A Walk Through Dickens’ London
February 22, 2024
An occluded winter’s day when sunlight barely glimmered offered the ideal opportunity for a ramble through Charles Dickens’ London. Employing a set of cigarette cards from 1927 which Libby Hall kindly once gave me as my guide, I set out on a circular walk from Spitalfields through the City to Holborn, returning along Bankside, to photograph those locations which remain today.
Dean’s Court, EC4
Staple Inn, WC1
2 South Square, Gray’s Inn, WC1
48 Doughty St, WC1
57-58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, WC2
13-14 Portsmouth St, WC2
Water Gate, Essex St, WC2
London Bridge Steps, Montague Close, SE1
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3 Responses
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A magnificent idea! Thank you!
Such comparisons between architectural images from different time periods are always exciting. I did this quite extensively when I repeated the travelogue “A Stroll to John O’Groats” by the author Isobel Wylie Hutchison, which was published in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE in 1956, in 1978.
Finding the camera location was a particular challenge. I would have to do it again today!
Love & Peace
ACHIM
Dickens’ London. Such joy. Those cards are fabulous.
Your journey makes me recall my own trips to The Grapes, the inspiration for The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters from Our Mutual Friend, now part owned by fellow north westerner Sir Ian McKellen. Doughty Street is also worth a visit.
I also remember a long ago visit to ‘Bleak House’ in Broadstairs, then a museum now a private house. It was incredible to see a copy of some pages from the original manuscript of David Copperfield full of scoring outs and revisions.
I think there is a still a small Dickens’ musem on the front at Broadstairs, overlooking the cliffs. The very same grassy cliff top from which the fictional Betsie Trotwood made it her mission to banish all donkeys.
Magic stuff.