Historic London Tours

11/02/2025

Peaky Blinders is a fantastic show, in part because it doesn't claim to portray itself as being an accurate portrayal of history: rather, it borrows certain names and events from the past without trying to pass them off as being factual. But one consequence of this is that viewers may assume that, because Tommy Shelby is fictional, so too are the other main gang leaders Alfie Solomons and Charles Sabini - whereas they were in fact real 1920s London gangsters. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/londons-peaky-blinders-the-sabini-gang
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Whenever I watch an historical drama series, I find myself constantly Googling to check whether the events portrayed are historically accurate (which is why I have never seen The Tudors, and just one of many reasons why ...

10/02/2025

Monday history quiz! The Griffin on Clerkenwell Road has been described as "London's seediest strip club", but which famous gangster once used it as their headquarters back when it was a regular pub...? The answer will be posted tomorrow.

04/02/2025

Every schoolboy knows that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221b Baker Street, and every Londoner knows that you can't walk down the north end of Baker Street without encountering a huge line of tourists all excitedly queuing up to have a stroll around the Sherlock Holmes Museum (some no doubt in the mistaken belief that he was a real person). But what most of them - and most Londoners, in fact - don't realise, is that 221b was never a real address. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/221b-baker-street-the-address-in-two-locations-and-none
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Every schoolboy knows that Sherlock Holmes lived at 221b Baker Street, and every Londoner knows that you can't walk down the north end of Baker Street without encountering a huge line of tourists all excitedly queuing up...

03/02/2025

Monday history quiz! The Sherlocks Holmes Museum is officially registered as 221b Baker Street, even though it's out of numerical sequence with the neighbouring buildings 237 and 239. But where does 221b actually fall on Baker Street...? The answer will be posted tomorrow.

29/01/2025

At number 4 Great Newport Street in Covent Garden, near the junction with St Martin's Lane, there stands a black tiled building, on the right hand side of which is a metal coat hook with the plaque "Metropolitan Police" above it. The story relayed by every tour guide in Covent Garden is that the hook dates back to the days before traffic lights, when a police officer would hang his heavy woollen coat upon it whilst directing the traffic at the busy six-way junction. But is it true...? Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/sherlock-holmes-the-case-of-the-policemans-hook
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At number 4 Great Newport Street in Covent Garden, near the junction with St Martin's Lane, there stands a black tiled building.

21/01/2025

Remember how the Jetsons showed us a 21st century where everyone would travel around by flight instead of by car? Well it wasn't just Hanna-Barbera who envisaged such a world. An architect named Charles Glover started planning for such a future back in the 1930s - with his plans for King's Cross Airport. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/kings-cross-airport
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Remember how the Jetsons showed us a 21st century where everyone would travel around by flight instead of by car? Well it wasn't just Hanna-Barbera who envisaged such a world. An architect named Charles Glover started pl...

20/01/2025

Monday London history quiz! This is a 1930s model of the Kings Cross area - but what's the giant wheel looming over it...? The answer will be posted tomorrow.

14/01/2025

Take a stroll to any of inner London's many churchyards, and you will inevitably notice that the ground is built up four or five feet higher than pavement level. This isn't due to any uniformity in landscape planning across the city; rather, the extra height is caused due to the mass of bodies piled up beneath the surface. At 121 Westminster Bridge Road, not far from Lambeth North Station, stands an attractive but unassuming building. Named 'Westminster Bridge House', this was once the terminus for London's death train, which was founded to relieve London of its cadaver crisis: the Necropolis Railway. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/londons-death-train-the-necropolis-railway
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At 121 Westminster Bridge Road, not far from Lambeth North Station, stands an attractive but unassuming building. Named 'Westminster Bridge House', this was once the terminus for London's death train: the Necropolis Rail...

13/01/2025

Monday history quiz! Which London railway service ceased to function after being hit by a bomb in 1941? The answer will be posted tomorrow.

