"Ian was an amazing tour guide. Very knowledgable and passionate about history. He took us to some very interesting places that Londoners themselves don't know a lot about. I highly recommend taking this tour."
head of the Roman Emperor Hadrian found in the Thames by London Bridge
(He can't do anything to you now. He's in a museum.)
(He can't do anything to you now. He's in a museum.)
Dark Side Walks are the antidote to boring, airbrushed history.
Like the people who discovered the wreck of the Titanic, we will pilot you into the debris field of one of the world's oldest cities to hear stories of the perished people who made it their home.
We take a British approach to British weather. If it's a cats-and-dogs day, we recommend designer tarpaulin (otherwise known as a Barbour).
Life in the past was no party.
There was some cool dressing up - if you could afford the laundry bills.
But say something cheeky about the king or queen, and you could find yourself
a) pelted with rotten fruit
b) pulled to bits
c) burned alive, or even
d) dismembered before your very own eyes
(It was called "Hanging, Drawing and Quartering" - kind of The Sopranos meets Jamie Oliver. You wouldn't do it to a chicken.)
It wasn't all bad. While you were alive, you might have worn the most groundbreaking fashions (like medieval girdles made of gold and precious stones) or heard the most exquisite poetry and drama ever produced.
Shakespeare and his friends were Renaissance people with a vast, labyrinthine medieval City to play around in. The monks and nuns had been thrown out by Henry VIII fifty years before, and it was full of spooky, half-empty thirteenth century monasteries.
What luck to have been around then.
But we're lucky too.
These people are still alive. It's just that they live in a place called the past.
Mick asked:
Why is the City called the City?
Dark Side Walks answered:
“The City of London is the original London. When it was founded there wasn't any West End at all. There was nothing you would think of as urban between the Fleet River (where Farringdon Street is) and the royal court at Westminster. There were palaces along the Strand, but these were enclosed worlds."
In the picture below Ian looks, well, deposed, as he tells the story of King Richard the Second's processional entrance to the City along Cheapside in 1377.
Followed by the theft of his throne by, you know, one of those relatives we never get on with.
He died of starvation in a pit in Pontefract. Which is a very nice place.
After all those exhausting processions, it hardly seems fair.
Ian lived to wear another bow tie.
The fellow on the left is looking scared. He may have a close relative he doesn't get on with.
Or maybe he comes from Pontefract...
Followed by the theft of his throne by, you know, one of those relatives we never get on with.
He died of starvation in a pit in Pontefract. Which is a very nice place.
After all those exhausting processions, it hardly seems fair.
Ian lived to wear another bow tie.
The fellow on the left is looking scared. He may have a close relative he doesn't get on with.
Or maybe he comes from Pontefract...
