This walk will be led by Sylvia McNamara, chair of Camden Tour Guides Association and accredited Camden and City of London guide. Living in Kentish Town, Sylvia is a passionate enthusiast of Camden and loves the history of Bloomsbury.

The walk revists the Squares that were originally laid out in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first – Bloomsbury Square itself – by the Earl of Southampton in the 1660s! These squares were always intended to serve as a greening purpose – they were halfway between parks and gardens, and are unique to England. Still today, thanks to the continued upkeep, the reaction of most people as the enter the square is to take deep breath. Each one has it’s own characteristics, and each has had interesting residents living in the surrounding houses.

We will meet some of the following characters on our walk:
-Gordon Square: Noor Inyat Khan
-Bedford Square: Jessie Reid and Louisa Garrett Anderson,
-Russell Square: the Pankhursts
-Bloomsbury Square: Dido Belle
-Tavistock Square: Virginia Woolf and Louisa Aldrich-Blake

FREE – Just turn Up 

This event is part of the Festival Opening Event The Store Street Global Garden Party.

“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” was written on Store Street, arguing for equal education for rich & poor, boys & girls together, at state expense. A radical idea! We salute its author by walking the streets she knew, hearing stories of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft in the smoky capital and its surrounding fresh-air villages (including Newington Green, where Maggi Hambling’s statue drew international attention in 2020). She lived and wrote in a circle of liberals and radicals, and like some later nearby writers, she too had an unconventional love life. Virginia Woolf said Wollstonecraft’s relationship with anarchist philosopher William Godwin was her “most fruitful experiment”; their daughter was Mary (“Frankenstein”) Shelley, whose memorial plaque we will pass.

Born the same year as the British Museum, Wollstonecraft spent her life searching for freedom: liberating her sister from an unhappy marriage, travelling to Paris to observe the unfolding revolution (our first female war correspondent), falling in love with an American adventurer and planning a life on the frontier with him.

We stroll through Russell Square (site of Thackeray’s anti-Wollstonecraftian novel “Vanity Fair”) via literary Marchmont Street to her first grave, at St Pancras Old Church, Somers Town.

Tickets: £5

This walk will be led by Sylvia McNamara, chair of Camden Tour Guides Association and accredited Camden and City of London guide. Living in Kentish Town, Sylvia is a passionate enthusiast of Camden and loves the history of Bloomsbury.

The walk revists the Squares that were originally laid out in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first – Bloomsbury Square itself – by the Earl of Southampton in the 1660s! These squares were always intended to serve as a greening purpose – they were halfway between parks and gardens, and are unique to England. Still today, thanks to the continued upkeep, the reaction of most people as the enter the square is to take deep breath. Each one has it’s own characteristics, and each has had interesting residents living in the surrounding houses.

We will meet some of the following characters on our walk:
-Gordon Square: Noor Inyat Khan
-Bedford Square: Jessie Reid and Louisa Garrett Anderson,
-Russell Square: the Pankhursts
-Bloomsbury Square: Dido Belle
-Tavistock Square: Virginia Woolf and Louisa Aldrich-Blake

Tickets: £5

“A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” was written on Store Street, arguing for equal education for rich & poor, boys & girls together, at state expense. A radical idea! We salute its author by walking the streets she knew, hearing stories of the life of Mary Wollstonecraft in the smoky capital and its surrounding fresh-air villages (including Newington Green, where Maggi Hambling’s statue drew international attention in 2020). She lived and wrote in a circle of liberals and radicals, and like some later nearby writers, she too had an unconventional love life. Virginia Woolf said Wollstonecraft’s relationship with anarchist philosopher William Godwin was her “most fruitful experiment”; their daughter was Mary (“Frankenstein”) Shelley, whose memorial plaque we will pass.

Born the same year as the British Museum, Wollstonecraft spent her life searching for freedom: liberating her sister from an unhappy marriage, travelling to Paris to observe the unfolding revolution (our first female war correspondent), falling in love with an American adventurer and planning a life on the frontier with him.

We stroll through Russell Square (site of Thackeray’s anti-Wollstonecraftian novel “Vanity Fair”) to literary Marchmont Street.

Tickets: £5

This walk will be led by Sylvia McNamara, chair of Camden Tour Guides Association and accredited Camden and City of London guide. Living in Kentish Town, Sylvia is a passionate enthusiast of Camden and loves the history of Bloomsbury.

The walk revists the Squares that were originally laid out in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first – Bloomsbury Square itself – by the Earl of Southampton in the 1660s! These squares were always intended to serve as a greening purpose – they were halfway between parks and gardens, and are unique to England. Still today, thanks to the continued upkeep, the reaction of most people as the enter the square is to take deep breath. Each one has it’s own characteristics, and each has had interesting residents living in the surrounding houses.

We will meet some of the following characters on our walk:
-Gordon Square: Noor Inyat Khan
-Bedford Square: Jessie Reid and Louisa Garrett Anderson,
-Russell Square: the Pankhursts
-Bloomsbury Square: Dido Belle
-Tavistock Square: Virginia Woolf and Louisa Aldrich-Blake

Tickets: £5

This walk will be led by Sylvia McNamara, chair of Camden Tour Guides Association and accredited Camden and City of London guide. Living in Kentish Town, Sylvia is a passionate enthusiast of Camden and loves the history of Bloomsbury.

The walk revists the Squares that were originally laid out in the 17th and 18th centuries. The first – Bloomsbury Square itself – by the Earl of Southampton in the 1660s! These squares were always intended to serve as a greening purpose – they were halfway between parks and gardens, and are unique to England. Still today, thanks to the continued upkeep, the reaction of most people as the enter the square is to take deep breath. Each one has it’s own characteristics, and each has had interesting residents living in the surrounding houses.

We will meet some of the following characters on our walk:
-Gordon Square: Noor Inyat Khan
-Bedford Square: Jessie Reid and Louisa Garrett Anderson,
-Russell Square: the Pankhursts
-Bloomsbury Square: Dido Belle
-Tavistock Square: Virginia Woolf and Louisa Aldrich-Blake

Tickets: £5