Charles Dickens Walking Tour - Ye Olde England Tours

The original Charles Dickens Walking Tour will take us to places that inspired Charles Dickens. Many of them nshaped Charles Dickens as a person and indeed a writer. Others because notorious locations in his many famous novels. All writers take inspiration from the people they meet and places they visit, and Charles Dickens was no different. His novels are so successful because he so enjoyed wandering the streets of London and picking up the rich details of everyday life. Now is your chance to follow his example!

Dickensian poverty and Victorian slums

This Charles Dickens tour will start off south of the Thames in one of the lesser visited areas of Central London. It is here where we will visit the only surviving remnant of Marshalsea Prison, which had such an impact on young Charles and his family. We will also see where Charles Dickens lived when his father was imprisoned. Not far away is where the old workhouse was, we can visit the very spot where Oliver Twist asked for more.

The the famous old George Inn has a rich history.

Next up we will visit Little Dorrit Church and learn of the terrible poverty this area was known for in Victorian times. Soon we will see the only remaining galleried inn in all of London which Dickens himself would visit. The building next door where Sam Weller met with Mr. Pickwick in the famous scene from The Pickwick Papers. Centuries earlier the pilgrims in Chaucers Canterbury Tales met here.

Charles Dickens Walking Tour – Pick a pocket or two at Borough Market!

Northwards we will go as we meander through the ancient Borough Market. Both Charles Dickens and his characters were familiar with its Victorian structure. Just beyond is the River Thames, where Pip came up with his plan to rescue Magwitch. Down a dark siding off London Bridge we see the steps where Nancy met Mr. Brownlow in Oliver Twist. This quickly led to her horrific death in the novel and was the place she was killed in the musical.

Experience Borough Market on our Charles Dickens Walking Tour.

Crossing over the famous old river we will visit the site of the notorious Newgate Prison. Charles Dickens visited for here for research purposes. See where Magwitch died and where Fagin sent the boys to pick a pocket or two on Execution days.

We will explore famous old Fleet Street, the old Newspaper street of London and visit Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. This venerable old pub featured in Dickens work but was also a favourite drinking place for him. Then we begin to enter one of the great legal areas of London where Magwitch visits Pip at his chambers in Great Expectations.

Dickens the successful writer

Just along the road is where Charles Dickens worked in the Blacking Factory. In the literary world, David Copperfield and Martin Chuzzlewit found themselves boardings but we will find something very different. A few minutes away is famous Old Curiosity Shop, perhaps the oldest shop in central London.

Always a highlight of the Charles Dickens Walking Tour, The Old Curiosity Shop.

Lincolns Inn Fields was close to Dickens home and as such features prominently in his literature. The Old Hall appears in the opening scene of Bleak House. The home of his friend and biographer is near by, John Forster, whose property became the residence of Mr. Tulkinghorn in Bleak House.

More Bleak House locations come thick and fast as we pass The Royal College of Surgeons and the likely location of Krooks horrid shop before he went up in flames.

Bloomsbury, the literature capital of the world

As we reach the end of our tour, we walk the streets of Bloomsbury that have long been the literary capital of the world. Past residents have included Orson Welles, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and JM Barrie, who created Peter Pan.

The Charles Dickens Walking Tour concludes outside the Charles Dickens House Museum where you will be free to visit in your own time. Or perhaps have a lunch in one of the many fine old pubs and restaurants in this district of Bloomsbury that Charles Dickens knew so well.

We also have an extended 5 hour version of the Charles Dickens Walking Tour and a shorter tour with less walking but a drink in an old pub that Charles Dicken both lived and wrote in. Each of these feature quite a few Christmas Carol locations too.