Walking Tour - Primrose Hill and the Navvies Who Built the Railways

Primrose Hill was born when navvies dug out the land by hand, bringing grime, racket, hard drinking and what some called Moral Depravity.

The neighbourhood radiates brilliant industrial solutions of Victorian engineers, but who built it? This walk puts hard-living navvies at the centre of the story and tells how the area developed in the face of the railway's soot and smoke. Camden railway landmarks include an Hydraulic Accumulator Tower, a roundhouse, the tunnels that working horses used to get to and from the Goods Yard, the site of the Stationary Winding Engine House and numerous street details. The story of Primrose Hill's creation takes us to a beautiful stretch of the Regent's Canal and the top of the famous hill with its superb views, as well as artists' studios and pastel-painted streets, ending at a high street free of chain shops. Good pubs abound, and it's all minutes from Camden Market.
Laura Agustín is an historian and anthropologist interested in illuminating the lives of unnamed people in history - the 'ordinary folk'.
Thanks to Victorian Web for permission to use the photo from Dick Sullivan's Navvyman.

The Naked Anthropologist is Laura's longtime blog, now dedicated to historical walks that highlight issues of Gender, Sex and Class .

You may also like the following events from Footprints of London:

• This Wednesday, 30th July, 11:00 am, Walking Tour - Peter Ackroyd's Monstrous East End in London
• Next Saturday, 9th August, 02:00 pm, Walking Tour - Pepys, Pubs, Graves and a Grotto (with pub stop) in London
• Next month, 27th August, 02:00 pm, Walking Tour - Beneath London's Streets in London

Also check out other Workshops in London, Arts events in London.