The Smithfield Pub Tour takes place at 7.15 pm
on Saturday, November 30.
Meet Kevin just outside the exit of BarbicanTube Stop.
One of the greatest place for London history. Just outside the Roman City Wall and used by the Romans as a cemetary. The “smooth field” became the main live stock market of London, occassional tiltyard and place of public executions. The Peasants’ Rebellion climaxed here. On 23 August 1305 William Wallace (‘Braveheart’) was hanged, drawn and quartered here. Religious martyrs were burnt here and forgers boiled in oil. There are two monasteries which give a great insight into the Reformation, with connections to Thomas More. St Bartholemews hosted Britains’s greatest fair, and provided the oldest hospital in the United Kingdom – the second oldest in Europe. There are more pre-Great Fire buildings than anywhere else in London. There are also the trace of World War 1 bombing and Zeppelin raids. There are street names that sing: Cow Cross Street, Giltspur Street, etc. There are people names that resonate: Ben Franklin, John Milton, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rahere, to name but a few. Oh, and did we mention this is where Holmes met Watson and where Benedict Cumberbatch fell off the roof.
This is a London Walks walk given by Kevin Flude
with the predicted catastrophe of Nazi terror bombing? Could London develop plans that reduced the predicted millions of casualties and thousands of people driven mad? On this walk, we look at London before the war and the measures taken to protect the City and its Citizens. We find out what it was like to come to work after a night in the shelters to find your work place in ruins. We visit the site of the earliest bomb raids on London, and explore the sequence of continuous bombing that followed the Battle of Britain, and on to the great City raid of 29th December 1940 which was centred on St Pauls. By May, 1941 the Luftwaffe had transferred to the Eastern Front, but the fear returned with the V1 and V2 secret weapons. Before the war was over London developed the Abercrombie Plan to direct the rebuilding of London after the war. We have a look at what happened to the plans for an optimistic modernist dream of a Corbusian City in the Sky.