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David Copperfield Walking Tour
London

Retrace the most personal story Dickens ever told, from the blacking factory where he worked as a boy to the streets where David found his feet.

9 stops · 4.9 km

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GPS-guided · Works offline · No signal needed

Every Stop Has a Story

Traddles and Sophy's Newlywed Home

Dickens loathed this place, calling it 'one of the most depressing institutions in brick and mortar, known to the children of men,' even though its hall once hosted the first known performance of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors.

David Visits Agnes

This private road was once the London palace of the Bishops of Ely, with a vineyard, orchards and strawberries famous enough for Shakespeare to mention.

David and Aunt Betsey's Walk

The famous clock David and Aunt Betsy stopped to watch dates from 1671 and still has its giants, Gog and Magog, striking the bells every quarter hour.

Young David's Wanderings

Young David stares longingly at the pineapples here, the fruit that became the emblem of Covent Garden Market and still decorates its walls.

David Meets Steerforth Again

David reunites with Steerforth at the Golden Cross Inn, a coaching inn demolished in 1830 to make way for the very square where Nelson's Column now stands.

David's First London Home

Dickens lodged on this street as a young reporter and gave David chambers here, on a street once home to Samuel Pepys, where an old watergate still marks the Thames's former edge.

David Works in the Blacking Factory

The warehouse David Copperfield describes as 'literally overrun with rats' was drawn directly from Dickens' own memory of working here as a boy, on a street then still called Hungerford Stairs.

David is Robbed

This obelisk, built in 1771 to mark distances for travellers crossing the new Blackfriars Bridge, moved to the grounds of the Imperial War Museum in 1905 before returning to its original spot in 1998.

Micawber's Crisis

Mr Micawber's crisis lands him in a debtors' prison so lax that those who could pay were allowed to live outside its walls altogether, until it closed in 1880.

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