Blood, Black Hearts & Booze

The vicinity of Smithfield Market has been associated with bloodshed and butchery for a thousand years

Meet outside the entrance to Barbican Tube Station at 11am.

The vicinity of Smithfield Market has been associated with bloodshed and butchery for a thousand years, but butchery and beer have long been close companions, and this area is also the City’s “pub heaven”. On this walk with Pete Smith, which starts from the entrance to Barbican Tube Station, we shall be discovering: where a man could legally sell his wife, what market became so scandalous that the Victorians closed it down, which pub became the “Court of Dusty Feet” and how many ghosts drink in a single City tavern.