KAT’S DICKENS WALK
START: Highbury and Islington tube (Victoria Line).
Turn right down Upper Street, eventually taking a right into Terret’s Place.
No 3 is generally identified with the house of Tom and Ruth Pinch in ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ – “a singular, old-fashioned house, up a blind street”.
Back on Upper Street, turn left onto Duncan Street, cross Duncan Terrace, home to the novelist and Dickens biographer Peter Ackroyd. Turn right back onto Upper Street/St John St. Somewhere near the turning for Rosebery Avenue was the Angel pub.
Dickens mentions the Angel in ‘Oliver Twist’.
Down Rosebery Avenue is Sadler’s Wells theatre.
The ending of ‘Oliver Twist’ was performed here – in true pantomime style – a woman playing Oliver, much to Dicken’s displeasure. As a boy, Dickens saw the clown Joe Grimaldi perform here, and in 1837 he was offered a partly written biography of Grimaldi to complete.
Turn right into Skinner Street, and then left into the Dickensian Corporation Row. Straight over, onto Bowling Green Lane, left onto Farringdon Road. At the Betsey Trotwood pub, head into Pear Tree Court.
The Betsey Trotwood pub takes its name from David Copperfield’s aunt.
Turn right into Clerkenwell Close, and right into Clerkenwell Green.
Clerkenwell Green is where the Artful Dodger instructed Oliver in the art of picking pockets in ‘Oliver Twist’. The narrow court from where the boys emerged onto the green is generally assumed to be Pear Tree Court.
Cross over Farringdon Road at the end, and then cross Clerkenwell Road – heading down Saffron Hill.
This was once a notorious ‘rookery’, where criminals lived in vast sprawling tenements that overlooked the reeking water of the River Fleet. Dickens knew the area well and placed Fagin’s lair here in ‘Oliver Twist’.
Left onto Greville Street and immediately right back onto Farringdon Road. Up onto the Holborn Viaduct, and walk left down Newgate Street. Continue along Cheapside and Bank go onto Cornhill. Turn right into Birchin Lane, left into Castle Court to the George and Vulture.
Mr Pickwick stays at the George and Vulture in the Pickwick Papers.
Turn left into St Michael’s Alley, to find the Jamaica Wine House.
It was in this alley that Dickens placed the office of Ebeneezer Scrooge.
Return to Cornhill. At the pink building topped by the gargoyle , turn right into St Peter’s Alley.
The church features in ‘Our Mutual Friend’
Back on Cornhill, turn right and right again down Gracechurch Street. At monument continue towards the river on King William St and across London Bridge, dropping down the stairs the other side.
In ‘Oliver Twist’ the fateful meeting between Nancy and Rose Maylie and Mr Brownlow takes place on the steps on London Bridge.
Turn right along the Thames Path as far as the Clink Prison museum.
The Clink Prison is mentioned by Dickens ‘Barnaby Rudge’.
Retrace your steps back along Clink Street, and right onto Cathedral Street. Bear left onto Beadle Street and right onto Borough High Street to The White Hart.
This is where Sam Weller meets Mr Pickwick: “number twenty-two wants his boots” Weller is told. To which he replies “Ask twenty-two whether he’ll have em now or wait till he gets ‘em”.
Next door at The George in George Inn Yard:
It is in The George that Edward ‘Tip’ Dorrit composes a begging letter to Arthur Clenman in ‘Little Dorrit’
Dickens captured the atmosphere of Southwark’s inns perfectly in ‘The Pickwick Papers’: “In the Borough, especially, there still remains some half-dozen old inns which have preserved their original features unchanged, and which have escaped alike the rage for public improvement and the encroachment of private speculation. Great rambling, queer old places they are, with galleries and passages and stairways, wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish material for a hundred ghost stories”.
Return to Borough High Street and walk left. – checking out Little Dorrit Court on the right. At the end of the High Street turn left into Tabard Street. Go left through the railings into a small garden that’s the former burial ground of the church.
The wall on the far side is all that remains of the Marshalsea Debtors Prison. Dickens’ father was placed in the New Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison after being arrested for debt. The stories of his father’s fellow inmates, and the atmosphere of the surrounding streets were to recur time and time again in his writing. In ‘Little Dorrit’ Dickens writes of “the games of the prison children as they whooped and ran, and played at hide-and-seek, and made the bars of the Inner Gateway ‘home’”. In ‘David Copperfield’, Mr Micawber remembers “the shadow of that ironwork on the summit of the brick structure… reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks”.
Return to Borough High Street where it becomes Marshalsea Road.
