Streets of St Giles
Streets of St Giles
St Giles was once a by-word for poverty and disease, notorious for its slums – the Rookery and Seven Dials. Yet the parish also included the grand houses around Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Great Queen Street. This historic area of contrasts is explored in six walks. In Drury Lane we walk in the footsteps of Boswell, close to the Saxon trading port of Lundenwic. In Shaftesbury Avenue we are by the site of the medieval leper hospital of St Giles, where the settlement grew up. [More...]
Famous people who have lived or worked locally include the scientist politician Benjamin Franklin; the painter Samuel Palmer; the inventor John Logie Baird; and celebrity chefs Antonio Carluccio and Jamie Oliver. There are many musicians associated with Tin Pan Alley, as Denmark Street was called.
2nd edition 2012