Poets and Rebels: A Shoreditch Walking Tour

Shoreditch has seen many transformations over the centuries. On this walking tour, you’ll hear about the fashionable yet edgy district’s past, and some of the famous folk who lived and worked on this northern boundary of the City of London.

Starting at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, you’ll visit the graves of visionary poet William Blake and Robinson Crusoe author Daniel Defoe. The tour winds through alleyways and historical squares en route to the sites where Shakespeare first staged Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet for London audiences. You’ll pass through vibrant Hoxton Square, once home to pioneering physician James Parkinson, and hear the real story behind the famous nursery rhyme, Oranges and Lemons.

Along the way, you’ll find out how the district has reinvented itself countless times since Roman settlers first crossed its farmlands. The creative hub that Shoreditch is today began as a medieval Catholic priory before transforming into London’s first theatre district under Elizabeth I. It later became both a manufacturing center and a notorious crime area, before emerging as the epicenter of Cool Britannia. The tour ends in Boundary Gardens, in front of the world’s first council estate.

Along the way, you’ll have a chance to:

• Stand at the birthplace of Methodism and hear its founder John Wesley’s remarkable story while taking in Wesley’s Chapel and Leysian Mission
• Hear about London’s first purpose-built theatres and their connection to Shakespeare
• Explore the 1990s fashion and music revolution that transformed Hoxton Square Park
• Listen to dramatic readings of the work of local literary legends like William Blake and Shakespeare
• Learn how social reform shaped modern Shoreditch
• Find out how the district became fashionable in the 90s outside The Old Blue Last pub, an icon of that era’s nightlife scene

By the end of this 90-minute London tour, you’ll have a sense of this edgy district’s history, and how it’s changed dramatically over the past few centuries – and so much more so in recent decades. Shoreditch borders on Brick Lane and Spitalfields and is an easy walk to the Thames, so there’s plenty to do and see after you have acquainted yourself with the area.