The Clink Prison Museum9 min
The case opens on Clink Street, outside the museum on the site of the bishop's prison. You'll find the blue plaque and read how the site was chosen for it. The Clink stood here for six hundred years, long enough to give English its word for every jail since, and a priest named Laurence Vaux starved inside.
Winchester Palace9 min
A few steps on, one wall of the Bishop of Winchester's great hall still stands, rose window and all. You'll complete a note about that window using a text on the wall nearby. The bishop licensed the Bankside brothels from this hall under ordinances dated 1161, then refused to bury the women.
Golden Hinde9 min
Squeezed into the dock next door is a full-size replica of Drake's galleon, the Golden Hinde, and the real ship shows you which carved animal a sticker hides in your photo. A few steps on, Southwark Cathedral is four hundred years older than everything around it. You'll match a statue outside to the right one of four photos, and inside lies John Gower, Chaucer's friend, who designed his own tomb down to the three books under his head.
Borough Market9 min
Under the railway viaducts, Borough Market has traded on or near this spot for about a thousand years. You'll find what's been erased from a photo of an old merchant's sign. Parliament abolished the market in 1755, so the parishioners bought a patch of land and started it again the next year.
Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret9 min
On St Thomas Street, a church tower hid a room nobody on the street knew about for ninety-four years: an 1822 operating theatre built into the roof. A scrambled message points you to the heads above the door. Nearly half the poor women operated on up there never came out.
9 min
Back on Borough High Street, a rhyming riddle about the hanging sign of the George, London's last galleried coaching inn, gives you a name. A little further down, Chapel Court hides the Marshalsea debtors' prison under its paving, and you'll restore a question with every vowel crossed out. In 1729 Parliament counted 300 dead here in a single quarter, and the keeper was tried for murder four times and acquitted four times.
St George the Martyr9 min
Beside St George the Martyr, an alley runs along the last surviving wall of the Marshalsea. You'll go round to a small black door and fill in the missing first word of its stone plaque. Thomas Bliss, a carpenter jailed over nine pounds, tried to climb that wall with a rope, and they cut it while he was on it.
Red Cross Cottages & Garden9 min
Red Cross Garden is the first thing on the route built to be kind: a pond, a bandstand and six red-brick cottages, laid out by Octavia Hill in 1887. You'll spot the extra detail in a photo of its welcome sign. Hill went on to co-found the National Trust, which is why the George Inn is still standing.
Crossbones Graveyard & Garden of Remembrance9 min
The gates of Crossbones Graveyard are covered in ribbons, beads and notes. You'll use a number code on the text by the gate to get a five-letter password. About 15,000 people lie under this road, the Winchester Geese among them, and on the 23rd of every month strangers gather here to read out their names.
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre9 min
On Park Street, a plaque high on a wall remembers the day in 1850 when brewery workers chased an Austrian general known as the Butcher down to the river, and you'll find what's missing from your copy. The file closes around the corner, at the outline of the original 1599 Globe in the paving, a short walk from the rebuilt theatre.
Haunted London: Ghost Hunt Self-Guided Walking Adventure
Ghosts of Greenwich: London's Haunted Walking Tour
