Request a copy of our recent documentary based on the Jack the Ripper walk. £4.99 to registered walkers.

 

 

Secret City Highlights

We’re going to be taking a journey back to a city that has apparently vanished but on closer inspection is right under our very noses. If we imagine the buses cars and taxis fading from our minds eye replaced by horses, carriages and a noise no less intense but from a different age. An age of myth legend and surprising history. Please do join us as we venture into the Secret City of Old London.

Stephens Alley
Bear right along Cornhill and go left when you arrive at the underground station exit.

We visit the church of St Anton Walbrook. We begin our journey through London’s hidden past in Roman London.

The Temple of Mithras, Walbrook is a Roman temple whose ruins were discovered in Walobrook this street in the City of London, during rebuilding work in 1954. It is perhaps the most famous of all twentieth-century Roman discoveries in the City of London.

Watling Street
We visit one of the most important Roman streets we’er on Watling Street. Which is part of the great Roman Road that came down from the North. We enter a whole warren of medieval streets in Bow lane previously called cordwainer street where all the shoemakers lived..

Alley facing pub: The Old Watling
Wren built the Old Watling for his workmen in rebuilding st Paul’s cathedral. So the men who built St Paul’s lodged and worked there.

Williamsons Tavern
At the very heart  of the old city of London we stand at the Williamsons tavern and the home of Sir john Oldcastle, the inspiration for the original John Falstaff. For many years this was the lodging of the lord Mayor of London a gift from William and mary when they came to visit the Lord Mayor.

Church of St Mary Le Bow
St Mary Le Bow is perhaps the most famous church in London because to be a real cockney a Londoner must be born within the sound of the church bells.

Underneath the Church of St Mary Le Bow. What you have here is an Anglo Saxon chapel we’ve come down to the level of London as it would have been in the 9th and tenth centuries. You can see there the old windows and the old walls.

Captain John Smith
To your left you will see a statue to Captain John Smith, a parishioner of St Mary-le-Bow, and one of the first colonists to settle Jamestown Virginia. The early survival of this, the first permanent English settlement in North America owed a lot to Smith’s leadership abilities.

However, Smith is perhaps best known through his involvement with Pocahontas, the daughter of a native American Chieftain.

Cheapside
For centuries this was the main market place in London. The word Cheap comes from the Anglo saxon word to barter. And that’s why we have so many market towns around London with the prefix Chipping , We visit, a house known to Wordsworth who decided to immortalise it in a poem called ‘Revelries of Poor Susan and on to the church f St Stephen Walbrook. The reason we go here is that there aren’t many churches you can go into today where there is the possibility of meeting a living legend. And an instant celebrity…I use that term to its fullest extent. He really is a living legend.
Up steps.

This is Christopher Wren’s church and what he wanted St Pauls’ Cathedral to be. Here the Samaritans was  by the lately deceased Chad Vara. It is the only church with a Henry Moore altar.

We move on to the Guildhall – City of Londons’ city hall and seat of the Lord Mayor, built in the 1430’s originally and where London is founded according to legend. Home of some of the most significant trials in English History.

We make our way to ‘London Wall’.
We walk down under 140 London Wall at the level of Roman Londijnium It’s one of the places where you can actually walk through Roman Londinium.

The London wall walk follows the line of the city walk. The city wall was built by the romans in AD200 – during the Saxons period large sections fell into decay. When the 12th and 13th century came around much was rebuilt in whatever stone they could get to hand. By the 17th century London expanded rapidly in size and the wall was no longer necessary as a means of defence so parts of the wall were demolished during the 18th century and and by the 19th century most of the wall had disappeared. Only recently have certain sections become visible as they were digging the foundations for the towers.

Giles Cripplegate and the MEDIEVAL tower which marks the north western corner of the roman and medieaval defences..

Home of Christopher Mountjoy
This would have been really Shakespeare’s area and this was where the Parish of St mary Aldermanbury stood and two church wardens of this parish John Henry and Henry Condell both fellow actors and close friends of Shakespeare gathered all his known works and arranged for the publication of the first folio of his plays in 1623. As inscribed here: “They thus merited the gratitude of mankind”.

The Church of St Mary Aldermanbury
Behind the bust are the remains of the Church of St Mary Aldermanbury, In 1966 following Churchill;s dearth it was dismantled stone by stone and and reassembled at Westminster College in Fulton Missouri as a memorial to Sir Winston. The notorious Hanging Judge Jefferies was buried in the Church of St Mary Aldermanbury

Love Lane
A notorious Red Light district that was once a notorious red-light district named for the services dispensed here.

According to John Stow the seventeenth century chronicles of London Love Lane is so called as this as it’s the first red light district of London. And of course it all comes down to the fact that London was a very condensed city and of course you had all the trade coming through here and of course prostitution was rife now very aptly it’s Wood Street police station that is centred here.

Roman Fort
We pass from Medieaval London into 17th century London and come to one the oldest surviving structures of the Secret City.  Built around AD 120 this was a fort that originally covered 4.9 hectares (12 acres)  and accommodated the guards of the Roman Governor of Britain. It is one of the few places left where you can see the roman wall. there is the tuft from the building.

Postmans’ Park
Our journey ends in what was on of the largest burial grounds in the whole of London and this is part of Christchurch Greyfriar’s burial ground. It is now a beautiful and inspiring Victorian public garden featured in many motion pictures and stories. We’re close to The Museum of London where many of the artifacts that would have featured in this experience can be seen on display.

How to Book >
Duration: approximately 1 hour 45 minutes – 2 hours
Meeting Point: Bank Underground

CLICK HERE FOR AVAILABILITY AND BOOKING >

---

Back to top