This excursion will be back soon. In the meantime we’d be happy to organise a private tour for you. Please contact us on 020 7624 3978 | [email protected] to make a booking.
This excursion will be back soon. In the meantime we’d be happy to organise a private tour for you. Please contact us on 020 7624 3978 | [email protected] to make a booking.
Marble Arch Underground station, London (exit 2, the Park Lane exit)
Guided by
For all London’s status as a global, multi-cultural city, English quirkiness shines through at every turn. Sometimes that eccentricity is writ large for all to see. Sometimes it needs a little ferreting out. That’s where London Walks come in. Tucked in behind the exotic fragrances from glass bottomed water-pipes in the pavement sheesha lounges of London’s ‘Little Beirut’ is the intriguing triangle of Tyburnia. This is unknown territory to even to most Londoners and has a spine-chillingly disturbing history named as it is after the Tyburn Tree or the gallows at London’s principal site of public execution. Nuns in the Tyburn Convent still pray around the clock for the souls of those who perished here. Yet some of the best known ‘names’ on the planet, such as Madonna, have homes in Tyburnia’s achingly elegant and entirely unspoilt squares or in the quaintest hidden-away mews. Nearby are exquisite water fountains gifted by a Prince to his beloved bride, Queen Victoria, and a Lilliputian cemetery that could be mistaken for the final resting place of fairy folk but for the names on the gravestones which clearly refer to beloved family pets.
But all this is not the main reason for our being here. Today this corner of London bursts into exquisite full throttled Englishness with ‘Horseman’s Sunday’ otherwise known as ‘The Blessing of the Horses’* when, in a tradition that is fifty years old this year, a cavalcade of horses present themselves to be blessed by a local vicar, also on horseback.
This is London Walks, so yes, there’ll be a dollop of shock, horror, yes, there’ll be royalty and on this walk, not just Charles Dickens but his unseemly feuding with his major literary rival. Mostly, however, today will be about all the fun of an English fete and keeping up with those horses. (Aaaah)
*Our daftest, wackiest, wonderfulest ceremony (and, emphatically yes, the walk is timed to catch it). Only in England.
The Tyburnia Walk takes place at xxxxm on XXXXXXXX. The meeting point is just outside exit 1 of Marble Arch Tube.
If you can’t make one of the regularly scheduled, just-turn-up, Tyburnia it can always be booked as a private tour. If you go private you can have the Tyburnia walk – or any other London Walk – on a day and at a time that suits your convenience. We’ll tailor it to your requirements. Ring Fiona or Mary on 020 7624 3978 or email us at [email protected] and we’ll set it up and make it happen for you. A private London Walk – they’re good value for an individual or couple and sensational value for a group – makes an ideal group or educational or birthday party or office (team-building) or club outing.
A private London Walk makes a fab gift – be it a birthday or anniversary or Christmas present or whatever. Merchandise schmerchandise (gift wrapped or not) – but giving someone an experience, now that’s special. Memories make us rich.