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Highlife -
Lowlife: Stories
of Fleet Street
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High life: former home of Lord Cobham in
Blackfriars
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Low life in Fleet Street (by Phiz, 1859)
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This walk explores the network of hidden medieval alleys,
courtyards and
gardens on either side of Fleet Street and the approaches to it from the
City Tourist office. Fleet Street is an ancient road running beside the
River Thames and linking the commercial City of
London with royal Westminster. Up to the reign of King Henry VIII
(1509-1547 ) the area was the home of high life, royalty, courtiers
and great monasteries. and we will explore the remnants of
royal palaces, monasteries and the homes of great nobles like Lord Cobham's (illustrated above). But the area deteriorated as the population
increased and the Thames became more polluted; by the 1800s much of it was slums;
we will see how the poor people lived cheek by jowl in crowed courts and
find Sweeney Todd's barber shop.
From the mid 1500s to the mid 1900s Fleet Street was the home of most of
our newspapers, with their links to high life and their 'gutter press' appetite
for stories about low life. Authors like William Shakespeare, Charles
Dickens (the illustration above is from A Tale of Two Cities), and more recently in the Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown lived in or set their work in the
the area.
We
start at 2pm on Tuesdays and Saturdays meeting at the City Information
Centre in St Paul's Churchyard. The walk is led by Susan Gane when advertised here,
and a qualified City Guide at other times. It will last one and half
to two hours and end
at Temple underground station; the cost is £7 per person, £6
concessions, with accompanied children under twelve free of charge.
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