Ice No Lemon Built London’s Pub Map

Why did Bermondsey’s working-class pubs serve up pints to tanners reeking of dog poo. While Hampstead boasts literary haunts filled with poetry and spa visitors? 

It’s not luck. It’s topography - for the answer is buried deep. From glacial gravel, to wandering water, to the winds of fortune, this episode takes you on a rollicking ride through the forces that shaped London’s pub map long before the first pint was pulled.

From gravel terraces and Victorian fogs to posh mews pubs and riverside alehouses, we’re mapping the city through sediment.

You’ll learn why there are more Tube lines north of the river (hint: mud), why Belgravia even exists (money and dirt - literally), and how pub names like The Flask or The Woolpack are basically geological signposts in disguise.

This isn’t trivia. This is the secret decoder ring for understanding where pubs are, what they meant, and why your pint tastes different in Hampstead than it does in Bermondsey.

Listen before you plan your next trip - because the ground beneath your feet might just tell you more than your guide book.

Transcript

PUBLICITY – LONDON BY PUB

EPISODE 2: Ice No Lemon Built London’s Pub Map

[VOICE - COLD OPEN]

You've got five days in London. Limited time, unlimited options.

Your guidebook lists neighborhoods worth exploring. Mayfair, Shoreditch, Bermondsey, Hampstead, Notting Hill, Whitechapel. All "must-see" with "authentic character".

You can't visit them all. So, you pick randomly. Bermondsey sounds interesting. You spend an afternoon there, walk past converted warehouses, find a gastropub. Pleasant enough. But you're left wondering, 

"Did I just waste half a day on the wrong neighborhood?"

Here's the real question…

Why does Bermondsey feel completely different from Hampstead? Why are the pubs different? The architecture? The atmosphere?

Walk into a Bermondsey pub in 1850 and you'd find tanners in leather aprons reeking of dog feces - yes, actually used in the leather trade. Walk into a Hampstead pub and you'd be greeted by spa visitors discussing chalybeate spring water.

These weren't just different neighborhoods. They were different worlds. And here's what nobody tells you: you can predict which world you're walking into before you gamble your vacation time…

I'm Expat Andy, and this is Publicity - London By Pub.

Today we're doing something different - we're going underground. Something that should delight fans of The Jam. 

I don’t mean the Tube, not even the station at midnight, but down through time. 50 million years deep. Because if you want to understand where to find the best pubs in London, you need to understand why London exists at all. 

It starts with ice, no lemon. 450,000 years ago. Way before Brexit…

[MUSIC – INTRO]

ACT 1: THE DECODER KEY

Why are there so few Tube lines south of the Thames?

It's not politics; not money; not even about railways getting there first.

It's mud.

Water-bearing sand and gravel at exactly the depth you'd want to tunnel. North of the Thames? Perfect clay. South of the Thames? Geological nightmare.

This shaped London for two thousand years. Once you understand it, the city makes sense. Why Belgravia is posh and Bermondsey working-class. Why Hampstead stayed a village. Why there are pubs every few blocks in some areas and none in others.

Our Decoder Key? The invisible forces - ice, wind, water - that determined which London neighborhoods became wealthy, which became working-class, and why their pubs are completely different.

After this episode, you'll be able to look at any London neighborhood on a map and know what it's going to be like.

You know this frustration.

You research neighborhoods online. "Shoreditch is trendy!" "Notting Hill is charming!" But which one should you actually visit?

Guidebooks groups them by compass point. Helpful for navigation. Useless for decision-making. 

Walking tours show one neighborhood well; but you just spent four hours in Shoreditch, and still don't know if you should visit Bermondsey or Whitechapel tomorrow.

What's missing? The logic. The framework explaining why neighborhoods are the way they are. 

What you need is the ability to look at a location and immediately know:

·       When did this develop? 

·       Who lived here?

·       What industries shaped it?

·       What will the pubs be like?

Here's the Decoder Key. Three invisible forces that determined everything:

1.      Ice created gravel terraces that determined where you could build.

2.      Wind determined who could afford to live in each area.

3.      Water determined what industries developed where and when.

These three forces interacted over 2,000 years to create modern London. They're still visible. You can use them to predict neighborhoods you've never visited.

[MUSIC – BUMPER 1] 

ACT 2: HOW THE DECODER WORKS

FORCE 1: ICE - Where You Could Build

British History Online tells us that 450,000 years ago, massive glaciers from the Anglian Ice Age advanced as far south as modern Finchley. When they retreated, they left a staircase of gravel terraces.

