The History of Walking with David Harrison from Footways

Episode type: London Walking Festival 2026 Special (final episode)

Recorded at: Church of St. Bartholomew the Great, London

Guest: David Harrison, co-founder of Footways and creator of the Historic Ways map

In the final walking festival special of the series, Michael talks to David Harrison at St Bartholomew the Great about the deep history of walking in London. David traces the surviving evidence of the city's pedestrian past, from Portland stone pavements at Lincoln's Inn to an 18th century "low traffic neighbourhood" at Queen Anne's Gate. He tells the remarkable stories of Ben Jonson and John Taylor, who both walked from London to Scotland in 1618 by entirely different routes, and maps out the lost medieval pilgrimage route from London to Walsingham. The conversation takes in Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, Dickens and Bob Cratchit, 400,000 Victorian commuters, the wealth of medieval monasteries around Smithfield, and the modern revival of pilgrimage walking through the London Walking Festival.

In this episode:

• Early pavements surviving in London at King's Bench, Lincoln's Inn and St Paul's
• Queen Anne's Gate as an early low traffic neighbourhood
• Samuel Pepys' walking commute across London
• Lancelot Andrews walking from Cambridge as a student
• Ben Jonson's 1618 walk to Edinburgh via the east coast
• John Taylor the Water Poet's Penniless Pilgrimage via the west coast
• The Canterbury Tales route along the A2
• The lost medieval pilgrimage route from London to Walsingham
• The Greenlink Walk from Epping Forest to Peckham Rye
• Walking Post's London Diagonal route
• The Essex Way from Epping Forest to Harwich
• 400,000 people walking into the City of London daily in the Victorian era
• Bob Cratchit and Dickens walking from Camden to the City
• The monasteries of Smithfield and Clerkenwell
• Filth and Health conference, 26 June at Bart's Hospital

Footways 

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