Barbara Wright from London Guided Walks

City of Westminster Tour Guide

London has always been a city of double personalities. It is home to many iconic landmarks but it also means that you’re never more than ten minutes from somewhere new!

I grew up outside London, but arrived in the big smoke in the late 1970’s, somewhere I had always wanted to live. Once here, I promptly set about exploring this beautiful metropolis that has captured my imagination like no other place could ever do.

Guiding is my passion. I am a fully qualified City of Westminster tour guide. I’m ready to show you London in all its glory, where you can see and learn about how this great city works. I’ve been guiding for the last couple of years, generally covering historical and cultural walking tours in Royal, Tudor, restoration, Regency and 19th century London (especially Westminster) and central areas with other neighbourhoods such as Soho, Covent Garden, Marylebone and Belgravia.

A special interest of mine are London open spaces. I have spent many years campaigning for better services to my local park, Streatham Common, being chair of the Friends of Streatham Common when the open space campaigning took place. Streatham Common is partly officially designated as a Local Nature Reserve, and was originally part of the ‘Great North Wood’ but was saved from development by being designated a Metropolitan Common in 1884.It also has the Rookery walled garden which was originally the site of a fashionable spa and which was opened to the public in 1913 as formal gardens.

My experience as a qualified town planner with a post graduate certificate Urban Design certificate has given me ample opportunity to work in London’s housing and regeneration planning so that I can offer guidance which comes from practical experience, with more than five years’ worth of research into the difficulties plaguing our current cityscape alongside its benefits for everyone else, some of it working for Westminster Council on Westminster regeneration estates. Together we’ll explore how best you might make your neighbourhood better through architecture or social history (or both) both if that interest you!

As an amateur musician, I also run walking tours with a music theme (particularly classical) and the entertainment industry.