The Joint Nature Conservation Committeeexplains how it worked. During warm periods between ice ages, the Thames was swollen with meltwater - maybe five times broader than today. It deposited gravel across its floodplain. Then, during the next cold period, the river cut down deeper, leaving the old floodplain high and dry as a terrace.

Repeat over hundreds of thousands of years, and you get the Thames Terrace System.

The British Geological Society identifies three key terraces:

The Boyn Hill Terrace - 100 to 150 feet above the river. Islington. Putney. Richmond. Good ground, stable, well-drained. Further from the water, which mattered in Roman and Medieval times.

The Taplow Terrace - 50 to 100 feet up. Prime real estate. The City, West End and East End. Close enough to the river for trade, high enough to avoid flooding. 

The Floodplain - A few feet above high tide according to The Encyclopedia Britannica. Marshy, subject to flooding, basically uninhabitable until, as Lookup London Tours tells us, Victorian engineers got their hands on it in the 1800s with the Thames Embankment. According to A London Inheritance, areas like Belgravia were described as a, "Lagoon of the Thames" where "the clayey swamp retained so much water that no one would build there." 

These terraces are gravel- well-drained, stable, perfect for building. The floodplain is clay and silt - waterlogged, unstable, malaria-ridden.

If you're a Roman general in 43 AD looking for a place to build a bridge, you want gravel terraces on bothsides of the river. There's one spot in the Thames estuary where you get that. 

THE ROMAN CHOICE

AD 43. Emperor Claudius invades Britain with 40,000 troops. His general, Aulus Plautius, pushes inland from Kent and hits the Thames - a massive natural barrier, a kilometer wide at high tide.

They need a crossing point. Most of the Thames estuary? Hopeless. Mudflats, marshes, gravel islands emerging and disappearing with the tide.

English Heritage and British History Onlinetell us that the Romans built their first bridge near modern London Bridge around AD 50 because here gravel terraces come right down to the water on both banks. The river narrows to about 300 meters. 

Steve Kay’s article in Banda Arc Geophysics reconstructs the rivers of 43 AD in SE England, assessing river wadeability, and examining relative sea-level changes.

Hazel Baker with London Guided Walkstells us this Roman bridge was a pontoon bridge - about 280 meters long, supported by 19 timber piers. Tree-ring dating on recovered timbers confirms mid-1st century construction.

This location gives you: 

·       Defensible ground.  

·       Fresh water.  

·       Tidal access from the coast. 

·       Road junction.

Website Roman Britaintells us that by AD 100, Londinium had at least 30,000  people. By AD 125, Historic UK says the Basilica in Roman Londinium was          , 

“The largest building of its type north of the Alps.”

This isn't accident - it's geology.

BUT HERE'S THE PROBLEM

The gravel terraces explain where people could build, but not who ended up wealthy or working-class.

The City, West End, and East End all sit on The Taplow Terrace. Same elevation, same geology. Why did Mayfair become mansions and Whitechapel slums?

Wind.

[MUSIC – BUMPER 2] 

FORCE 2: WIND - Who Could Breathe

The Encyclopedia Britannicastates, 

"The prevailing wind is west-southwest." 

That determined which neighborhoods became wealthy and which became slums.

From the 1700s onward, London burned lots of coal. Every house, factory, forge, and brewery. Coal smoke poured out of thousands of chimneys. Sulfur dioxide, soot, particulates. 

All that pollution blew east across the city on prevailing west-southwest winds. 

The Guardian Newspaper reported in 2017 that when cities have westerly winds, the easterly sections are poorer than the west.

THE VICTORIAN EVIDENCE

Victorian London tells us that in 1880, Victorian meteorologist R. Russell wrote a study on London fogs, calculating which neighborhoods would get the worst air.

Russell wrote, 

"At Hammersmith, an easterly breeze blowing from the direction of the East India Docks would bring the smoke of ten miles of houses… with a steady west wind the East End" would be "most obscured."

This wasn't subtle. Victorians knew. The wealthy could see which neighborhoods had clean air.

EAST END: THE SMOKE TRAP

Dr. Christine Corton, author of "London Fog - The Biography," explained to the East End Review,

"The wind direction in London tends to be from west to east, so the East End had a lot of industry puffing out smoke and houses that used open fires. But it was also getting the smoke from the West End because of the wind direction."