The church on the left, St George the Martyr – built in 1736 it is known as Little Dorrit’s church because of its associations with the novel. It is here that Little Dorrit is christened and later marries Arthur Clenman. But it is another scene from the book that is commemorated by one of the church’s windows. At one time Little Dorrit lived in the Marshalsea Debtors Prison with her father. Returning late one night, she is locked out and has to sleep in the vestry, using one of the old registers as a pillow. Today her kneeling figure can be seen in the bottom of the east window behind the altar.
Walk right along Marchalsea Road, branching left at Mint Street, and pause at the corner with Weller Street.
Weller Street is named after Sam Weller form the ‘Pickwick Papers’. Mint Street is believed to be the location of St George’s workhouse, which formed the basis of the workhouse descriptions in ‘Oliver Twist’.
At the bottom of Weller Street turn right into Lant Street.
The 12-year old Dickens lodged in a back attic (now demolished) in this street. He would use his landlord and landlady as the models for the Garland family in ‘The Old Curiosity Shop’. He would remember in later years that “my old way home by the Borough made me cry, after my eldest child could speak”. There’s a Charles Dickens School built after his death in his honour.
Turn right onto Southwark Bridge Road – notice David Copperfield Street on the left. Cross Union Street onto Great Guildford Street. Turn left onto Sothwark Street, and right onto Blackfriars Road – crossing the Thames on Blackfriars Bridge,
In 1824 the 12-year old Charles Dickens used the Blackfriars Bridge when he walked home from his miserable days at Warren’s Blacking factory off the Strand.
Continue forward onto New Bridge Street, and then left onto Fleet Street. Go into Wine Office Court on the right to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.
Dickens was among its distinguished literary rollcall In ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, Sydney Carton leads Charles Darnay down Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street and then up a covered way into a tavern, where they enjoy “a good plain dinner and good wine”. The model for Dickens’s tavern is widely believed to be Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese and Dickens himself allegedly chose to sit at the table to the right of the fireplace in the ground floor room opposite the bar.
Return to Fleet Street, and then turn left down Bouverie Street.
At Number 10 ‘Punch’ had its offices for most of the 19th Century. Dickens was a frequent guest. But was never invited to sign the famous Punch table. His work was rejected by the magazine.
Turn right into Temple Lane and head to Temple Church, trying to walk as straight possible (look for Kings Bench Walk, and Crown Office Row as a guide) around the courtyards towards Middle Temple Lane. Bear left to Middle Temple and right through an archway into Fountain Court.
It is here that Tom meets his sister Ruth in the novel ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’…”the fountain that sparkled in the sun, and laughingly its liquid playing music and merrily the drops of water danced and danced”.
Bear right, back up towards Fleet Street – NW Court, Devereux Court and right up Essex Street. Walk left along Fleet Street, then left into Surrey Street , and halfway down on the right up Surrey Steps, then right again to the Roman baths.
Charles Dickens knew them as a child and included them in ‘David Copperfield’. Copperfield talks of “an old Roman bath.. at the bottom of one of the streets out of the Strand – it may still be there – in which I have taken many a cold plunge”.
Return to Fleet Street and retrace your steps right. Turn left up Chancery Lane. Turn left again into Carey Street, and then right through a passageway of legal bookshops into New Square.
Lincolns Inn Hall is where the court case of Jarndyce v Jarndyce “drones on” in ‘Bleak House’.
Bear left onto Sardinia Inns Fields, and right around Lincoln’s Inn Fields. After the Sir John Soames museum, pause to the right on Gate Street Little Turnstile. In ‘Bleak House’ – much of which was set around Lincoln’s Inn – Mr Snagsby tells his apprentices of a time when “a brook as ‘clear as crystal’ once ran the middle of Holborn, leading slap way into the meadows”.
Continue walking around Lincoln’s Inn Fields to number 58.
Number 58 was the home of Dicken’s good friend and eventual biographer John Forster. It was also the inspiration for Mr Tulkinghorn’s house in ‘Bleak House’. “The crow flies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Gardens into Lincoln’s Inn Fields”, wrote Dickens in the novel, continuing, “Here, in a large family house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr Tulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in these shrunken fragments of its greatness lawyers lie maggots in nuts”
It was also here at 6.30pm on December 2nd 1844 a group of Forster’s friends gathered to hear Dickens read his new Christmas story ‘The Chimes’. The early hour was chosen because the story would take more than three hours to read. “There was no a dry eye in the house” said one listener “I do not ever think there was a more triumphant hour for Charles”. The area also features in ‘David Copperfield”, where we are told that Aunt Betsy Trotswood stays “at a kind of private hotel in Lincoln’s Inn Fields”.
