Walks Through Regency London
This book is the result of many explorations in search of the Regency London that forms the background of my novels. London has a long history and fire, war and redevelopment have destroyed, changed and blurred the physical evidence of that past. Yet it can still be found, sometimes intact, sometimes only as a ghost.
These ten self-guided walks will take you to the London of the “long Regency” – the last years of the 18th century and into the first quarter of the 19th century. In some places you can see actual buildings and places that Jane Austen, Nelson or Beau Brummell would have recognised. In others the explorer must use their imagination to conjure up the past.
Each walk is around 2 miles (3 km) long, not allowing for visits inside museums, but they can be subdivided and tackled in shorter visits or linked together for all-day explorations.
It can be used in conjunction with Walking Jane Austen’s London which contains a further eight walks.
Excerpt
Walk 1: St James’s
Distance: 1.5 miles.
Transport: Nearest tube station – Green Park. Buses 9, 14, 19, 22, 23, 38.
When to visit: Spencer House is only open on Sundays (Guided tours. Booking required.) but St James’s Square garden and the shops in St James’s Street are closed then and services may be in progress in St James’s church.
Useful websites:
St James’s church: https://sjp.org.uk
Spencer House: https://spencerhouse.co.uk
Green Park: https://wwwroyalparks.org.uk/visit/parks/green-park
Start at Green Park tube, turn right along Piccadilly to St James’s Street. Pause at the top of the street looking down to St James’s Palace.
On the corner was the fashionable shoemaker George Hoby, who designed riding boots for the Duke of Wellington, resulting in the eponymous Wellington boot.
St James’s Street was the masculine heart of fashionable Regency London. Georgette Heyer’s fans will recall the scene in The Grand Sophy where Sophy disgraces herself by driving Miss Wraxton down St James’s Street past the gentlemen’s clubs.
In 1815 “the west side of this street is chiefly composed of stately houses belonging to the nobility and gentry, one or two extensive hotels, bankers etc. The opposite side consists of elegant shops, which appear to a stranger rather as lounging-places than resorts of trade and the busy pursuits of merchandise.” But, as the Reverend Joseph Nightingale went on to point out: “The fact is, that, with one or two exceptions, these hotels are those sinks of vice and dissipation – the bane of human happiness and domestic peace – Gaming Houses!” (Surveys of the City of London and the City of Westminster, 4 vols 1814-15.)
It is estimated that there were twenty-four gaming hells in the St James’s area at the beginning of the 19th century.
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