07/01/2025

St Mary's Church on Upper Street in Islington has seen more than its fair share of important characters. No fewer than at least six of its curates and priests have gone on to become bishops, including two twentieth-century Archbishops of Canterbury (Donald Coggan and George Carey). Founders of the Methodist Church George Whitefield, John Wesley, and his brother Charles, all preached at St Mary's in the seventeenth century. Philip Quaque, the first black Anglican minister, was christened here in 1759; Samuel Crowther, the first black Anglican bishop, was ordained at St Mary's in 1843. But in addition to the great and the good who have served St Mary’s over the years, there is also buried in its graveyard a man described as “the most contemptible miser who ever lived”. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/the-most-contemptible-miser-who-ever-lived
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St Mary's Church on Upper Street in Islington has seen more than its fair share of important characters. No fewer than at least six of its curates and priests have gone on to become bishops, including two twentieth-centu...

31/12/2024

Leinster Gardens in Bayswater, just north of Hyde Park, appears at first glance to be a regular upper-middle-class Victorian garden square, of the kind you'd find all over areas such as Chelsea or Belgravia. A closer look at number 23 and 24 however reveal that these particular 'houses' are in fact fake facades, built to shield the wealthy nineteenth-century residents from the horrors of the newfangled steam locomotive, as it briefly appeared above ground to release its smoke into the open air. Just over a mile south of Leinster Gardens in South Kensington there appears to be another one of these fake facades, but the difference is that this skinny building is actually habitable and is often dubbed 'London's thinnest house'. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/thin-end-of-the-wedge-5-thurloe-square
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Leinster Gardens in Bayswater, just north of Hyde Park, appears at first glance to be a regular upper-middle-class Victorian garden square, of the kind you'd find all over areas such as Chelsea or Belgravia. A closer loo...

30/12/2024

Monday history quiz! Where can you find 'London's Thinnest House'? The answer will be posted tomorrow.

24/12/2024

Ask most anyone “when were Christmas trees first introduced to Britain?”, and a pound to a penny they’ll respond “Prince Albert brought them over during the Victorian period”. But it was actually a German compatriot of Albert’s who began the tradition, around half a century earlier. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/o-tannenbaum
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Ask most anyone “when were Christmas trees first introduced to Britain?”, and a pound to a penny they’ll respond “Prince Albert brought them over during the Victorian period”. But it was actually a German compatriot of A...

17/12/2024

Strand Lane, just around the corner from Temple Station, was once a thoroughfare connecting the Victoria Embankment with the Strand, until King’s College blocked off the northern entrance with its ugly brutalist Strand Building. It’s still worth venturing along this one-way passage however: towards the northern end, at 5 Strand Lane, is an oft-steamed-up window that looks down upon what was long thought to be a 'Roman' bath. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/a-not-so-early-bath-strand-lane-roman-bath
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Strand Lane, just around the corner from Temple Station, was once a thoroughfare connecting the Victoria Embankment with the Strand, until King’s College blocked off the northern entrance with its ugly brutalist Strand B...

16/12/2024

Monday history quiz! This is an artist's impression of a 'Roman' bathhouse in London, but where can you find it...? The answer will be posted tomorrow!

10/12/2024

If someone told you that there stands in Holborn a war memorial the size of a football pitch, you’d likely think they were either confused or long overdue a trip to Specsavers. They can keep their current spectacles however, because they would be describing the two-acre, Grade II* listed, art deco masterpiece of the United Grand Lodge of England: Freemasons’ Hall, originally known as the Masonic Peace Memorial. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/freemasons-hall


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If someone told you that there stands in Holborn a war memorial the size of a football pitch, you’d likely think they were either confused or long overdue a trip to Specsavers. They can keep their current spectacles howe...

09/12/2024

Monday history quiz! Where in London can you find this First World War memorial...? The answer will be posted tomorrow.

03/12/2024

"Never can there become fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds, this day, in the sight of heaven and earth.” So writes Charles Dickens in Bleak House about one of the many confusing, overlapping civil courts of nineteenth-century England. In the 1860s a huge amount of money was spent constructing an immense building to house these disparate courts, one which is open to the public for guided tours. Find out more on the link below!

👉 https://historiclondontours.com/tales-of-london/f/hoary-sinner-the-royal-courts-of-justice


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“The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the murky streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation: Temple B...