East London wasn't just producing its own pollution from docks, factories, and foundries. It also received all the pollution from central and west London. The East End became a smoke trap.

Property values responded. If you had money, you moved upwind - west.

BERMONDSEY: Downwind, Downriver, Working Pubs

Wikipedia tells us Bermondsey sits on, 

"A higher, drier spot in an otherwise marshy area", 

barely above the floodplain. More importantly, it's on the south bank, east of London Bridge. Downriver, and downwind from everything.  

Living London History tells us that in medieval times, 

 “The tanning of leather was banned within the city walls, due to the noxious smells it produced. Bermondsey, therefore, situated just South of the river, with its ready availability of water and grazing land became a hub of leather production…  dog faeces, or ‘pure’, was used along with urine to purify and soften the hides… Dickens said on one of his visits to Bermondsey that the ‘air reeks with evil smells’.” 

 A 1996 episode of the BBC documentary series Timewatch titled, “Voices of Victorian London” covers the grim reality.

[MUSIC – BUMPER 3] 

BERMONDSEY'S WORKING PUBS

Bermondsey developed a dense network of working pubs. By 1841, Bermondsey Street alone had 21 watering holes according to website Bermondsey Street London.

Workspace tells us that The Leather Exchangeat 15 Leathermarket Street, SE1 3HN opened in 1878, built right into the London Leather, Hide and Wool Exchange building designed by Bermondsey Architect George Elkington. 

According to Living London History, the building features decorative stone reliefs depicting the leather-making process. The pub served tanners and leather dressers whose clothes were "marked with many stains".

Simon the Tanner at 231 Long Lane, SE1 4PR became famous for its quality ales and Sunday roasts, serving the leather workers who dominated the area. Today, Londonistsays, 

“This smart pub has a lovely community feel, with a strong beer-focused offering… often features London (or near-London) independent breweries.”

Difford’s Guide notes the eponymous Simon was not an old boozy local tanner but the 10th century Coptic Orthodox saint associated with the myth of moving the Mokattam Mountain in Cairo.

CAMRA reminds us that the building is Grade II listed.

The Woolpack at 98 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3UB. Londonist tells us,

“A Bobby Dazzler once you step inside, with vintage tiling, a spiral staircase and curvy banquette seating adding a touch of class. The pub's chief attraction, though, is the ivy-strewn beer garden out back.”

London Picture Archive documents, 

“The site hosted a tavern since the late eighteenth-century, under the name of the Cock and Magpye, or the Cock and Pye, gaining its current name by 1837.” 

Bermondsey Street tells us that,

“Woolstaplers were trading in wool and wool products in Bermondsey St as early as the 15th century.”

The Hand and Marigold at 244 Bermondsey Street, SE1 3UH, was featured in a 1972 Thames TV documentary about life in Bermondsey, capturing authentic working-class pub culture before redevelopment. Emily Buckley Bunn writing for Southwark News reports the pub is,

“Thought to be named after the women who picked marigolds on the Thames’ marshes, the Hand & Marigold first opened in 1793… closed after the Covid pandemic… in September 2024 it was taken over by … couple Oli Carter-Esdale and Alice Hayward.”

Near the river is The Shipwrights Arms at 88 Tooley Street, SE1 2TF. London Guided Walks tells us that the pub served shipbuilders and dockworkers in Shipwright Yard. 

CAMRA shows us that it is a beautiful Grade II listed building built in 1884 with an original tiled mural of shipwrights at work and a rare central island bar. 

The Lyons Family Bermondsey History record tells us that by 1842 in Bermondsey, 

“The wealthier residents had left the parish, and the place had acquired a bad reputation. A thickly populated district along the waterside was inhabited by coal porters, whippers, longshore laborers and jobbers, corn porters, costermongers, watermen and sailors, whose earnings were irregular. The rest of the parish was occupied by working tanners, fellmongers, leather-dressers and other laborers. Four to five persons, on an average, slept in one room, standards of cleanliness and temperance were low, and the population subsisted chiefly on bread and potatoes.”

These weren't destination pubs. These were daily infrastructure for people who worked with their hands in brutal industries. The pubs reflect the neighborhood's working-class character because geology and wind determined who could afford to live there.

[MUSIC – BUMPER 4]

HAMPSTEAD: Upwind, Uphill, Destination Pubs

Now the opposite. According to the London Geodiversity Partnership, Hampstead Heath sits on Bagshot Sands overlying Claygate Beds and London Clay. 

