Historic Pubs and Ghastly Smithfield - A Tour Through London's Macabre Past

Explore the macabre churches, grisly execution sites, and haunted tube stations in one of London's oldest areas - and stop for pints of traditional cask ale along the way. As a London historian and cultural anthropologist specialising in dark heritage, I love traversing the spookiest corners of this ancient city. I have written extensively on this topic, and love sharing these grim and wonderful tales over a pint of local beer. On our tour, we'll visit plague pits, skinned saints, restless ghosts, surgery without anaesthetic, body snatchers, public hangings, and so much more. You'll understand the dark side of this city on a deeper level - this is not your typical 'ghost' tour with costumes and jump scares. Instead, these are the real histories of doom, horror, and death that make London what it is today.

We meet at Farringdon Station, said to be haunted by the spirit of a mistreated little girl. Then, we make our way to Charterhouse Square - the site of the largest plague pit in London, and visit our first pub. Next, we walk through the massive Smithfield Meat Market for tales of public execution - some boiled in oil in front of Bloody Mary herself. We take small twisted lanes to the oldest church in London - St Bartholomew the Great, said to be haunted by a restless monk. If our tour is during the day, we can also go inside and visit Rahere and statue of the skinned St Bartholomew. Now it's time for our second pub, and tales of surgery before the era of hygiene and anaesthesia. We visit Bart's hospital and the site where William Wallace was hanged, drawn, and quartered, and then we make our way to St Sepulchre Without Newgate. Here, we explore the topic of body snatching and the Resurrection Men before sitting down at our final pub to talk about public hangings at the Old Bailey.