Complete the circle round Lincoln’s Inn Fields until you’re back on Sardinia Inn Fields, and continue across Chancery Lane into Curisitor Street.
In November 1828 the young Dickens entered the employment of Charles Molloy, Solicitor, in now-vanished premises off Chancery Lane.
Bear left into Took’s Court.
This is the ‘Cook’s Court, Curistor Street’ where Mr Snagsby, Law-stationer, pursues his lawful calling in ‘Bleak House’. “In the shade of Cook’s Court, at most times a shady place, Mr Snagsby has dealt in all sorts of blank forms of legal process...” Dickens was both fascinated and appalled by the law. In honour of the area’s connection with the great writer, Number 15 is called Dickens House. The ‘Door Tennants’ sign next door has a distinctly Dickensian ring.
Return to Chancery Lane and turn right into Southampton Buildings. Continue through the brick archway at the end to find Staple Inn.
The small garden features twice in Dickens. In ‘Bleak House’, the law stationer Snagbsy enjoys walking “in Staple Inn in the summertime and to observe how countrified the sparrows and the leaves are”. In ‘The Mystery of Edwin Drood’ it is described as “one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street, imparts to the relieved pedestrian in the sensation of having put cotton in his ears, and velvet soles on his boots”.
Follow the passage out to High Holborn. Take not of the large red brick building along to the right.
This is the former building of the Prudential assurance Company and is built on the site of Furnival’s Inn where Dickens was living when he wrote ‘The Pickwick Papers’, published in 1836. In ‘Martin Chuzzlewit’ John Westlock has chambers in Furnival’s Inn, “a shady, quiet place, echoing the footsteps of the stragglers who have business there; and rather monotonous and gloomy on summer evenings”.
Cross High Holborn, turn left and then right into South Square .
One May morning in 1827, Dickens walked through the doors of Number One South Square. He was taken on as a clerk at Ellis and Blackmore, and found the work extremely dull. But according to a fellow clerk, George Lear, has was apparently “a universal favourite” among the staff. He was a brilliant mimic and Lear said he could “imitate in a manner that I have never heard equalled, the low population of the streets of London in all their varieties, where mere loafers or sellers of fruit, vegetables or anything else”.
Crossing South Square head into Gray’s Inn Square. Walk round to the right and through the archway onto Grays Inn Road. Turn left onto Roger Street, and then right onto Doughty Street.
Dickens lived at number 48 from 1837-1839 – among his most productive years. Much of ‘The Pickwick Papers’, ‘Oliver Twist’ and ‘Nicolas Nickelby’ was written here.
At the top, turn left into Guildford Street, pausing at Coram’s Fields.
When Captain Thomas Coram established the Foundling Hospital – for abandoned babies and children- here, Dickens supported it with an article in his own magazine, ‘Household Words’. The hospital also appears in Dickens’s story ‘No Thoroughfare’, which he wrote with Wilkie Collins.
Turn left into Guildford Place, heading into Lamb Conduit Street. Turn right onto Great Ormond Street.
Dickens supported this hospital, raising money for it at talks and public readings of his works, especially ‘A Christmas Carol’. He described the hospital in ‘Our Mutual Friend’ as “a place where are none but children; a place set up on purpose for children; where the good doctors and nurses pass their lives with children, talk to none but children, touch none but children, comfort and cure none but children.”
At the end of Great Ormond Street, across Queen’s Square into Cosmo Place, stands the Church of St George the Martyr.
The church featured in Dicken’s story ‘The Bloomsbury Christening’ in ‘Sketches by Boz’.
Bear right onto Southampton Row, continuing up into Woburn Place with Russell Square Gardens on your left. Cross Tavistock place to the far corner of Tavistock Square.
There’s a plaque commemorating Charles Dickens here – he lived on the site now occupied by the British Medical Association, from 1851-1860.
Turn left into Endsleigh Place into Gordon Square – cutting straight through University College London if possible. If not, bear left round Gordon Square, into Bying Place, right onto Gower Street, and then left down University Street. Cross Tottenham Court Road into Maple Street., to the corner with Fitzroy Street.
Dickens lived at Number 25 Fitzroy Street when he was 20.
Turn left down Fitzroy Street until it becomes Charlotte Street. Turn right onto Tottenham Street and left onto Cleveland Street.
During 1829-30 Dickens stayed with his family above a greengrocer’s shop at Number 22, Cleveland Street. The building, with its fan-tailed windows still exists.
Continue into Rathbone Street, left into Percy Passage, turning right briefly into Charlotte Street before taking a left into Percy Street. Turn right down Tottenham Court Road, cross over and left into Great Russell Street,.
