London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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A very good evening to you, London Walkers. One and all. Wherever you are. It’s Monday, March 24th, 2025.
The main act for today is some more map work. Georgian London this time.
But a few incidentals before we get to our old map. I note in passing that yesterday was World Meteorological Day. The 65th annual WMD. There was a ceremony at the WMO headquarters in Geneva. A ceremony at which the balloon went up, so to speak. Namely this year’s theme for the WMO’s work. Its strivings. And in case you’re wondering, the 2025 theme is, “Closing the Early Warning Gap Together.”
In the scheme of things a much handsomer, much more important piece of work than that childish White House announcement a couple of days ago that had it not been for the United States France would be speaking German. That’s not just childish, it’s breathtakingly ignorant. Cue London Walks going to put it on record that nine out of ten Wehrmacht soldiers who lost their lives in World Two were killed on Eastern front. The Fuhrer’s 3rd Reich drowned in Russian blood.
On a much less sobering note, here’s what I’ve learned – so far – today. I like this one a lot. Turns out that timberhill is a very old regional word for staircase. Timberhill. A wooden staircase. Timber and hill. It’s much more evocative, isn’t it.
And how about this. Tennis is a very old game. The modern game can trace its roots all the way back to the 12th century. Got started in the land that came to be known as France. I suppose if they wanted to the Élysée Palace could return service to the White House by saying, “and if it weren’t for France you wouldn’t have your U.S. Open. You’d probably be playing Bierball instead. Here’s the skinny on Bierball. Also known as Flunkyball, Beer ball is a drinking game. The rules are simple: two teams stand opposite each other with a bottle in the centre. The players have to knock the bottle over with a ball. If one team succeeds, they can drink until the bottle is put back in place. Throwing skills are required, as well as drinking strength and a good team spirit. Despite its uncomplicated rules and humorous nature, beer ball is a serious matter for many: all too often, people cheat.
But back to tennis. It was a game that was played at court. Thus Royal Tennis, which of course is why tennis is known as the sport of kings. The word itself – tennis – comes from a very old Anglo-French word tenetz, which meant ‘hold’, ‘take’, ‘receive’. In effect it was a call – a heads up – from the server to his opponent. Tenetz – “Here it comes, get ready.” But here’s the ace. Turns out in early tennis a player might briefly rest. He’d let a servant throw in the ball. Thus the words ‘serve’ and ‘service.’
Words. Forget the circus. Words are the greatest show on earth. They’re an extravaganza. You peer into them and you’re courtside at a sporting event that took place centuries ago.
Moving on, let’s think about Hansard and its American equivalent, the Congressional Record. Hansard is of course a “substantially verbatim” printed report of what is said in Parliament. The Congressional Record is the American equivalent. Now if the matter at issue here were before the House, an MP – or Congressperson – could contribute the following to the debate and it would go up on Hansard or go into the Congressional Record.
It’s an email we received this morning from Andy Hotels, the guide who’s created those two new headline-grabbing walks: Stories and Secrets of London’s Luxury Hotels.
I’m going public with Andy’s email for three reasons. 1) Because it’s true, it happened. 2) It’s outrageous. And 3) I’m getting this out there as a public service.
Here’s Andy’s email.
It’s headlined, “There’s walks and then there’s bad walks.”
Andy elaborates as follows:
Hi David
All London walk companies were not created equal! I found this out to my detriment a fortnight ago.
My sister, not knowing any better, bought me a voucher for a Beatles walking tour for my birthday last year. I’ve only now got round to cashing it in. Everything was booked for me and a friend to join the 10 am tour. Until I received a Whats App message first thing in the morning saying that the guide had an emergency and would I mind moving to a tour with a different guide in the afternoon. We moved a few deck chairs around and said okay.
We duly turned up as instructed at 2:30 pm outside the Dominion theatre on Tottenham Court Road. I went up to several likely looking strangers. But none of them was a tour guide. After a couple of frantic WhatsApp messages I got a call from our new guide. He said he’d only just been told he was doing this tour and as he was still at home, and it was a long way from central London, he ‘suggested’ we might like to cancel. Might like to cancel? I wasn’t quite clear what alternative we had!
