Square Mile Experiences

17/04/2026

A fantastic tour of the West side of the City of London today with some fun guests. While visiting St Brides we had the pleasure of meeting the owner of Square Mile Distillery who invited us in to view their interesting and beautiful venue. They are offering Distillery Tours from May 2026

18/02/2026

***What the Dickens***

After a dramatic acquittal for treason, Charles Darnay finds relief not in a grand palace, but in the everyday heart of the City of London.
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens leads Darnay and Sydney Carton down Ludgate Hill to Fleet Street, slipping “up a covered way” into a tavern where good food and wine restore both body and spirit. That tavern was almost certainly Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666 and one of Dickens’ favourite haunts.
It’s a moment that reminds us how Dickens grounded his great dramas in real streets and real places — many of which still welcome visitors today.

At Square Mile Experiences, our walking tours uncover these literary landmarks, where fiction, history, and the everyday life of the City meet.

🚶 Walk Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street
📖 Step into Dickens’ London
📍 Experience the Square Mile, story by story


www.squaremileexperiences.com
[email protected]

13/02/2026

Feeling a little under the weather? You’re in good company…
In 1663, Samuel Pepys famously wrote about staying in bed on the advice of his apothecary, blaming his woes on “a late quantity of Dantzic-girkins”! Even four centuries ago, Londoners were diagnosing themselves with questionable remedies and colourful excuses.
Luckily, fresh air, gentle exercise, and good company have always been a better cure.
So why not follow Pepys’ lead (minus the sweating it out in bed) and join Square Mile Experiences for a stroll through the winding streets of the City of London?
Our guided walks bring the past vividly to life — from diarists and doctors to dukes and dinner tables — uncovering the everyday stories, oddities, and ailments that shaped London life.
Step out, stretch your legs, and let history work its magic.
Fresh air beats girkins every time. 😉
📍 Tours running weekly
👣 Private and group bookings available
👉 Message us to reserve your place

www.squaremileexperiences.com

[email protected]

Experienced and passionate tours by Londoners who bring The City of London rich history to life. Whether as a tour for your family and friends or for corporate clients. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life" Dr Samuel Johnson with Square Mile Experiences you can immerse yourself in thi...

11/02/2026

In Great Expectations (1860–1861) Dickens also uses Smithfield Market as part of Pip’s first impressions of London:

Pip describes Smithfield as “all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam,” a sensory image that conveys the grim reality of urban life and foreshadows the temptations and moral struggles Pip will encounter.

Dickens employs Smithfield’s filth and congestion symbolically — the physical “dirt” of the market is tied to emotional and moral contamination associated with his initial London experiences in the novel.

www.squaremileexperiences.com
[email protected]

Experienced and passionate tours by Londoners who bring The City of London rich history to life. Whether as a tour for your family and friends or for corporate clients. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life" Dr Samuel Johnson with Square Mile Experiences you can immerse yourself in thi...

05/02/2026

On 7 February 1812, a boy was born who would grow up to tell the stories of London like no one else — Charles Dickens.

But his connection to the City wasn’t just literary… it was deeply personal.

When Dickens was just 12, his father was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea. Charles was pulled out of school and sent to work in a boot-blacking factory, earning six shillings a week to help support his family. Those early experiences of hardship, injustice, and life on London’s streets shaped the powerful characters and settings we know so well today.

The struggles he witnessed — poverty alongside wealth, hope beside hardship — are the very contrasts you can still feel walking through the City of London.

At Square Mile Experiences, our walking tours explore the real streets that influenced Dickens’ life and fiction, uncovering the human stories behind the Square Mile’s grand façades.

🚶 Walk in Dickens’ footsteps
📖 Discover the London that shaped his stories
📍 Experience the Square Mile, past and present



www.squaremileexperiences.com
[email protected]

Experienced and passionate tours by Londoners who bring The City of London rich history to life. Whether as a tour for your family and friends or for corporate clients. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life" Dr Samuel Johnson with Square Mile Experiences you can immerse yourself in thi...

30/01/2026

Peep into Pepys London.
Again we have our weekly look into the life of the diarist and keen walker Samuel Pepys.

We live in a world of second by the second media, where we are programmed to believe that the world is so much more dangerous than it was in days gone by. With all the horrors which are occurring around the globe and the supposed crime ridden of large UK cities. With scooter gangs snatching mobile phones from innocent members of the public.

However if we look at Samuel Pepys diary of 28th January 1662 we see that these crimes are no new phenomenon.

"So home, and there found my wife come home, and seeming to cry; for bringing home in a coach her new ferrandin waistecoate, in Cheapside, a man asked her whether that was the way to the Tower; and while she was answering him, another, on the other side, snatched away her bundle out of her lap, and could not be recovered, but ran away with it, which vexes me cruelly, but it cannot be helped."

👣 Want to walk where Pepys walked?
Join Square Mile Experiences and explore the streets of the City of London through stories like his.

