When was each legend born, and what fact lies inside it?
5 walks with different starting points and stories. Compare their maps, stops and duration, then choose where to begin.
Explore these walks
London's ghosts have a history, though it may not be the one suggested by the first version you hear. This theme gathers legends and mysterious tales around a recurring question: when did people begin telling them? The walks keep the unsettling appeal while distinguishing documented episodes from the interpretations and traditions that came later.
In “Covent Garden and the Strand”: On Bow Street, London's first thief-takers were born; on Drury Lane, Pepys saw Nell Gwyn in her smock sleeves, and the theatre has its Man in Grey, a ghost first written down in 1945.
In “The Tower and Pepys's diary”: Around the Tower, without going in: Thomas More joking on the scaffold, the fake parson who stole the crown, the ravens and their modern legend, and the neighbour who wrote it all down, Samuel Pepys, between the plague of 1665 and the fire of 1666.
In “The City”: You look down the street beneath which a temple of Mithras appeared in 1954, reach the London Stone that nobody could explain even in 1598, and finish with Dick Whittington: the real mayor, buried three times, and the cat that was already being called a lie in 1605.
Choose from 5 independent walks in London. Open the one that interests you to see its map, stops and approximate duration before deciding. You don't need to do them all or follow this selection's order; each walk has its own starting and finishing points.
Open a marker to see its page. Use two fingers to move the map on mobile.
You look down the street beneath which a temple of Mithras appeared in 1954, reach the London Stone that nobody could explain even in 1598, and finish with Dick Whittington: the real mayor, buried three times, and the cat that was already being called a lie in 1605.
On Bow Street, London's first thief-takers were born; on Drury Lane, Pepys saw Nell Gwyn in her smock sleeves, and the theatre has its Man in Grey, a ghost first written down in 1945.
Outside St Dunstan-in-the-West you find out that Sweeney Todd was born in a penny serial on this very street, and that the only real thing in the novel is the pair of giants on the clock.
At the mouth of Cock Lane, a ghost that had all London talking; at Pye Corner, the fat golden boy where the fire stopped.
Around the Tower, without going in: Thomas More joking on the scaffold, the fake parson who stole the crown, the ravens and their modern legend, and the neighbour who wrote it all down, Samuel Pepys, between the plague of 1665 and the fire of 1666.
London makes more sense an area at a time than as one vast walk. Neighbourhoods change pace within a few streets; the sky may change while you find the next one.
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