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 Monday, September 29th, 2025.
And just like that, the London Calling Book Club Corner is back. Well, back for tonight at any rate.
Kevin, the emeritus London Museum archaeologist, has written in to say he’s reading The Tyranicide Brief: The Story of the Men Who Sent Charles I to the Scaffold.
Kevin says, “I was recommended this book in an email from someone who came on my walk. What makes it so fascinating is that it is written by a human rights lawyer with a real understanding of the law. He can therefore show how pioneering John Cooke was in his job of prosecuting King Charles 1st for Treason and murder. It really gives a great insight into what was at stake.” Kevin says
Americans in particular might want to get across Geoffrey Robertson’s book given the temper of the times, so to speak.
Ok, moving on.
“What’s in a name?” says Juliet in Shakespeare’s great star-crossed lovers tragedy. Well – quite a lot, as poor Juliet and her boyfriend soon find out.
And just like that, hey presto, here’s an idea. Why stop at names? Why not ask: what’s in a word?
Let’s take a word we guides use all the time – one that’s common currency on our walks – and really look at it. Get ourselves, and our walkers, the London Walks community, properly up to speed. My hunch is that would be something in the way of a good deed. Because I suspect a lot of people only have, at best, a sketchy idea of what we mean when we say, “in the Georgian era…”
So, yes, today’s word – our inaugural word for this series – is Georgian.
And to be sure, there are plenty of other sheep in that pen – Elizabethan, Jacobean, Regency, Victorian, Edwardian. Their turn will come. Something tells me this idea has legs.
But today, it’s Georgian’s day in the sun.
First things first, when Was the Georgian Period?
It takes its name from four kings. Four kings, one name. George I takes the throne in 1714. George IV bows out in 1830. That’s the Georgian era – just over a century. Sometimes we let William IV (1830–37) sneak in as “late Georgian,” and we often include the Regency (1811–20) under the same umbrella. Same look, just with a touch more polish.
So: if you’re standing in front of a building from 1714 to 1830, there’s a good chance you’re looking at Georgian.
A little lexicographic footnote: the word Georgian doesn’t appear in English until 1745, when the Gentleman’s Magazine suggested that “a new account of time be established in perpetual memory of his majesty King George, denominated the Georgian account.” Curiously, Dr Johnson – the Georgian figure par excellence – didn’t get around to putting the word Georgian into his great dictionary.
Ok, so here’s your Spotter’s Guide to Georgian London. Well, Georgian architecture at any rate.
Georgian buildings are calm. Polite. They look you straight in the eye.
Step back: does it look orderly, balanced, civilised? You’re looking at Georgian.
And so we come to the question, Why does Georgian architecture look like that. This is where it gets fascinating. Georgian architecture isn’t just pretty – it’s the mindset of the age in brick and glass.
1. Call it Virtue out of necessity. Georgian London was a pre-industrial city. Wealthy, yes – but not yet industrially rich. They didn’t have the factories to mass-produce endless ornament. They didn’t have the budget for decorative excess. So they made a virtue of restraint: balance, proportion, symmetry. It’s elegance by arithmetic.
Come the Victorians, the Industrial Revolution is roaring, Britain is rolling in money, and the mood shifts. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it.” So they do – with busy brickwork, carved lintels, stained glass, terracotta panels, iron balconies. Decoration for decoration’s sake.
But you can drill down deeper still. In five words: Order in a lawless city. Public space in Georgian London was chaotic. No police force. Patchy street lighting. Rowdy crowds. Occasional riots. You couldn’t control the streets – but you could control your house. And so you did. The symmetry, the order, the careful façades were partly a psychological defence: here at least, in this house, there is calm and order.
And as for the Anatomy of a Georgian House
Come inside.
Basement. The engine room. The kitchen with its big fire range. No fridges, no tins – food bought daily, preserved with salt, sugar, vinegar. A scullery, a pantry, a wine cellar if you could afford one. Servants lived down here.
Ground floor. Through the front door into a hall and a sweeping staircase. Dining room one side, parlour the other. Bare boards with rugs. Painted panelling or wallpaper (yes, they loved wallpaper). Coal fires in every room.
First floor – the piano nobile. The show floor. Tall ceilings, best plasterwork, drawing room and music room for entertaining.
Upper floors. Bedrooms. Smaller as you climb. Servants and children often under the eaves.
Lighting? Candles, oil lamps. Water? A pump or cistern. Toilets? Chamber pots or a backyard privy – unless you were early to the water closet fashion.
The Street Outside
House numbers only appear from the mid-18th century – before that, you’d say “the house with the blue door, three along from the Swan.” Streets paved in good districts. Oil lamps first, then gas by the Regency, and suddenly London had nightlife. Still, watch your step – horses left their calling cards everywhere.
Georgian Calm vs Victorian Clutter
Step into a Georgian interior: chalky walls, pale green or stone. Fine, unfussy cornices. Light furniture with slim legs. A plaster rosette on the ceiling, a marble fireplace – and that’s enough.
Now step forward fifty years into a Victorian parlour: patterned wallpaper, patterned carpet, patterned curtains. Heavy carved furniture. Knick-knacks, bell-pulls, antimacassars, ferns. Every surface busy.
Georgians whisper elegance. Victorians shout prosperity.
Seeing With Understanding
The great 19th century English painter John Constable once said we don’t truly see until we understand. Once you understand this, Georgian London comes into focus. The fanlight isn’t just decoration – it’s a little moon of order in a dark, dangerous city. The symmetry isn’t just fashion – it’s control, it’s reassurance.
Those plain fronts are not poverty – they’re poise. Elegance born of necessity.
Understand Georgian architecture and you stop being a passer-by. You become a time-traveller.
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 £20 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 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.