A plaque at Numbers 13 and 14, above the Cinema Bookshop, notes that Charles Kitterbell lived here in ‘The Bloomsbury Christening’ – one of the stories in Dickens’s ‘Sketches by Boz’. The plaque is unusual as it commemorates a fictional character, rather than its creator. Further along at number 46 is home to antiquarian booksellers Jarndyce, a name taken from Dicken’s ‘Bleak House’, which sells lots of ‘Dickensia’.
Retrace your steps back to Bloomsbury Street and turn left. Turn right along New Oxford Street, and then left into Charing Cross Road. Take a right into Sutton Row to Soho Square, and left into Greek Street.
The House of St Barnabas on the left – built in 1846 for London’s destitute and homeless – is believed to be the house that Charles Dickens had in mind for Dr Manette in ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, hence Manette Street on the left.
Continue along Greek Street to The Pillars of Hercules pub on the left.
This is almost certainly the Hercules Pillars featured in ‘A Tale of Two Cities’.
Turn left at the end onto Shaftesbury Avenue, and at Cambridge Circus, bear right into West Street until it meets St Martin’s Lane where you turn right, and then left into Long Acre.
At St Martin’s Hall Dickens gave three readings of ‘A Christmas Carol’ in 1859.
Turn right into Bow Street until it becomes Wellington Street.
This is where Charles Dickens edited ‘All the Year Round’, the magazine that first serialised Wilike Collins’ ‘The Moonstone’. The magazine was so popular that crowds would gather waiting for the next issue.
Turn right into Russell Street and into the Covent Garden Piazza.
Here, Dickens would apparently gaze longingly at the pineapples on sale when he had no money.
At the far end of the piazza turn left into Southampton Street, and then right into Maiden Lane.
Rules Restaurant is a literary landmark that dates back to 1798 – Dickens was among its numerous and distinguished customers.
Turn right into Bedford Street, noting first the red brick building on the left in Chandos Place.
This is the site of Warren’s Blacking Factory where a 12-year old Dickens was paid a shilling a day to tie up bottles of blacking and label them. He was only there a few months, but it was a miserable time that haunted him for the rest of his life.
Turn right into Henrietta Street.
This was home to Dickens’s original publishers Chapman & Hall. And Offley’s steak house at number 23 was a favourite resort of Dickens because he always “found a fine collection of old boys”..
Return to Bedford Street and continue right. After New Row head forward/slightly left into Garrick Street to the Garrick Club.
Dickens was a member of one of the most famous clubs among literary and publishing folk. It was founded do that “actors and man of education and refinement might meet on equal terms”.
At the end of Garrick Street, turn left onto St Martin’s Lane. Follow it down to Trafalgar Square. Turn right down Pall Mall East and into Pall Mall as far as Waterloo Place. Turn left towards The Mall.
Charles Dickens was a member of the Gentlemen’s Club at the Athenaeum, but not particularly ‘clubbable’. One member said: “he seldom spoke to anyone unless previously addressed”. Another said, “he used to eat his sandwich standing at the centre table, or striding about”. Nevertheless, after Dickens died, his chair was brought from his home at Gad’s Hill, near Rochester in Kent, and a member presented it to the club.
Walk down the steps, cross the Mall into St James’s Park. At the corner with Birdcage Walk continue ahead into Storey’s Gate, Great Smith Street and Marsham Street. Turn left into Horseferry Road, left into Dean Bradley Street and into Smith Square.
The former church – now St John’s Concert hall – here did not appeal to Charles Dickens. In ‘Our Mutual Friend’ he called it a “very hideous church, with four towers at the corners, generally resembling some petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs in the air”.
Cross the square into Lord North Street. Turn right and then first left into Little College Street Turn left into Great College Street to the end – and go through the gates into the quadrangle of Westminster School. Keep to the right-hand pavement and exit at the far corner. This brings you out to the entrance of Westminster Abbey.
After Dicken’s funeral here in 1870 his grave in the Abbey was left open for two days. At the end of the first day there were still one thousand people outside waiting to pay their respects. For two days the crowds of people passed by in procession, many of them dropping flowers on his coffin – “among which”, his son Henry said “were afterwards found several small rough bouquets of flowers tied up with pieces of rag”.
Leave the Abbey – turning right across Parliament Square to Westminster tube station.
FINISH
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
This walk couldn’t have been written without the help of:
‘Walking Literary London’, by Roger Tagholm (published by New Holland Publishers).
‘Walking Haunted London’, by Richard Jones (published by New Holland Publishers).
AA’s 50 Walks in London (Published by AA Publishing).
