London History

In this episode of the London History Podcast, Hazel Baker is joined by City of Westminster tour guide Phil Scott for a reign-by-reign exploration of Kensington Palace. Together, they trace its story from its origins as Nottingham House in the Middlesex countryside, through William III and Mary II’s transformation of it into a royal palace, to its spectacular Georgian state rooms and its defining Victorian associations.

They discuss Queen Mary II’s hands-on involvement in furnishing the palace, including her remarkable collection of East Asian porcelain; William Kent’s theatrical King’s Staircase and remarkable Cupola Room; Queen Caroline’s influence on Kensington Gardens and the Serpentine; and the difficult, closely supervised childhood of the young Queen Victoria under the so-called Kensington System.

The conversation also explores Queen Anne’s extraordinary relationship with Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough; the palace’s connections to the transatlantic trade in enslaved people; the private and public lives of Princess Margaret, Diana, Princess of Wales, and more recent royal residents; and the overwhelming outpouring of mourning outside the palace after Diana’s death in 1997.

Whether you are planning a visit, revisiting a favourite London landmark, or simply enjoy royal history with all its personal drama and political consequences, this episode offers a vivid introduction to Kensington Palace and the people who shaped it.

londonguidedwalks.co.uk/podcast

Step into the restless, glittering and deeply unequal London of 1904 with author, screenwriter and director Mario Theodorou, creator of the Felix Grey Mysteries.

Mario joins Hazel to explore the Edwardian capital behind his historical thrillers: a city of political power, royal intrigue, rapid technological change and growing demands for social reform. At the heart of the novels is Felix Grey, an idealistic and inexperienced young Prime Minister drawn into dangerous mysteries of abduction, conspiracy and corruption.

Together, Hazel and Mario travel across Edwardian London—from Downing Street, Parliament and Buckingham Palace to Fleet Street, the Savoy, the Tower of London, Bow, Old Kent Road and Sailortown. They discuss gentleman’s clubs and imperial power, the changing character of the capital, workers’ rights, the Bryant & May matchwomen, suffrage, the press, secret passages, and the tension between the old Victorian order and a more modern, uncertain future.

Mario also shares how his film background shapes the sensory world of his fiction, from the smell of ink on Fleet Street to the energy of the docks, and why he hopes readers will begin to see London as a lived-in city of overlapping stories rather than simply a tourist destination.

A richly atmospheric conversation for anyone who loves Edwardian London, historical fiction, political intrigue and the hidden histories beneath the city’s streets.

London History Podcast Website

Spotify episode description

London’s forgotten fighting history comes alive in this episode of the London History Podcast. Hazel Baker explores the brutal, theatrical and hugely popular world of Georgian bare-knuckle boxing — a sport that shaped London’s streets, entertainments and social life.

From James Figg, celebrated as the “invincible master,” to Jack Broughton’s influential rules of combat and Daniel Mendoza’s revolutionary style, this episode follows the fighters who made the ring a defining feature of eighteenth-century London. Hazel also examines women’s involvement in the boxing world and the writing of Pierce Egan, whose accounts give us a vivid window into the culture of prizefighting.

Discover how boxing moved from taverns, amphitheatres and the margins of the city into the centre of popular London life — and why its legacy still matters today.

In this episode:

• The rise of prizefighting in Georgian London
• James Figg and the early fighting schools
• Entertainment, gambling and the city’s rougher edges
• Women in the boxing world
• Jack Broughton and the first formal boxing rules
• Daniel Mendoza and the changing art of combat
• Pierce Egan and the storytelling of the ring

For full show notes, sources and more London history, visit the London History Podcast website.

How Tower Bridge Was Built: The Untold Story of London's Most Famous Bridge

Discover the remarkable history behind Tower Bridge, one of London's most iconic landmarks. Learn how political battles, engineering innovation, and Victorian ambition transformed a transport crisis into one of the greatest bridge-building achievements of the nineteenth century.

00:00 Building Tower Bridge

01:00 Why London Needed a New Thames Crossing

03:00 The Engineering Challenge

05:00 Early Designs and Political Battles

06:00 Choosing the Bascule Design

06:30 Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry

08:00 The Tower Bridge Act of 1885

10:00 Building the Foundations Beneath the Thames

12:00 The Six Divers of Tower Bridge

14:00 Constructing the Steel Superstructure

16:00 The Revolutionary Hydraulic System

18:00 Victorian Engineering and Safety Standards

20:00 Costs, Delays and Human Sacrifice

22:00 Legal Disputes During Construction

24:45 Why Victorian Critics Hated Tower Bridge

27:30 The Grand Opening of 1894

29:00 Tower Bridge's Lasting Legacy

Below Stairs London: Tracing Victorian Servant Life in Belgravia and MayfairHazel Baker guides listeners through surviving street-level traces of Victorian servant London—area steps and railings, coal-hole covers, bell systems, mews alleys, and service districts—showing how London’s architecture encoded a rigid “upstairs/downstairs” hierarchy and enforced servant invisibility. Using census figures, she explains domestic service as Britain’s largest employer of women, driven by coal soot, class display, and tax incentives against male servants, then outlines household ranks from butler and housekeeper to scullery maid and mews staff. She describes the physical toll of long days, the servant supply chain at Shepherd Market, mews history and later gentrification, and surviving examples including Hyde Park Gardens Mews, Belgravia Mews West’s Star Pub, Bathurst Mews stables, and 18 Stafford Terrace (Sambourne House). She critiques period dramas for softening labor and highlights servants’ documented sexual vulnerability and limited protections.00:00 161: Life Below Stairs00:12 Introduction01:55 The Scale of Servant London14:20 The Architecture of Invisibility17:02 Coal Holes & Bell Systems22:38 The Mews28:50 Shepherd Market33:23 A Day in the Life37:00 Downton Abbey vs. Reality40:04 Sexual Vulnerability & Structural Silence44:47 Why Did Servants Stay?46:32 18 Stafford Terrace48:54 The Dual City51:43 Outro & Related Episodes

Host Hazel Baker and Westminster guide Philip Scott record in Soho Square, tracing its shift from Middlesex countryside and royal hunting ground—where “Soho!” was cried—to a late-1600s development originally called King Square for Charles II, whose weathered statue remains after being moved and later returned.

