We set out to walk and explore London each month.
Members, individually or in small groups, take it in turn to choose, research and lead the walks, focusing on particular places of interest.
| Status: | Active, open to new members |
| Contact: | |
| When: | Monthly on Thursdays 2nd Thursday |
For ideas to assist in trip planning or a review of the sort of trips London Explorers groups do, please see this page.
In the Footsteps of the River Fleet.
A really interesting walking tour of the area around Kings Cross, led by London Walks Guide, Mary Brooks.
The river, once London's second, has long been forced to flow underground, but it had a big impact on what was built and where. Wealthy land owners built comfortable homes away from the smelly and noisy centre of London, near the leafy banks of the river, but as Georgian terraces and attractive squares sprang up, the river became a polluted sewer and was forced underground. The Fleet shaped the route of the earliest railways, flowing under Kings Cross Station and forcing Farringdon Station tracks to be built above. As the area became more developed, clear evidence of social disparity amongst the housing stock emerged.
Much of the area had substantial bomb damage as a result of the Luftwaffe focusing on the nearby railway lines. The post-war buildings have replaced some of the graceful terraces with more brutalist structures, though the architect Berthold Lubetkin created the Bevin Court Apartments with great care and thought, providing the best possible accommodation for local working people. (See photo: the constructivist staircase c1954).
