Shadwell, developed to equip ships for imperial interests and explorations in the Age of Sail, was home to wealthy merchants and many small businesses. To make those possible, large numbers of ordinary folk provided services, making the area a multicultural hub where escaping slaves hid out, fed-up sailors started new lives, river pirates spied opportunities and women provided the comforts of home in lodging-houses, taverns and brothels. Of course, women were also seamen, pirates, slaves and merchants. Outsiders came to experience the many opium-dens that were standard places of unwinding for seafarers. Shadwell Basin is the only one left of three early docks located in the area. On this walk we pass remnants of all these phenomena as well as river stairs, imposing warehouses, green spaces, the Thames Path and numerous appealing pubs.
Guide: Laura Agustín
Meet at Shadwell Overground Station, outside exit on Cornwall Street, London E1 2QE
When industrial Hackney Wick declined the artists moved in. Across the River Lea institutions including the V&A, Sadlers Wells, BBC and Universities are transforming the area. Our walk follows Carpenters Road from Stratford through the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park to Hackney Wick. On the way there is sculpture and street art, a memorial to the victims of 9/11 and intriguing glimpses of the area's industrial past.
Guide: Sue McCarthy
Meet at Stratford Underground Station, 99 Gibbins Road, London E15 2HU
Women reigned in Rag Fair, which extended from Tower Hill along Rosemary Lane into Cable Street in the 17th-19th centuries. Poorer women sold old clothes, thieved and worked in the brothels of Damaris Page, called by Samuel Pepys 'the most Famous Bawd in the Towne’. We wend through back-alleys to one of the first London Docks, around whose walls a myriad of small businesses set up to service ships and sailors. Fans of Call the Midwife will be interested to see where young Mary escaped from one of the notorious brothel-cafés of Cable Street in the 1960s era of decline. We see where two local women lived who were accused of witchcraft and where the artist JMW Turner spent romantic - and unmarried - weekends. In short, on this walk we focus on a lot of residents rarely mentioned in histories of the docks. Great pubs await near the final stop.
Meet outside Tower Hill Station, London EC3N 4DJ
