The South Bank: 400 Years of Entertainment from London Bridge to the Tate Modern

Follow in the footsteps of Chaucer and Shakespeare on this walking tour from London Bridge to the Tate Modern. You’ll find out why Southwark’s position outside the City of London, on the south bank of the Thames, gave it a murky reputation. This was where city-dwellers came for the types of entertainment that were illegal just across the river.

Along the way, Blue Badge Guide Brian Cookson will point out sites like:

• ‘Nancy’s Steps’, the place Dickens imagines Nancy from ‘Oliver Twist’ having her ill-fated conversation with Mr Brownlow
• The beautiful architecture of Southwark Cathedral, with its commemorations to Shakespeare and his most famous plays
• The oldest operating theatre in Britain, now a museum where you can watch a surgeon at work
• Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, built mainly from the same materials as the original Globe – with the addition of toilets!

By the end of the tour, you’ll have seen ancient inns, churches, hospitals, markets and prisons that span nearly 2,000 years of London’s busy history.

Excerpt from Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, read by Rebecca Dittman, is courtesy of Librivox.

Renaissance by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Artist: http://audionautix.com/