They highlight residents and landmarks, including Mary Seacole’s blue plaque and her Crimean War work after being refused by Florence Nightingale’s nurses: she built the British Hotel, treated soldiers and went to battlefields, later publishing her 1857 autobiography and receiving a benefit concert.

They discuss Seacole’s rediscovery from the 1980s and her statue near Parliament, the square’s 1925 mock-Tudor gardener’s hut and tunnel myth, Huguenot immigration and the French-language Protestant church, Theresa Cornelis and Casanova, and trivia about entertainer Danny La Rue, buried near Seacole. The episode ends promoting a Soho walking tour.

London’s Dracula Connections: Victorian Vampires, Penny Dreadfuls & the Lyceum Theatre (World Dracula Day Special)On World Dracula Day (26 May), London History Podcast host Hazel Baker speaks with Lambeth tour guide and Gothic novelist David Turnbull about how a century of Gothic writing and London locations shaped Bram Stoker’s Dracula. They trace early vampire traits through Coleridge’s Christabel, Byron’s circle and the Villa Diodati summer, Polidori’s The Vampyre, and the influence of penny dreadfuls like Varney the Vampire and Lloyd’s publications, before moving to Fleet Street magazines and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla.

The conversation highlights Stoker’s Lyceum Theatre work under Henry Irving, the Beefsteak Room’s literary influences (including Burton and Vambéry), Stoker’s research at the British Museum and London Library, and Dracula’s London settings from Piccadilly and King’s Cross to Hampstead.

They discuss Dracula’s slow initial success, rivalry with The Beetle, and its 20th-century rise via Hamilton Deane and Bela Lugosi, ending with Turnbull’s Dracula-influenced novel The Hurdy Gurdy Man and related London tours.00:00 Introduction05:39 The Romantic Poets & Vampire Origins17:17 Penny Dreadfuls & Fleet Street31:57 Dracula's London Locations36:19 Dracula's Rise to Fame

See Show Notes

The script traces Finsbury Circus Gardens’ transformation from medieval marshland north of London’s wall—created as the Wallbrook’s flow was impeded—into today’s Grade II listed public garden and commercial centre. It recounts Roman burials, later use as a waste dump and tanning area, failed drainage and quarrying, and the successful draining in 1527.

The site became home to Bethlehem Royal Hospital (“Bedlam”) in 1675–76, designed by Robert Hooke, before its demolition in 1814–15 and redevelopment as an elegant oval residential circus planned by George Dance and executed by William Montague (1815–17). It covers the area’s religious institutions, a fatal 1825 construction accident, an unrealized radical monument to Rafael del Riego, its 19th-century medical quarter (including Moorfields Eye Hospital), later office redevelopment and key buildings like Lutyens’ Britannic House and Derwent Wood’s sculptures, public opening in 1900, and 2025 restoration after Crossrail works.

Podcast show notes: londonguidedwalks.co.uk/podcast

Hazel Baker of the London History Podcast describes late December 1870 at the crowded Worship Street Police Court, where three women—Elizabeth Brown (22), Charlotte Quigley (20), and her mother Charlotte Quigley (45)—are charged with stealing large quantities of buttons from Hackney manufacturer Mr. Williamson. The episode explains why buttons had real commercial value in the booming Victorian clothing trade and how stolen goods could be easily hidden and resold.

Detective Chapman traces the missing buttons through East End neighborhoods via shopkeepers such as Isaac Levine of Bethnal Green Road and Mr. Hyams near Spitalfields, who admit buying “job lots” without records or reporting suspicions. Magistrate Henry Jeffreys Bushby condemns this normalized receiving of stolen goods, warns traders to keep detailed purchase records, and links the thefts to severe East End poverty and economic distress; the case is remanded and the final outcome is unknown.

Hazel Baker introduces Smithfield (West Smithfield near St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Smithfield Meat Market) as a deceptively ordinary open space that for centuries served both as a major market/fairground and a prominent execution site used to project state and church power.

With tour guide Maria Alexe’s commentary, the episode traces Smithfield’s execution history from William Wallace’s hanging, drawing and quartering in 1305 to the last clearly documented burning in 1612, noting its particular association with heresy burnings and high-profile traitors, especially the Marian burnings under Mary I (about 48 at Smithfield, per Foxe). It highlights John Foxe’s shaping of Protestant martyr memory through accounts such as John Rogers and Anne Askew, describes execution methods including hanging, burning, quartering and boiling (Richard Rouse in 1531; Margaret Davy in 1547), and explains the crowd spectacle, commerce, and the risk of creating martyrs. It ends by identifying surviving local traces—St Bartholomew the Great, the gateway, street names like Cloth Fair, and modern contrasts—and invites listeners to related walking tours.