Wapping Tales

Few places in London catapult you back in time as fast and accurately as Wapping.  It’s the London that once was – mysterious, rough around the edges and even romantic. And it seems to have developed apart and at its own pace. That’s because it’s been walled in – quite literally – by the docks to the east and the City of London to the west for centuries.

It became the haunt of pirates and the final resting ground of some 75 sea captains at St Paul’s Shadwell; the sight and the smell of the River Thames at its widest point is ever present.

Join ace Blue  Badge Tourist Guide – and author of the Lonely Planet Guide to London – Steve Fallon as he walks you along Wapping High Street, flanked by  towering brick towering early-19th-century warehouses and past cobbled lanes and water stairs that once hosted slave traders, prostitutes and drunken sailors (and any of the three dozen pubs where they once supped).

We’ll walk down Wapping Old Stairs by one of these pubs, the  Town of Ramsgate, to Execution Dock, where convicted pirates were tarred, hanged and their bodies chained in a gibbet at low tide, to be left until three tides had washed over their heads.

Among this select group was Captain William Kidd, hanged here in 1701. We’ll learn more – lots more –  about him at the pub bearing his name.

The Wapping Tales walk takes place at 10.45 am on Saturday,  May 21st

Meet Steve F. just outside the exit* of Tower Hill Tube Stop. 

*Steve will be standing by the Tower Hill Tram Coffee Stand, which is just five yards outside the exit of Tower Hill Tube. You’ll see it – it’ll be straight ahead of you – as soon as you come through the ticket turnstile at Tower Hill Tube. When you get off the Tube at Tower Hill be sure to follow the signs to the Exit. If you get turned around and emerge from the entrance to the station the Tower Hill Tram Coffee Stand will not be visible. You have to make sure you exit the station from the Exit. It is clearly signposted.