To make matters worse no alternative date or refund has yet been provided. I just get periodic messages from someone with a Philippines phone number who ‘remote works’ for the company.
Carry on doing your amazing work. You guys knock the competition for six (and a home run)!
All the best
Andy”
Caveat emptor, as the saying goes.
Ok, here’s today’s main course. Some more map work. This one draws on the very best of London’s Georgian maps.
Map maker John Rocque’s 1747 survey of the British metropolis.
And for the record, John Rocque was French. French Huguenot. His family fled France in 1709, when John Rocque was five years old. They went first to Geneva. And then just months later pitched up in England. It’s so London, the John Rocque story. French he was, but he couldn’t have been more of a Londoner. It needs must never be forgotten this city was founded by immigrants. And built by immigrants. London always was, still is, and I suspect and hope, always will be a city of immigrants. How London John Rocque was is effectively spelled out in his London addresses. He lived in Great Windmill Street on the edge of the French quarter in Soho until 1743. Then in Piccadilly opposite Green Park until 1749. And then in Whitehall until a fire on the 7th of November 1750 destroyed his possessions. Nothing daunted, he re-established his business in 1751 in the Strand, at the centre of the London map trade. And in the Strand he remained – at three successive addresses – until his death.
Soho, Piccadilly, Whitehall, the Strand, you don’t get more London than that.
And maybe it’s just me, but it gives me a little burst, a little glow of satisfaction knowing where remarkable Londoners lived. Obviously blue plaques are the landmarks in that regard. main sails on that London stream. But I really like knowing stuff that’s not signposted.
I’ll take it. Just to go into Windmill Street and have that little light flash in my mind, Gosh, John Rocque lived here. John Rocque who knew about – and recorded – that shiver up the spine stuff that went on at Speaker’s Corner.
I get the same little dopamine hit when I come out of Green Park Underground Station onto Piccadilly and think, “Peek aboo, John Rocque, I can see you, I know you lived just across the street there.”
But let’s get to our map. Our map? John Rocque’s map. His 24 sheet map.
We’re going to look at just one sheet. Sheet No. 9. It shows the western edge of London in 1747. The western end of Mayfair, in other words. First, we notice what wasn’t there. Most conspicuously, Marylebone. It was countryside. Fields.
And sizeable portions of western Mayfair we’re yet to be developed. Including the area we know today as Marble Arch.
And names were different. Park Lane as it’s known today was Tyburn Lane in 1747. And indeed the western part of Oxford Street wasn’t Oxford Street, it was Tyburn Road. Teaching moment here. To see London you have to hear it. A long time ago they drew a distinction between the words street and road. Streets were urban. Roads went through the countryside. London – Mayfair – was only just beginning to pitch up on the eastern stretch of Tyburn Road. So it was still a Road, still in the countryside.
Aside here, nomenclature-wise Oxford Street has had a rich and varied history. It’s very old of course. In its earliest incarnation it was part of the route of a Roman road that ran from Hampshire to the Suffolk coast. Right there you have why it’s straight as an arrow. That’s the way the Romans built. As opposed to the rolling English road. It’s gone through almost as many name changes as Ford has rolled out new models. It was called the Waye from Uxbridge and the King’s Highway and the Road to Oxford and Acton Road and the Tyburn Way (as well as the Tyburn Road). And of course Oxford Road and, today, Oxford Street.
Some of those names come trailing interesting, tell-tale. Tyburn Way and Tyburn Road because the Tyburn – one of London’s secondary rivers – flowed across the road – or street, take your pick – from Stratford Place to Davies Street. You’re down that way, you look closely, you can see Oxford Street dips there. That dip marks the Tyburn’s streambed. And the name Tyburn itself is one of those London magic lanterns. Some people say it means two burns. A burn being a stream. Other etymologists say the parent word meant boundary stream.
