Pilloried, Pelted and Paraded: A Medieval Bristol Walking Tour

Bristol's medieval streets carry more than a thousand years of drama, ambition, and spectacle. On this walking tour, you'll trace the city's most gripping stories through plague, rebellion, public punishment, and royal ceremony – uncovering how power and criminality shaped one of England's great medieval cities.

The tour starts at St John on the Wall, a 14th-century church built atop the last surviving fragment of Bristol's medieval wall, complete with a portcullis groove still visible overhead. From here, you'll walk through the arch where Elizabeth I processed on horseback and Queen Victoria knighted a mayor without stepping from her carriage. Along Broad Street, you'll pass the Guildhall where Judge Jeffreys sentenced Monmouth rebels, the Corn Exchange's famous bronze nails where merchants paid on the spot, and a 14th-century building now housing a French café – its medieval jettied floors hiding centuries of documented lives.

You'll discover how Bristol's most prominent citizens – mayors, sheriffs, and MPs – ran the city's biggest smuggling operation, and hear the case of James Naylor, and find out why he received 300 lashes, branding, and a pierced tongue. The tour ends at the crossroads of High Street and Wine Street, where the High Cross once soared 50 feet high as Bristol's stage for coronations, executions, and naked parades of shamed lovers.

On this 60-minute tour, you'll have a chance to:

• Explore St John on the Wall and its colourful surrounding streets
• Hear how Bristol Bridge once held five-storey houses, a chapel, and a cow that survived plunging into the River Avon
• Stand on the site of Newgate Prison, where over 1,000 prisoners survived on bread and water
• Discover the brutal story of Bristol's rotating pillory, where one elderly man was pelted to death
• Visit the remains of Bristol Castle's Great Hall in Castle Park, all that survives of a 30-acre royal fortress
• Learn how the Viking slave trade operated through Bristol long before the 18th-century trade began

This tour will change how you see Bristol – a city where every cobblestone conceals a story worth knowing.