Peakvisor.com reports the summit reaches approximately 453 feet (138 meters) above sea level, making it one of the highest points in London. 

Five miles northwest of the City. Completely upwind.

When London burned coal, Hampstead's high elevation kept it above the worst pollution. When the Thames flooded, Hampstead stayed dry. The London Geodiversity Partnership explains that springs emerged where the permeable Bagshot Sands met the impermeable Claygate Beds below, providing "Pure soft spring water".

Upwind, high elevation, healthy spa spring water. Wealthy Londoners paid attention.

The Camden Guides website notes these iron-rich chalybeate springs were thought to have medicinal properties and became the basis for health spas. 

Know Your London reports that commercial exploitation was well advanced by 1700. 

Wikipedia states elegant housing was built in New End Road, New End Square, and Church Row as the area developed into a fashionable spa retreat where the wealthy built weekend villas and artists sought clean air.

What kind of pubs did Hampstead develop? Not working pubs. Destination pubs. Literary pubs. Artist pubs.

The Spaniards Inn at Spaniards Road, NW3 7JJ. Their website tells us,

“Built in 1585 as a tollgate on the Finchley boundary… named after the Spanish Ambassador to James I of England”

A London Inheritance tells us The Spaniards Inn was built at the entrance to an estate owned by The Bishops of London administered by a toll gate known as Spaniards Gate. The pub and the toll gate feature in John Rocque’s pivotal 1746 map of London. 

London Pubs Where History Really Happened ’nails’ it,  

“Gaining a clear idea of the history of the Spaniards Inn is a bit like trying to nail a crisp to a beermat.”

A London Inheritance tells us the name has two different alleged origins. two Spanish owners dueled over a woman, or it was named after the Spanish Ambassador to James II. Highwayman Dick Turpin kept his horse in one of the pub buildings. 

The pub had a role in the Gordon Riots of June 1780. Anti-Catholic rioters approaching Kenwood House stopped at The Spaniard's Inn where they drank too much and were overcome.

The Spaniard’s Inn features in Dickens’ Pickwick Papers. Many literary and artistic inhabitants of Hampstead are believed to have visited - Keats, Shelley, Byron, Hogarth and Constable.  

Bram Stoker borrowed one of the pub’s ghost stories for Dracula, mentioning the pub, where the vampire hunter Van Helsing, after having supper in Jack Straws Castle, then, 

“By good chance we got a cab near the “Spaniards,” and drove to town.”

The Flask at 14 Flask Walk, NW3 1HE. Exploring London tells us The Flask is a Grade II listed building, named because of waters from nearby springs were taken to be bottled before being sold to coffee houses and taverns across London at threepence a flask. 

A London Inheritance tells us the site the pub is located on was the bottling location for the local well water.

CAMRA tells us that the current building dates from a rebuild in 1873 by Architects Cumming and Nixon. It is a CAMRA London Heritage Pub listed for its historic interior. 

The Wells Tavern at 30 Well Walk, NW3 1BX. Artist Website Freehand Lines documents this pub as serving, 

“A social hub during Hampstead’s spa era, offering facilities for drinking mineral waters, dancing, and even clandestine marriages…”

CAMRA informs us of The Wells Tavern Grade II listing.

Artist website Tomarctustells us that The Wells Tavern was established as a coaching inn by 1848 serving travelers between London and Hampstead.

Website Know Your London adds that according to a wall panel in the current Wells Tavern, the chalybeate waters began to be exploited in 1701 by John Duffield, with the Wells opening, 

"With good music and dancing all day long with accommodation for water drinkers of both sexes."

The Old Bull and Bush at North End Way, NW3 7HE.  

A London Inheritance cites an article from The Hampstead and Highgate Express telling us the building started life as a farmhouse and the country seat of the artist Hogarth, also enjoyed by Gainsborough. 

CAMRA adds,

“Grade II listing:- Public house. Reputedly built as a farm c1645, licensed 1721, rebuilt with modern extensions 1923-24”

CAMRA tells us the pub was made famous by Florrie Forde’s music hall song, “Down at the Old Bull and Bush". 

By the early 1900s it was a major summer destination. 

Website Peculiar London tells us the pub is rumored to be haunted by the ghost of a man whose skeleton was found bricked up in one of the walls during a 1987 renovation. The skeleton was accompanied by Victorian surgical implements suggesting that this was an illegal autopsy covered up.

These were destination pubs. Places where artists, writers, and wealthy spa visitors gathered - not to drink after a work shift, but to socialize, to be seen, to escape the city.

