London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Monday, November 24th.
And, yes, here it is, your daily London fix. It’s a London anniversary. A double anniversary. And what’s not to like about it. You want to leave your friends staring in stark amazement – let alone lost in admiration – casually ask them if they know what happened in London on this day in 1434. And then again in 1715.
And, sure enough, there’s a London Walk that has a pretty good dovetail with this ancient London event. A visual no less. You’ll see it on the Along the Thames Pub Walk. But that’s enough warm-up. As the umpire says at the start of a baseball game, Play Ball.
We can get the game underway by picturing the grey-green swell of the River Thames slowing,
its tide pushed back by ice,
the roar of barges silenced,
London’s heart unexpectedly still.
On this day, November 24th, 1434
the river froze so hard
you could cart freight across it
from the mouth to the City.
And exactly 281 years later,
on November 24, 1715,
it happened again.
Difference was this time
only this time the ice
gave Londoners a party.
What’s with November 24th?
And how
did this frigid spectacle come about? Let’s slip on our winter boots and
step onto the ice of time.
Why 24 November keeps showing up
The date isn’t mystical in itself –
rather it falls at the cusp of true winter
in the later medieval/early modern era. By late November
the nights are long,
an Arctic high-pressure system
can settle in,
cold easterlies bite across Britain,
and for those few windows
the Thames becomes vulnerable.
In 1434 a “great frost” began
on November 24th
and stuck around until February 10th.
Then in 1715
a similar freeze commenced
the same day,
ushering in
one of the larger ice-fairs on the Thames.
So yes –
November 24th seems
to mark the moment
when conditions lined up:
long cold nights,
slowed tides,
and a river flow hampered
by a medieval bridge.
Fate and architecture combined.
How the Thames came to freeze
Here’s the physics behind the spectacle. The Thames in those centuries was broader,
shallower,
and far less managed than today.
It hadn’t yet been embanked and upstream flow was sluggish.
Add in the crucial factor:
Old London Bridge,
with its 19 narrow arches and
timber-casings that
caught ice and debris.
In a brutal winter,
ice floes would lodge
between the piers,
act like a dam,
slow the ebb tide and
allow the river surface to freeze solid. The broader phenomenon?
The so-called Little Ice Age:
a period of colder winters across northern Europe
from the 14th to 19th centuries.
Put cold nights,
stagnant water,
a slow tide,
a pinch of architecture mischief –
and you get ice.
So what was London like half a century
before Columbus?
On that first date
London was a patch-work of
timber-framed houses,
narrow lanes,
riverside stalls,
the great bridge crowded with
shops and houses.
The population perhaps 40 000 at most.
When the frost began on
November 24, 1434
“all sorts of merchandises and
provisions brought into
the mouth of the said river were unladen, and brought by land to the city.”
Imagine the river frozen
from just below London Bridge
out towards Gravesend:
boats stuck,
watermen idle,
the usual bustle of shipping
turned into a winter road.
Outdoor traders adapting.
Cold enough that
Londoners might walk
or cart directly across the frozen solid river.
It wasn’t festive-fair time yet though. The mood: survival,
wonder,
economy readjusted.
Elsewhere in Europe
the Hundred Years War rumbled,
plague still lurked, and
England’s future empire
lay centuries away.
Now, Fast-forward to
November 24, 1715 and
a Britain ruled by
the recently crowned George I.
A London of Whig politics,
coffee-houses,
imported tea,
the crucible of a growing empire.
On the Thames:
not quite “they built a city on ice”
but they came close.
The freeze began that day,
and by January Londoners were skating, sledging,
watching ox-roasts,
printing souvenirs,
sliding nine-pins and
footballing on the river.
The boathouses became taverns,
the piers became promenades,
and for a few glorious weeks
the river was the West End.
And in 1715 the timing
(again starting on this day, November 24th)
reflects same meteorological window: late-autumn cold
establishing a frozen river base.
The difference?
Bigger city,
bigger spectacle,
more leisure.
Ok, back to 1434.
What else was going on in 1434?
The printing press
had just been invented in Europe (Gutenberg’s Bible only two years later). England languished amid war and disease,
the sea-route to the New World
still unknown.
Nearly 300 years later – 1715 –
The War of the Spanish Succession over; New World trade booming;
London expanding;
coffee, gin, global connections.
Yet nature still flexed its muscle.
Both freeze events show
that no matter how advanced the society, the climate can still stop traffic,
smash norms,
freeze a river into a dance-floor.
And why does it matter?
Because those freezes are
more than quirky anecdotes.
They remind us architecture matters
(that old bridge slowed the river),
the climate can shift (the Little Ice Age),
and people adapt
in the most human way:
business as unusual.
The 1434 freeze was raw survival.
The 1715 event turned that survival
into spectacle.
Both started on November 24th –
a date when the atmosphere,
the architecture and
the river’s flow conspired.
And in our warming world
the very idea of the Thames freezing seems absurd now.
The embankments,
the new bridges,
the steamy urban river –
mean we’ve lost a connection
to that wild freeze-moment.
Ok, ninth inning.
Final scene time.
Let’s get out the magic marker
and ring this date on the calendar.
On November 24th, years apart:
London stops.
The river halts.
Ice becomes roadway.
Cargo is dragged ashore.
Or ice becomes fairground.
Booths sprout on the Thames.
Sledges whizz.
Taverns open on the bog-white surface.
That date isn’t magic.
But it is the moment
when winter wins for a time.
And London pauses,
stumbles,
maybe pratfalls,
laughs,
adapts.
Next time you stroll by the Thames, imagine the ice,
the stillness, the whiteness,
the crowds on the river,
all beginning in that crisp November air.
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.