London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good evening to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s October 30th, 2025. And here it is, your daily London fix.
A one-two punch this evening. First off – a quick word, a heads up – about tomorrow night’s British Museum After Hours Tour.
Halloween night, no less.
And forget the fake cobwebs and the pumpkin punch. This is the real Halloween experience – history, mystery and magic in the world’s greatest treasure.
And the kicker is we’ve practically got it to ourselves.
That’s right, that’s what goes with the territory of the famed and fabled London Walks British Museum After Hours Tour. And the heads up is, atypically for this one there are still a few tickets going. We limit the size of the group so it usually sells out. But as luck would have it – or perhaps a touch of Halloween magic – there are a few places left.
So if you fancy doing something properly memorable this Halloween – something spine-tingling but civilised – well, if you’re in London and you’re listening, you’ve just turned up trumps.
What’s not to like: the British Museum after dark. The crowds gone. The Great Court glowing softly beneath its glass dome. The mummies resting quietly in their cases. The shadows stretching long across marble floors. The air humming with stories. It’s a place that was built to be haunting – and on Halloween night, it truly is.
And your guide? Marc.
You’ll know him from the award-nominated podcast Extraordinary Stories of Britain. A journalist, photographer and top-flight Blue Badge Guide – the very model of a modern Major-General of a Renaissance man. He’s got that rare blend: scholarship, wit and pure storytelling magic.
He’ll lead you through five thousand years of human history – from the Rosetta Stone to the Elgin Marbles – while the museum dreams around you. The hush of the Round Reading Room, the ghosts of Dickens, Marx and Virginia Woolf just out of sight.
So – Halloween night, six o’clock, outside Russell Square Tube. A few tickets left, and one unforgettable evening waiting for you. You have to book. As I said – or at least implied – it’s a small group guaranteed, VIP Tour. You’ll need to book it. Go to www.walks.com – to Friday’s Walks – Click on the British Museum Friday Late link and you’re home and dry. You’ve scored what’s almost impossible to score this late in the game. One – or two – of those four remaining tickets.
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Ok, handbrake turn here. Let’s swerve from the British Museum over to Hyde Park
They say you can tell a lot about a civilisation by how it treats its dead.
Well– go poke your nose through the railings just north of the Bayswater Road, and you’ll find out how the Victorians felt about dogs.
Welcome to one of London’s tiniest, strangest, and most heartbreakingly human corners: the Hyde Park Pet Cemetery.
Now, blink and you’ll miss it. It’s tucked away behind the Victoria Gate Lodge – literally just beyond the lodgekeeper’s garden. Walk past at a clip and you’d never know it was there. A small square of turf, shaded by lime trees, ringed with tiny tombstones. It’s smaller than a tennis court, but my word it packs an emotional punch.
Picture it: rows of miniature headstones, most no more than a foot high, neatly aligned like soldiers on parade. A few lean a little now, moss creeping over their inscriptions. And on them – names like Prince and Fido, Tiny, Rex, Dodo, Dear Jim. The language is pure late-Victorian sentiment:
“Here lies our faithful friend, until we meet again.”
“Poor dear dear little Balu, so good, so gentle.”
You can practically hear the sobbing parasols.
The story begins in 1881. The first burial was a little terrier called Cherry – belonging to a Mr and Mrs Winbridge, friends of the lodgekeeper, Mr William Pettiward. Cherry had been the beloved companion of their young daughter.
When the dog died, the little girl was inconsolable. She’d walk past the park lodge every day, crying. The kind-hearted Pettiward – who looked after the Victoria Gate – suggested they might bury Cherry in his own garden, a quiet patch just inside the railings. And so, a small grave was dug, and Cherry was laid to rest beneath a rosebush.
That could have been the end of it. But London loves a precedent. Word got around – other park regulars heard about the little grave and asked if their pets might have the same honour. And Mr Pettiward, bless him, said yes.
Before long, the corner of his garden began to fill up. Small marble markers were ordered from stonemasons. “Sacred to the memory of…” they began. The Victorians, of course, were mad for a good funeral. They buried parakeets and guinea pigs, terriers and retrievers, cats, monkeys, even one parrot named Polly whose stone is still there.