[MUSIC – BUMPER 5] 

BELGRAVIA: GEOLOGY SAYS NO; MONEY SAYS, “HOLD MY BEER”!

There's a third type of neighborhood - one that shouldn't exist based on natural geography. Belgravia.

A London Inheritance quotes from Old and New London by Edward Walfordan, 1878, 

"Much of Belgravia… was a 'lagoon of the Thames'… the clayey swamp… retained so much water…  no one would build there."

A swamp. Completely unbuildable. The location was upwind, however…

The Grosvenor family website details a fateful 1677 marriage between Sir Thomas Grosvenor and Mary Davies, heiress to the manor of Ebury - 500 acres of meadows, marsh and pasture to the west of the City. 

In the 1820s the Grosvenor family used this land for, 

“The development of Belgravia created a fashionable new quarter of houses, garden squares, streets and crescents in the Regency style… 

The Grosvenor family website adds,

“At the southern edge of the area, marshy lands described by American writer Edgar Allan Poe as ‘barren fetid damp waste’, were reclaimed using the soil excavated during the construction of London’s St Katharine’s dock to create Pimlico.” 

They drained the swamp. Imported excavated dirt from the docks. Physically raised the ground level. Construction from 1826 to 1847 created Belgrave Square. Eaton Square. Grand stucco terraces designed specifically for aristocrats and wealthy merchants.

Wikipedia notes that Belgravia was, 

"One of London's most fashionable residential districts from its beginnings". 

[MUSIC – BUMPER 6] 

THE MEWS PUBS OF BELGRAVIA

Website Ever Changing Mews tells us that Belgravia's grand terraced houses had mews streets behind them - narrow cobbled service streets where horses were stabled, carriages housed, and servants lived above.

Lurot Mews Newsreports that grooms and stable lads lived above the hay and corn store in rooms that, 

 "Reeked of ammonia and animal smells from the stalls below".

For these workers, toiling 12 hours a day with one day off per month, the mews pubs provided their only social space.

The Star Tavern at 6 Belgrave Mews West, SW1X 8HT is a perfect example of a surviving mews pub. One of only five pubs in every edition of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide.

A London Inheritance tells us,

“The Star was part of the westward expansion of Belgravia in the 1830s / 1840s, with the development of the Grosvenor Estate… it served, "A great many workmen and servants of the nobility and gentry in the neighborhood, who required that accommodation which only a licensed house could afford."” 

London Pub Crawls tells us that the pub was frequented by servants and farriers who worked in Belgrave Square. 

Ted Bruning, in his book Historic Pubs of London, describes the class-conscious architectural plan,  

“The ground floor of the pub was originally divided into at least three rooms. The main entrance opens onto a public bar, which may… have been subdivided by partitions around the horseshoe bar counter. Here one can imagine grooms and footmen assembling on their rare days off. Off to the left was an elegant saloon with its own fireplace, where valets and butlers might foregather… at the back of the pub you would have found yourself in the true inner sanctum, where only the butlers of the very grandest houses… would have congregated”.

Bruning documents domestic service was the largest employer before World War I, and,

“Represented one of the few chances of social advancement for working-class people.”

The decline in rigid social categorization after World War II saw these separate rooms combined. 

Enter Paddy Kennedy. One of the most colorful of pub Landlords took the stage at The Star Tavern. 

A London Inheritance tells us, 

“Pat Kennedy’s voice sounds like gravel-chips being steamrollered. It is heard at full blast any time of day or night… Name a personality, and he or she has been there.”

Swift Half reports that Landlord Paddy Kennedy once told Elizabeth Taylor, 

“Get your fat arse off that stool and let my friend sit down”, 

which she dutifully did.

Swift Half tells us that The Star Tavern’s upstairs room was a meeting place for major criminals in the 1950s-60s. The Great Train Robbery of 1963 was planned there. The gang stole £2.6 million (£50 million today), the largest heist in British history at the time.

Belgravia’s mews pubs served the domestic staff of Belgravia's grand houses. Not the wealthy residents - they would never set foot there. Not industrial workers - there was no industry here. Just butlers, grooms, coachmen, stable boys, scullery maids, and household servants.

Small. Hidden. Functional. These pubs occupied a middle ground - serving people who worked for the wealthy but weren't wealthy themselves.

Belgravia proves that with enough money, you can overcome geological disadvantage. 

