Dickens

St Michael's Alley

Walk along Cornhill to the Church of St Michael and go left into St Michael's alley. Here you find the Jamaica Wine House with ledgers of old transactions in its window - this was Ebenezer Scrooge's office from a Dickens story you may have heard of - A Christmas Carol, anyone?

Further along this alleyway you'll come across the George and Vulture chop house which features in The Pickwick Papers and is decorated with pictures relating to the novel. If you go upstairs you may also see a ghost in a long grey dress.

Furnival's Inn Holborn

Mr Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers, his first novel, here in 1834. It was attached to the Inns of Chancery at Holborn, survived the Great Fire, but ceased to exist in the 1900s. There's now a plaque.

Doughty Street, Bloomsbury

The legend lived at No 48 Doughty Street after Furnival's Inn, and it's now the Dickens House Museum. HE wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby here.

Information

48 Doughty Street
London WC1N 2LX
Telephone:
+44 (0)20 7405 2127

The Museum may be reached by using the following buses:
7, 17, 19, 38, 45, 46, 55, 243.

And by these Underground services:
Piccadilly Line (Russell Square Station)
Central Line (Chancery Lane and Holborn)

Mondays - Saturdays
10.00-17.00

Sundays
11.00-17.00

Lord North Street - St John's

Dickens described the former St John the Evangelist (now known as St John's) as "a very hideous church with four towers at four corners, generally resembling some petrified monster, frightful and gigantic, on its back with its legs in the air" in Our Mutual Friend 1865.

Mint Street Workhouse/Lant Street

The Mint Street Workhouse may or may not have been the workhouse on which the one in Oliver Twist was based. Was most definitely situated around the corner from Charles' lodgings in Lant Street when he was 12 years old and separated from his mother and father who were in prison at the time. There's now a very pleasant garden where the building used to be.

During his time in Lant Street he was befriended by a boy called Bob Fagin (geddit) who worked in the same blacking factory. This kind boy tried to protect a proud Charles (Charles didn't want Bob to know that his parents were in prison and had Bob leave Charles at a strange house - after Bob had risked his life taking Charles through one of the poorest and most villainous neighbourhoods in London - the Mint).

Hatton Garden

It was in this area of the City (later the diamond-dealing district) where Fagin's Den was based. Bleeding Heart Yard (given this name after Lady Elizabeth Hatton supposedly danced with the devil here in 1626 and was found next morning dead, heart pumping blood) here is mentioned in Little Dorrit "there was some relish of ancient greatness about it". There is now a very nice pub cum French restaurant near it called the Bleeding Heart Tavern (well worth a visit, although service can sometimes be a tad slow).

St Olave's

This church is on Seething Lane at Hart Street. It was Dickens' favourite city church, the best beloved churchyard of ghastly grim, its ferocious strong spiked iron gate like a jail ornamented with skulls and cross bones as described by him in Uncommercial Travel: City of the Absent.

George and Vulture

Mr. Pickwick and Sam took up their present abode in very good, old–fashioned, and comfortable quarters, to wit, the George and Vulture Tavern and Hotel, George Yard, Lombard Street.

The George and Vulture is owned by John Smith's and serves old-fashioned English fayre - it's more of a restaurant than a pub these days, and opened only during the week as it's in the city, 2:30pm.

Further Information

Discover the Dickens' Victorian world at David Perdue's excellent comprehensive Dickens Page - especially the Dickens' London Map section. Click anywhere on it for a bit more detail on the location and how it relates to his stories, including Pickwick Papers, Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol. You'll find many of Dickens' novels, books and other writings online at Charles Dickens Great Book Index.