Going Astray Dickens And London

What People Mean When They Talk About Going Astray Dickens And London

The phrase usually comes up when someone is trying to map out a walking itinerary through central London that traces the locations Charles Dickens frequented or set in his novels. It is not an official program, a registered tour company, or anything backed by the Dickens House Museum. It is a loose concept that has circulated on forums and travel boards since at least the early 2000s. The idea is straightforward: you pick a cluster of Dickens-related sites in London and walk between them instead of taking the tube or bus. The core mechanic is selecting about five to eight addresses across a single zone and walking them in sequence. Common starting points are the Museum of London near Barbican, then moving toward Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Old Bailey area, Greyhound pub in Lambeth (associated with Oliver Twist), and finishing near Covent Garden or Smithfield. The whole circuit covers roughly 4 to 6 kilometers depending on which buildings you include. The route takes about 90 minutes to two hours at a leisurely pace, and closer to 45 minutes if you are just hitting the major stops. What most people miss at first is that the Dickens connection for many of these sites is indirect. The Blue Plaque scheme marks where he lived or wrote, not necessarily where scenes took place in the books. For example, Dickens lived at 48 Doughty Street in Bloomsbury, and that house is now a museum with fixed opening hours. But the Shropshire Arms in Clerkenwell, often cited as the model for pubs in Oliver Twist, has no plaque and no formal Dickens affiliation. It just happens to be in the right neighborhood and looks roughly period-appropriate.

I ran into a specific problem last October when I tried to verify whether the churchyard near St Mary's in Walworth actually matched the description of the graveyard scene in Oliver Twist. The official guidebooks claim a connection, but the parish records from the 1830s show that much of that ground was already built over by then. The current church is a Victorian rebuild. I solved it by cross-referencing the 1831 tithe map of Walworth held at the London Metropolitan Archives, which showed the original burial ground layout, and comparing it to the Ordnance Survey map from 1862. The discrepancy turned out to be about 40 meters from where most tour guides point tourists. Another thing nobody tells you is that several of these locations sit inside or adjacent to active courthouses, government buildings, and secure institutional grounds. The Old Bailey is a functioning criminal court. You can walk past the exterior on the public sidewalk, but you cannot photograph the facade from close range without attracting security attention. Same thing near the former Fleet Prison site off Charterhouse Street. The land is private, the fencing is real, and there is no public access to the original prison grounds. The best you get is a small informational plaque on the pavement outside. If you want the full address list with walking directions, the closest thing to a downloadable route is the PDF hosted on the Dickens Society London chapter website. It maps out nine stops across Zones 1 and 2, includes approximate walking times between each point, and notes which sites require paid entry. The file is about 240 kilobytes and loads fine on mobile. You can find it by searching for the Dickens Society London walking routes page. There is no app, no official download portal, and no paid version. Anything selling a premium guide on this is just repackaging free content.

The main limitation is weather. London rain during a two-hour outdoor walk will ruin the experience faster than any poor planning. I learned that the hard way in November when I spent forty minutes stuck under the awning of a closed shop near Holborn Viaduct waiting for a downpour to ease. The route works best between April and September, ideally on weekdays when the central sidewalks are less crowded. Weekends near Covent Garden and Seven Dials are essentially a pedestrian bottleneck. A practical alternative if you do not want to walk in bad weather or spend the entire afternoon on your feet is the Dickens London audio guide produced by BBC Audio. It covers the same locations but lets you listen while riding thetube. It costs about £4.99 and runs roughly 75 minutes. It is not as immersive as walking the actual streets, but it skips the discomfort and the missed connections caused by construction barriers that frequently appear around charterhouse square and the holborn viaduct area. The only other reliable source for updated information on which Dickens sites are actually open is the English Heritage property list. They manage two confirmed Dickens residences: Charles Dickens House Museum at 48 Doughty Street and Gad's Hill Place in Higham, which is technically outside London proper but often included in longer itineraries. Gad's Hill requires advance booking for group visits. Walk-in availability is rare outside the summer months.

There is also a persistent myth that Dickens set Much Ado About Nothing in London. He did not write that play. That is Shakespeare. People confuse this constantly when reading unofficial guides. Stick to the verified novel and short story locations if you want accuracy. The route itself is not complicated. Pick a morning, wear waterproof shoes, and check which museums are open that day before you start. The biggest time sink is turning up to a closed door because a site changed its schedule for a private event. I keep a bookmarked list of the current opening hours for each location and refresh it the night before I go. It saves about twenty minutes of wasted walking per outing. If you are looking for the most densely packed cluster of Dickens-related spots in a single walk, start at British Museum tube, walk south through Bloomsbury past Gog Magog Tavern and Doughty Street, cut through Russell Square, head down to Kings Cross and the now-demolished workhouse site near the current hospital grounds, then east toward the Charterhouse and St Paul's Cathedral area. That gives you the highest concentration of relevant addresses within roughly 3 kilometers. Everything else spreads too thin to be practical.