[MUSIC – BUMPER 7] 

ACT 3: READING NEIGHBORHOODS WITH THE DECODER

You now understand: ice, wind, water. Here's how you use this to decode London.

Reading Elevation

Pay attention to hills. Going uphill - like walking from the Thames Embankment up to the Strand - means you're climbing from floodplain to terrace. That's why it's called the Strand. It was the beach before Victorian embankments.

Walk through Green Park toward Piccadilly and you'll feel the ground rising. Better drainage, cleaner water, less flooding. 

Flat and low areas like Southwark or Bermondsey? You're on the floodplain. These developed later, after Victorian engineering made them habitable on a large scale. 

Reading the Compass

Think about where you are relative to the City.

West? Upwind. Mayfair, Notting Hill, Kensington – clean air, wealthy neighborhoods.

East? Downwind. Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Poplar – pollution, working class neighborhoods.

Reading Pub Names

"The Flask," "The Wells Tavern," "The Spring"? Near a historic water source. Old, prime real estate, worth visiting.

"The Waterman," "The Ship," "The Anchor"? Near the river, developed around maritime trade.

"The Railway," "The Station Hotel"? Victorian pubs built when railways enabled suburban development.

[MUSIC – BUMPER 8] 

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOUR TRIP – READING THE COMPASS

Think about what you want to see.

Working-class Victorian London? Go east or to floodplain areas. Bermondsey, Whitechapel, Wapping. The pubs are functional, historic, and unpretentious. 

Wealthy Georgian and Victorian London? Go west and look for hills. Hampstead, Highgate, Notting Hill. Pubs designed for leisure, for showing off. Grander, more ornate.

Engineered Victorian Ambition? Belgravia, Mayfair, Pimlico, the Thames embankments. Areas that exist because Victorians had the engineering skill and capital to override geography.

THE BIG PICTURE - THE THREE FACTORS COMBINED

Geology determined where you could build. Gravel terraces? Build. Floodplain? Not without massive investment.

Wind determined who became wealthy. Upwind neighborhoods got clean air and became fashionable. Downwind got pollution and became working-class.

Water determined whendevelopment happened. Areas with easy water access developed first. Marshy areas waited for Victorian engineering.

Capital could override everything - but only for the very wealthy.

These three factors interacted over 2,000 years. Each combination created different pub culture:

·       Hampstead - destination pubs serving spa visitors, artists, and writers. The Spaniards Inn where Keats wrote poetry. The Flask named for spa water bottles.

·       Belgravia - hidden mews pubs serving domestic staff. The Star Tavern where servants drank.

·       Bermondsey - working pubs serving tanners and dock workers. The Leather Exchange. Simon the Tanner. The Woolpack. The Hand and Marigold. The Shipwrights Arms.

None of this was planned. It was geography determining history, step by step, over centuries.

And once you understand this, you can read London like a local.

[MUSIC – BUMPER 9] 

ACT 4: YOUR SUPERPOWER

Here's what you can do now that other tourists can't.

You're planning your London trip. You open a map. You look at neighborhoods you've never visited. And you can easily predict:

·       "Shoreditch - east of the City, floodplain. Working-class history, Victorian warehouses, now gentrified. Pubs will be converted industrial spaces, hipster bars, gastropubs.” 

·       "Primrose Hill - northwest, high ground, upwind. Wealthy residential. Pubs will be refined, expensive, destination venues. Literary connections likely."

·       "Wapping - Thames riverside, east. Maritime trade, dockworkers. Pubs tied to shipping history. Likely still rough-edged character if they survived gentrification."

You don't need to visit them all. You can look at the map, apply the Decoder, and know which neighborhoods match what you want to experience.

That's the superpower. Not memorizing neighborhood names. Not hoping your guidebook steered you right. Actually understanding the invisible forces that made London what it is.

When planning a London trip, ask yourself:

•         Am I looking at high ground or floodplain?

•         East or west of the City?

•         Near water? Springs? River?

•         What does the architecture tell me about when this developed?

These questions tell the neighborhood's entire story. Once you can read the topography, you can read London.

Your friends will wander randomly. You'll know exactly where to go.

Every pub, every neighborhood, has a story to tell, if you know where to look…

You just need the Decoder Key…

Find us at publicitythepodcast.com for maps, walking routes, photos. Everything you need to turn these stories into experiences. We even have our Watchmakers Club for those who want to go deeper into show topics.

I'm Expat Andy, and this has been Publicity - London By Pub. Thank you for listening.

[MUSIC – OUTRO]