Bloomsbury Walk - London trip

The London Walks are guided tours that take tourists around London, looking at interesting and important things in the city. We are going on two different walks with different themes. I am not sure what to expect, but it will probably be interesting.

Report from tour: Our guide took us around Bloomsbury. It was special because of all the famous people, writers and politicians who have lived and worked here. Also, there were Georgian-style buildings, fanlights, oil-lamps and street-signs. I learned a lot of new things, like the fact that the doors are wide so that the chairs people were carried around in could fit though the doors. I also really liked all the squares at the end of the roads that looked like small parks. One of the stories our guide told us: King Charles I wanted to govern all by himself without the influence of politicians. This created a lot of problems, for instance economical ones. Because of this, he was killed, and his son sent into exile. Oliver Cromwell took over and became the new leader of Great Britain. He was a puritan, and shut down theatres, pubs, cancelled Christmas and so on. 

After Oliver Cromwell died, the people wanted Charles II, King Charles I’s son, to come back and be king, because they were not happy with what Oliver Cromwell had done. He came back and became king, and was called the Merry Monarch, because of how much better and happier the times became. He wanted to avenge his father’s death, but because those who had done it, including Cromwell, were already dead, he couldn’t publically execute them as he normally would. But he had their bodies dug up, lined up on the wagon and taken through the streets of London. When they stopped for their last drink (“one for the road,”) the bodies weren’t having a drink, obviously, so their guards went into the pub and got drunk instead. The next morning the kept going, and the bodies were eventually hung. 

After, they were decapitated too. Cromwell’s head was put on a stake and stayed there for 20 years before it blew off in a storm and disappeared. It was eventually found and ended up in the British Museum in 1970. It is said that the ghosts of all three who were “executed” still haunt the site of the pub where they had (or didn’t have) their last drink.