So yes – it’s not just dogs. Dogs are the overwhelming majority, but this tiny acre is a Noah’s Ark in miniature. Here lie cats—like Poor dear Pussy and Topsey the kitten. There’s that parrot, Polly, who “sang till the end.” A couple of rabbits – one marked as “beloved companion of our boy Freddie.” And even a monkey or two, reminders of an age when exotic pets swung from the gaslight brackets of Bayswater drawing rooms.
But make no mistake – this is the dogs’ domain. The cats and parrots are there like musical grace notes; the dogs are the melody. Rows upon rows of loyalty in stone, the names lined up like a regiment of good boys on parade.
And who were their owners? Ah, here’s where it gets juicy.
Because this wasn’t just anyone’s doggy plot. The Hyde Park Pet Cemetery was, in its way, the Harrods of pet burial grounds. You had to know Mr Pettiward, or at least be introduced. Many of the mourners were from the well-to-do Victorian middle classes who lived in Bayswater, Notting Hill, and Mayfair – people with servants, but also with hearts full of poodle-shaped affection.
One notable inscription belongs to a dog named Prince, the favourite of a Captain John Furneaux, who’d fought in the Crimean War. Another – Rex – belonged to Lady Sophia Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond. The headstones tell their own stories: one commemorates Topper, “faithful friend of a blind man,” another Jim, “killed by a carriage, 1898.”
Each tiny stone whispers a small Victorian tragedy – and a big Victorian tenderness.
By the early 20th century, though, the cemetery was full. The last recorded burial was in 1903 –though one or two “quiet” interments are rumoured to have taken place up to 1915. After that, Hyde Park’s pet paradise was sealed. The gate shut, the lodgekeeper retired, and the cemetery simply faded from public notice.
For decades, hardly anyone knew it was there. It was rediscovered, in a sense, when the Royal Parks opened it occasionally for tours. Today, you can only see it by special arrangement – or by joining one of those rare guided visits.
But here’s the thing: you can peek through the railings. Go to Victoria Gate, just by the Lancaster Gate side of Hyde Park, opposite Albion Street. You’ll see the old lodge – lovely red brick, pitched roof, like something out of Beatrix Potter. Peer carefully through the black iron fence. You’ll spot the tiny white stones in the grass.
Now, as for when to go – timing is everything. Late afternoon is best, around four o’clock, when the light comes slanting low across the park. The sun picks out the inscriptions and the shadows stretch long and dappled through the trees. It’s magic. There’s something in the air then – melancholy, yes, but also tender.
Come in high summer and the flowers bloom across the grass; come in winter and the frost rims the little stones like silver lace. Either way, it’s quiet. You can almost hear the faint patter of ghostly paws.
And what’s special about it? Well – it’s intimate. It’s personal. Unlike the great Victorian cemeteries – Kensal Green, Highgate, Brompton – this isn’t a statement in marble. It’s not about glory or grandeur. It’s about love. About loss. About the small heartbreaks that the big ones are made of.
Think of it: 1881. The British Empire at its height. Railways everywhere, steamships criss-crossing the world, electric lights just coming in – and yet, behind a gatekeeper’s lodge, someone’s grieving over a tiny terrier and carving “Good Dog” into a bit of white stone. That’s London for you. The vast and the intimate, cheek by jowl.
I like to imagine Mr Pettiward tending the graves, clipping the grass, maybe talking quietly to his silent company. And the park’s great trees whispering overhead. He probably had no idea that, a century later, Londoners would still be standing there, peering through his railings, moved by what he helped create.
The Victorians built empires, yes. But they also built this – this miniature heaven for their faithful friends.
And in its own way, that might be the truest monument of all.
So next time you’re in Hyde Park – don’t just stride past Victoria Gate. Stop. Look through those railings. Say hello to Cherry and Prince and Tiny and Jim.
Because down there, beneath that patch of grass, London’s most loyal citizens are still keeping watch.
And if you listen closely – really closely – you might just hear a faint wag of the tail.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com.
Home of London Walks, London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £25 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do to attract and keep the best guides in London – you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating: the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Jack the Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians, university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)… well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.