the wonderfully named Montgu Phippen-Porch who is three years younger than Winston! 2nd husband only 16 days older than Winston (clearly she had a type)

She is American - Huguenots via Isle of Wight - arriving American 1710s. But there is a family legend, which Winston tells, that also some First Nation Iroquois heritage in there to.

06/03/2024

You probably know already the cigar seller James J Fox on St James’s Street has a little museum in its basement.

They have been here since 1787, selling ci**rs to Churchill and Oscar Wilde.

Not sure why there is a squirrel with a cigar.

Museum total free to visit - their ci**rs less so.

02/03/2024

Loved the Sargent and fashion exhibition at Britain.

Such a lot to enjoy, but one of my highlights was his painting of the famous actor Dame Ellen Terry. He painted her as Lady Macbeth and the painting is shown next to her costume. Her dress had actual beetle shells sown into it adding to the amazing dark yet simmering colours. It really is quite something.

When Oscar Wilde, a neighbour to Sargent’s Tite Street Chelsea studio, saw her arrive in full Lady Macbeth outfit he remarked that this was indeed a street that “must always be full of wonderful possibilities.”

Sargent, Wilde and Tite Street pop up in my Chelsea tour.

23/02/2024

I have had a rocky few days.

At the weekend had a trip to the Isle of Portland just by Weymouth (surprisingly long 3 hours direct from Clapham Junction).

The Isle of Portland is where the famous Portland Stone comes from. This is the stone that faces most of the big London buildings - Buckingham Palace, St Paul’s Cathedral, the British Museum and so on.

A Jurassic limestone about 150million years old. Surprisingly tough and naturally jointed to form blocks it was a great building stone.

Popular with Weymouth MP a certain Sir Christopher Wren, whose Portland Stone statue is of the front of the Guildhall Art Gallery in the city.

Yesterday also got to nose about below the art gallery where the remains of the Roman amphitheater are. While still limestone the Romans used the more local Kent Ragstone (also seen on )

Ok I’ll shut up about rocks and London now.

17/02/2024

What a find! Books Ahoy in Weymouth is one of the wonderful shops you can spend hours in. Not only floor to ceiling books but also an amazing collection of boat crockery, built up over 40 years.

Every shipping line had its own plates, cups, teapots, even gravy boats.

Money was spent by us but already regretting the purchases we did make. Well worth a trip.

17/02/2024

What a find! Books Ahoy in Weymouth is one of the wonderful shops you can spend hours in. Not only floor to ceiling books but also an amazing collection of boat crockery, built up over 40 years.

Every shipping line had its own plates, cups, teapots, even gravy boats.

Money was spent by us but already regretting the purchases we did make. Well worth a trip.

15/02/2024

Really enjoyed the “Entangled Pasts” Exhibition at . It explores the links between the academy and Britain’s colonial past.

One modern piece looks old and has a range of colours, a bit like a painter’s plate. But it is a pseudo-science tool to categorise humans by skin colour. Interestingly right here in Burlington House as the American Civil War raged the scientists of the day debated race, species and slavery.

Great exhibition - give it plenty of time - not cheap but big!

Also great to see original stuff relating to Ignatius Sancho, Phillis Wheatley and Ottobah Cugoano.

31/01/2024

Lucky to make the last day of the exhibition by Hanna-Lena Ward

And Southwark Cathedral such a wonderful setting for it.

30/01/2024

30th January anniversary of the beheading of King Charles I in 1649. His head (bronze) remains outside the Banqueting House on Whitehall.

His head appears again on St Margaret’s Church next to . Here he looks across the road to a huge statue of Oliver Cromwell.

Charles I head post-chopping off was quickly sown back on again. It is buried in the chapel in Windsor Castle.

Cromwell was buried (with head) to begin with. Charles II had the co**se dug up from the Abbey, and tried for treason. It did not go well for Cromwell. His body was dragged through the streets, hung and then beheaded. The head was put on a pole just by where his statue is now by Parliament. After about 30 years it is blown off in a storm and someone nicks his head. Eventually Cromwell’s head reappears and is now buried in his old Cambridge college chapel.

Do love a bit of history.

24/01/2024

Whitehall once the heart of an empire that ruled over a quarter of the world’s population. Or did it?

Empire was always a bit more ramshackled than often imaged. A network of private enterprises and military exchanges, with the settlers on the outskirts having very different ideas to those in Whitehall.

This Saturday’s tour looks at the statues of Whitehall and the stories they tell of the British empire.

The tour is called white noise, as like background music, we generally walk past these huge statues without even noticing them. Time for a bit of retain and example!

This Saturday afternoon - book at

🇬🇧

20/01/2024

It was international Winnie the Pooh day this week (apparently).

Therefore following my Chelsea tour this morning had to pop round and pay my respects.

AA Milne lived just off the King’s Road. This, 11 Mallord Road, is the house that Christopher Robin was born in.

Just one of Chelsea’s many literary links from Dracula to Mary Poppins, George Smiley to James Bond.

30/12/2023

Last tour of 2023 and great to have a challenge! A private tour with a specific request for Australia deportations and Imperial history themes.

So to Britain. Once the site of the huge grim Millbank Prison. Its swampy site and poor design meant it was a terrible prison. In the end Millbank Prison was used to hold prisoners before they embarked for Australia. Thousands walked on to boats moored on the Thames, which is marked by a granite mooring bollard.

The prison was demolished by 1900’s and all that remains is part of the moat which is now full of drying clothes lines.

The phrase POM for Australians comes from Prisoner Of Millbank.

We then wandered through Whitehall and finished at Captain Cook’s statue on the Mall.

Great way to finish a busy year!

Do let me know if interested in setting me a challenge for a tour!

Steve Does Tours

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