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 Tuesday, February 17th, 2026.
And here it is.
Here’s your daily London fix.
Right.
Faded colour. Grainy. Slightly jumpy.
The BBC camera tilts up into a pale Trafalgar Square sky and there,
dear God, there he is.
A man.
A small, stubborn human figure. Halfway to heaven on a ladder that looks about as reassuring as overcooked spaghetti.
This is the famous 1960s BBC footage of Nelson’s Column being cleaned.
And it is, to borrow the line we must absolutely keep,
hold-on-to-your-seats viewing.
Because the ladder is not snug against the column.
Oh no.
Near the top it leans outward into thin air.
Not in.
Not straight up.
Out.
Into space.
The platform beneath the statue projects beyond the shaft of the column, so the poor steeplejack is effectively climbing into fresh London atmosphere.
Traffic murmuring 170 feet below. A breeze doing its worst.
And one chap in a flat cap proceeding upward with the calm of a man who has clearly never watched his own job on YouTube.
The ladder-and-steeplejack era makes for heart-in-mouth viewing.
But the modern regime is rather more civilised.
But before we fast-forward,
let’s get properly acquainted with what, exactly,
they were clambering up.
At the summit stands Admiral Nelson himself, naturally.
The statue is carved from Craigleith sandstone, quarried near Edinburgh.
This was premium 19th-century building stone.
Fine-grained. Pale.
Dense. Tough as old boots. Architects loved it because it held crisp detail and weathered London’s climate better than most sandstones.
Below Nelson rises the great fluted shaft of Dartmoor granite.
Darker. Harder.
Practically indestructible. If Craigleith is refined,
Dartmoor granite is
the strong silent type.
And at the base of the column, those four famous battle reliefs?
Yes indeed. Bronze.
Cast from captured French cannon after Trafalgar.
Proper imperial recycling with a flourish.
So the monument is a marriage of sandstone, granite and bronze.
All handsome. All durable.
All, unfortunately, extremely good at attracting London grime.
Because what were those brave steeplejacks actually cleaning off?
Mid-20th-century London air was filthy.
Not metaphorically.
Chemically.
Think:
Over time this cocktail forms a dark, crusty film.
On sandstone it discolours and can trap moisture.
On bronze it creates complex patinas,
some protective,
some quietly corrosive
depending on the chemistry of the deposit.
In the smoggy decades before
clean air legislation bit,
Nelson got grubby with surprising speed.
Hence the periodic assaults by the steeplejacks.
How often did they go up those ladders?
Not annually,
but regularly enough to keep the national hero presentable.
Major cleans tended to come along roughly every couple of decades, with inspections and minor attention in between.
The dramatic BBC footage captures one of those bigger campaigns rather than routine weekly dusting.
And who, you may reasonably ask, put those alarming ladders up?
Not volunteers with strong tea and weak judgement.
These were professional steeplejack firms, specialists in high work on chimneys,
towers and spires.
They erected and secured the ladders,
rigged the ropes,
and sent up men who possessed the sort of balance that makes the rest of us feel faint.
Even so.
You watch that moment where the ladder kicks out near the top and your palms begin to prickle.
Because of that architectural flourish you spotted.
The bit that sticks out and causes all the drama.
The correct term is the capital of the column.
More precisely, Nelson stands above the Corinthian capital and its abacus,
the crowning assembly that spreads the load at the top of the shaft.
It projects beyond the column below,
which is why the ladder,
in those hair-raising films,
has to lean outward into open air for the final stretch.
Structurally sound.
Visually terrifying.
Now fast-forward to the present day, and everything changes.
When Nelson gets his clean
in the modern era,
the watchword is minimum intervention.
Conservation, not conquest.
For major campaigns,
the entire column is wrapped in full scaffolding.
Base to admiral’s hat.
Proper engineered framework.
No more lone figures flirting with gravity for routine works.
This allows conservators to:
And here’s the big shift.
Instead of the aggressive blasting methods once used,
the 21st-century approach is gentle, almost tender.
The major 2006 restoration, for example,
relied heavily
on steam cleaning and
very mild abrasives.
Low pressure. Controlled.
The aim explicitly to avoid damaging both the sandstone and the bronze.
For delicate areas,
especially bronze details,
it becomes almost museum work:
It’s meticulous. Patient.
Not remotely cinematic.
Between the big scaffold moments, smaller maintenance jobs may use cherry pickers,
those long articulated arms
you sometimes see nosing into the sky above the Square.
Still high. Still impressive.
But a far cry from a man
inching up a ladder that appears
to have lost confidence in the concept of gravity.
There has been another quiet change as well.
The pigeon factor.
There was a time when Trafalgar Square hosted tens of thousands of pigeons.
A feathery air force of enthusiastic contributors to the nation’s guano reserves.
Their droppings were not just unsightly.
They’re mildly acidic and can damage stone over time.
Modern bird control has dramatically reduced their numbers. Fewer pigeons means slower grime build-up.
Which means Nelson gets to keep his dignity for longer stretches between cleans.
So where does that leave us?
In the old days they sent up steeplejacks with ladders and strong nerves.
Today Nelson is tended like a museum masterpiece,
slowly, gently and at
considerable expense.
Safer for the monument.
Safer for the men.
Perhaps,
if we’re being just a little sentimental,
slightly less hair-raising for the rest of us.
But I will say this.
Watch that BBC film.
Watch the ladder tilt out into nothing.
Watch the man climb anyway.
And try not to feel a flicker of admiration for the London workers who looked up at
170 feet of fresh air and thought, with magnificent understatement:
Right then.
Up we go.
Because Nelson may be sandstone and granite and bronze.
But the story of keeping him clean?
That, my friends, is pure nerve.
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 a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time Out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including 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 here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
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.