🌐 www.squaremileexperiences.com

📧 [email protected]

Experienced and passionate tours by Londoners who bring The City of London rich history to life. Whether as a tour for your family and friends or for corporate clients. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life" Dr Samuel Johnson with Square Mile Experiences you can immerse yourself in thi...

21/01/2026

What the Dickens Wednesday.....

Aldersgate Street, every step carries layers of London’s past 📖🚶‍♂️

Named after Aldergate, one of the Roman gateways through the City wall, Aldersgate Street has been a route through history for nearly two thousand years. It also features powerfully in the work of Charles Dickens, who knew the City’s streets intimately.

In Little Dorrit, Arthur Clennam walks down Aldersgate Street towards St Paul’s when he encounters a crowd carrying the injured John Baptist Cavalletto after the dramatic mail coach accident — a moment that brings the bustle and humanity of the City vividly to life.

Later, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, John Jasper stays in a modest hotel tucked away in a small square just behind Aldersgate Street, close to the General Post Office — placing intrigue and unease right in the heart of the Square Mile.

At Square Mile Experiences, our walking tours reveal how Roman roads, Victorian drama, and modern London intersect on streets like Aldersgate — where fiction and history walk side by side.

📍 Walk ancient routes
📖 Discover Dickens’ City
🚶 Experience the Square Mile

www.squaremileexperiences.com

[email protected]

Experienced and passionate tours by Londoners who bring The City of London rich history to life. Whether as a tour for your family and friends or for corporate clients. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life" Dr Samuel Johnson with Square Mile Experiences you can immerse yourself in thi...

16/01/2026

📜✨ Peeps into Pepys – Week of 12 January ✨📜
It’s Friday, so it’s time for another Peeps into Pepys — our weekly wander through the diary of Samuel Pepys, brought to you by Square Mile Experiences. Each week we look at what Pepys was doing this very week in history, right here in London.
🗓️ What was Pepys up to in the week commencing 12 January?
Mid-January finds Pepys well and truly back in the rhythm of daily life. Across several years in the 1660s, his diary shows him:
Fully returned to Navy Office business, juggling meetings, paperwork, and naval finances
Continuing his annual habit of self-improvement resolutions — often reviewing them with a critical eye
Spending evenings on music, reading, and social visits, especially during the long winter nights
Walking London’s streets in cold weather, noting both the city’s bustle and his own changing moods
It’s a wonderfully honest snapshot of everyday London life — ambition, routine, and the challenge of sticking to good intentions once the new year glow begins to fade.
👣 Want to walk where Pepys walked?
Join us on a Square Mile Experiences walking tour and explore the streets Pepys knew so well — where work, worry, pleasure, and history unfolded side by side.
📍 Square Mile Experiences – where history walks with you.


www.squaremileexperiences.com

[email protected]

Experienced and passionate tours by Londoners who bring The City of London rich history to life. Whether as a tour for your family and friends or for corporate clients. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of Life" Dr Samuel Johnson with Square Mile Experiences you can immerse yourself in thi...

14/01/2026

Welcome to our regular Wednesday visit to Dickensian London.

What the Dickens!

At the heart of the City of London stands the formidable Bank of England — a symbol of power, money, and control that fascinated Charles Dickens.
In Little Dorrit, Dickens draws on the world surrounding the Bank and Threadneedle Street to explore wealth, debt, and the crushing machinery of bureaucracy in Victorian London. The great financial institutions of the Square Mile become part of the novel’s backdrop, reflecting a city where fortunes are made — and lives are constrained.
At Square Mile Experiences, our walking tours uncover the stories hidden behind these grand façades, revealing how Dickens’ London still echoes through the streets around the Bank today.
🚶 Walk the financial heart of Dickens’ London
📖 Discover stories of money, power, and people
📍 Experience the Square Mile, past and present


www.squaremileexperiences.com

[email protected]

09/01/2026

📜✨ Peeps into Pepys – Week of 5 January ✨📜
Happy New Year! 🎉 It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another Peeps into Pepys, our weekly look into the diary of Samuel Pepys, brought to you by Square Mile Experiences. Each week we explore what Pepys was doing this very week in history — right here in London.
🗓️ So what was Pepys up to in the week commencing 5 January?
Early January was often a time of fresh starts and firm resolutions for Pepys. Across different years in the 1660s, his diary shows him:
Returning to work at the Navy Office after the Christmas break
Carefully reviewing his finances and setting goals for the year ahead
Making earnest (and often repeated!) promises to improve his habits
Enjoying winter walks through London, mixed with music, meals, and social visits
It’s a wonderfully relatable moment in the diary — the optimism of a new year, tempered by Pepys’ awareness of how easily good intentions can slip.
👣 Fancy walking in Pepys’ footsteps?
Join us on a Square Mile Experiences walking tour and explore the streets where Pepys lived, worked, worried, celebrated — and wrote it all down.
📍 Square Mile Experiences – where history walks with you.


www.squaremileexperiences.com

[email protected]