Saucy, Sacred, Secret, Scary Southwark

John Constable, who spoke at SELFS waaaay back in July 2003, is the shamanic poet of ‘The Clink’, the area around Borough that was once the sex, drinking and gambling den of London during it’s time under the Bishop of Winchester (we’ll skirt around the prostitution and bear-baiting here).

All sections of the city has their own spirit, created by history, psycho-geography and goodness knows what else. John has truly been captured by his part of London and will be taking some guided walks around this ‘outlaw borough’ of London.

See and here more of John at the Southwark Mysteries site.

Details of each walk are as follows: each walk in on either on a Tuesday or Wednesday from 7pm. Assemble in the covered area outside John Harvard Library, Borough High Street, SE1.

Borough tube.

Each walk lasts roughly 1½ hours and is free.

Tuesday 13th September: The Outlaw Borough: The medieval Liberty of the Clink, outside the law of the City of London - prisons, theatres, bear-pits, taverns, and stews - outlaws, actors and Winchester Geese.

Wednesday 14th September: The Ghost Walk: Haunted inns, a Roman cemetery, Cross Bones graveyard and the legend of Mary Overie.

Tuesday 20th September: The Bermondsey Walk: Celebrating people, crafts and industries from Roman times to the present.

Wednesday 21st September: The Secret Elephant: Magic and myth around the Elephant and Castle

Tuesday 27th September: The Healing Walk: Guy's Hospital to Bedlam - via parks on the sites of former prisons andthe Cross Bones people's shrine.

Wednesday 28th September: What The Dickens? Marshalsea Prison, Lant Street and The Mint - the criminal underworld ofDickens' childhood.