Walking Tours of London

St. Paul's Cathedral is England's 'Temple of Solomon'. It invites us to consider  its role in inspiring Georgian gentlemen to admire stonemasons to the point of adopting the tools of their trade as symbols.

Formal masonry, as we know it, started under the shadow of the newly-built St. Paul's in 1717, although the roots were already in place.

Amen Court and the walls of the old Newgate prison give us some flavour of the high and low sides of Georgian society, with Masons represented in both of course.

The Central Criminal Court invites us to meet lawyer and Magistrate Charles Delafaye who strengthened Masonry and worked to make it acceptable to the establishment.

Viewing St. Bride's Church we remember the genius of Christopher Wren, Scientist, Administrator and Architect who bestrode his age and seemed to be capable of anything.  Is it a stretch to consider that he inspired the Masonic idea that an  Architect is the embodiment of creativity ?

We will visit a gaslit Georgian Square and meet a pivotal figure of the Enlightenment, his Masonic biographer and his famous cat.  We will consider how the new, progressive and secular ideas of the day inspired the Masons.

We will see a pub, open to this day, which is the closest we will get to the atmosphere of the taverns which hosted the early Lodges.

The next stops are to the sites of two of the most famous sprawling Masonic taverns, where rival lodges met during a time of schism, alongside other clientele including Aristocrats, criminals and MP's.

We now come across the historic boundary of the home of an older organisation, the Knights Templar the fearsome warrior monks of the Crusades and their considerable military and economic power.

The tour finishes at their historic church where their remains and artifacts can still be seen today.

Westminster is where it all happened for poor King Charles.

His trial, final walk and execution site are all here.  We will be visiting them all, and reliving the frightening sense of chaos, and of a country lurching out of control which pervaded the bloody civil war which precipitated his downfall.

We are lucky in the large variety of memorials and reminders of that period, put up by sympathisers of both sides in that struggle, as a battle for remembrance and meaning has been played out, and, indeed continues to this day.  The conflict between King and People is etched into the very fabric here.

On the way, we will also see a reminder of another beheaded English monarch.  An earlier tragic Queen who perhaps foreshadowed Charles' fate.

The graceful palace building, outside of which he was killed, still remains to this day, and, while death was final for Charles I, the symbolic resurrection of the central idea his life - the God-given rights of a King - did happen after his death, and is symbolised by a magnificent statue, cast during his lifetime, which puts King Charles at the very centre of today's London, as he is to British history.

We finally escape the noise and bustle of modern London into the calm of the National Portrait Gallery, where we can contemplate the King and the man in front of a superb contemporary portrait.

The National Portrait Gallery is Britain's family Album.

In this tour we will look at 12 of the best and most significant portraits.  We will be finding out who the subjects were, the societies they lived in, and the legacies they left.  

The portraits chart the society and growth of London and of England over the last 400 years, from a remote inward-looking island to a world power whose influence spanned the globe, for good or ill.

We will meet Kings and Queens, and tantalising might-have-beens who but for fate would have taken our history in a different path.

We will meet scientists and architects, socially radical women, men and women of letters, and we will see how the portraits themselves present them in a certain light, and we will wonder if they deserved all the flattery.

This wheelchair friendly tour lasts 90 minutes.

Westminster is the centre of British institutions.

The monarchy, legislature, executive and the Church all are centred here.

This tour takes in all the sights - four Royal Palaces, including the Palace where a King was beheaded, the government buildings and residences of politicians, including the Prime Minister.  We will see the historic Cenotaph, the centre of attention of the country's National Day.

We finish at the Palace of Westminster, the home of Parliament, and also a historic Royal Palace itself, next door is the Abbey, founded by an Anglo-Saxon King back in the Dark Ages.

The tour starts at Green Park station, and finishes outside Westminster Abbey, near Westminster tube station.