Musical

Sweeney Todd Walking Tour
London

Follow the demon barber from his Brick Lane birthplace to the blood-soaked cellars of Fleet Street — the most notorious mile in London's criminal history.

8 stops · 3.5 km

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GPS-guided · Works offline · No signal needed

Every Stop Has a Story

Sweeney Todd's Birthplace

Legend places Sweeney Todd's birth here on 16 October 1756, on a street that was then just a rural lane leading out to the Bethnal Green brickfields.

Newgate Prison

In the legend, a 14-year-old Todd was wrongly imprisoned in this notorious prison and taught his trade by a barber he met inside.

St Dunstan-in-the-West

Below this church ran a network of tunnels, part of the old Whitefriars Monastery, through which Todd and Mrs Lovett are said to have moved their victims' remains.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese

The Sweeney Todd audio walk created for the 2007 film pauses here, at a pub famous for a suet pudding that once weighed up to 80 pounds and whose contents nobody dared ask about.

The Barber's Shop

Whether Sweeney Todd was ever a real person remains disputed by scholars, but this address has been accepted as his barbershop for two centuries; in the legend, his chair sat over a trapdoor leading straight to the cellar.

Mrs Lovett's Pie Shop

A tunnel connecting Mrs Lovett's basement to Todd's barbershop ran directly beneath the church, letting the two conduct their business entirely unseen.

Temple Bar Griffin

The heads of executed traitors were once displayed on iron spikes above Wren's stone arch here, replaced in 1880 by the griffin that marks this spot today.

The Royal Courts of Justice

This Gothic Revival palace of law, with 35 million bricks and three miles of corridors, was built after Todd's supposed era but embodies exactly the corrupt legal establishment Sondheim's musical rages against.

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