By the River Thames in Southwark
Manningtree, Essex
Bankside
Mistley, Essex
Joined 2023
Laura A.
Identity Verified
Interview-Based Quality Checks
Date
People
Available Areas
Essex, London (Living), Hammersmith and Fulham, Haringey, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Kent, Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Waltham Forest, Wandsworth, Bloomsbury, England
Languages
English (Native), Spanish
Response Time
11 hours on average
Availability Updated
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About Tour Guide Laura A.
I'm a qualified London guide now offering History Walks with Gender, Sex and Class. Walks focus on the lives of poorer working people rarely described in historical accounts except as criminals or objects of charity. When there’s an opportunity to talk about women I’ll take it, and social class is always on the table. I've been a writer, researcher and critical historian all my life, and I've been a Londoner since the 1960s, although I've left to live in other towns and countries. Author of Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry, for many years I've focused on getting the stories out of women and others marginalised because of being poor, foreign, ‘different’ or doing jobs some folks think are Wrong, in the present and in the past. I'm known as The Naked Anthropologist.
Important
I'm a guide for walking tours; I don't have a car.
Tours
All tours can be customized for you. Send me a message with your requests!
Categories
Art, Culture, & Historical
The Sex Industry and the Stage in Georgian London
London
2 hours 30 min
After the Puritan Protectorate Londoners went wild. The sex industry became huge and public and London sex-capital of Europe. The walk starts with theatres at a time when all actresses were considered prostitutes and the stage a place for clients to find them. We see where street-walkers and bawdy houses were linked with playhouses, hear about bawdy-house keepers and women who worked in them, homosexual Molly Houses, Jelly Houses, Coffee Houses and Bagnios. Links with criminals are everywhere.
FROM$450/ per group
The Secret London Village of Primrose Hill
London
2 hours 30 min
Primrose Hill is one of London's most desirable areas but it was born with the noisy grimy railway in the early 19th century. The streets show industrial solutions by brilliant Victorian engineers and the hard labour of tough 'navvies' who built them. On this walk you'll see railway-industry landmarks and pastel-painted streets that came later, in one of which lives Paddington Bear. Also a beautiful stretch of the Regent's Canal, and from the top of the hill itself great views over London.
FROM$450/ per group
The Great Wild West of Medieval Southwark
London
3 hours 30 min
Nowadays Southwark is in London but 500 years ago it lay outside City control, an area of Anything Goes. South of London Bridge was the county of Surrey, but the sheriff's job was made hard by private estates with their own systems of law. This was the place to be if you were on the run. The market was outside the City so prices were cheaper driving City authorities wild. Travellers and pilgrims came from far and wide, Bankside was nightlife area renowned for gaming, theaters and brothels.
FROM$450/ per group
Wind in the Willows - the Thames from Richmond to Twickenham
London
4 hours
Your dreams of English countryside come true in the city. Richmond is Sir David Attenborough's favourite place on the planet. We see a wide village green, narrow lanes, the Tudor gatehouse of Richmond Palace and the Old Deer Park. Swimming birds and working boathouses await you, as we cross Richmond Bridge to walk southwards along the river, passing Marble Hill House and other mansions with parklands and formal gardens as well as wildflowers, paddling children and dogs.
FROM$389/ per group
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