But if anything Tyburn is most famous – or infamous – as the principal place of public executions for four centuries. From 1388 until 1783. There were permanent gallows there, the first of which was erected in 1571. The statistics are staggering. It’s believed that over 50,000 people were hanged at Tyburn.
And where exactly was it? Right on the corner of Oxford Street and Edgware Road. In other words, right across from Marble Arch. There’s a small traffic island there. You make your way to it – it’s a little bit hazardous, that urban move because there’s a welter of traffic there – anyway, you make your way out to that traffic island you’ll find a small commemorative stone that marks the spot.
And sure enough, on John Rocque’s map, right there, in the middle of the road, where Tyburn Road meets the Edgware Road (as it’s known today) – right there, on his map, John Rocque has depicted a little gallows. You can see the cross arm, see the noose hanging from it. And he’s labelled it. A one-word label, nothing more was needed. Tiburn. Spelled T-i-b-u-r-n. What an intersection that was. The Tyburn Road was the road east and west. The Edgware Road was the road north and south. Tiburn – the gallows – was the road to eternity. For the record, like Oxford Street,
the Edgware Road was also a Roman road. Once known as Watling Street, it was, as I said, the main road north.
That spot, so busy today, was desolate three hundred years ago. As paucity of names on the map attests to. There’s nothing there to name. Just one house. Called, on the map, Tiburn House. God knows what it was for, who, if anyone, lived there. How could anyone have any peace of mind living in a house right outside the front door of which was the gallows. And there are just three other legends – namings – on that part of John Rocque’s map. One of them is Mile Stone. So, yes, at no little risk of belabouring the obvious, there must have been a milestone there. And the penultimate legend – name – is Turnpike. That’s what that western stretch of the Tyburn Road is labelled on John Rocque’s map.
And then we come to it. I spotted this several years ago. It stopped me in my tracks then and it’s haunted me ever since. I’ve never been able to forget it.
Right where Speaker’s Corner stands today the John Rocque map bears the legend: Where Soldiers are Shot.
Let that sink in. Everybody and everybody’s cousin knows about Tyburn. Knows about the gallows, knows about the 50,000 hanged men and women. You’re there at Marble Arch you’re squarely in London’s death factory.
But more so than you thought. Because they weren’t just hanging people in the middle of the road there.
There in the park – right there, at Speaker’s Corner – right there, that’s “where soldiers are shot.” Those four words on the map are all we’ve got to go. There’s no post or tree to be seen on the map. But as those four words – “where soldiers are shot” – starkly tell us, that was where the firing squad, lined up, took aim, and, on command, pulled the trigger. The soldiers who were shot must have been tied to a post. Or a tree. Or maybe there was a wall or an earthen embankment. But it raises so many questions. How many soldiers were shot there? When did it start? How long did it go on ford? Where did they spend their last night? What time did it happen? Were they shot at dawn? Which way were they facing? Why were they shot? Who gave the order that they should be taken to Tyburn and shot dead by a firing squad? Did the army keep criminal law and the justice system for civilians at arm’s length. Was it never the twain did meet? Except there, at Tyburn, at the end, where death was meted out? And why there? Was it because Tyburn was the accepted place where the state ended the lives of many of its subjects? Did the army brass say, “yeah, that’s Death corner, why not there, it’s as good a place as any?”
What makes me shudder the most, though, is the phrasing. It’s just so matter of fact. Where soldiers are shot. That phrasing, mundane, everyday, casual, says, “there’s nothing out of the ordinary about this, it’s what happens here, it’s just the way things are.”
Some things about the past are reassuring, comforting. ‘Oh, they were just the same as we are.’ But other things about it are terrifying, monstrous, horrific. But mind you, John Rocque and Dr Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith and their fellow Georgians would be no less horrified – aghast, filled with disbelief and sickened – at things that we take for granted. Things that are every day to us and that our era accepts as normal, the way things are. The Doomsday Clock and human extinction compliments of nuclear war spring to mind.
From where soldiers are shot to human extinction, that’s one giant leap for mankind.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.