Join us for a trip back to the world of Charles Dickens…….

Saturday 24th March 2012  meeting at 11.45 am

To all our collectors, and their families, we hope you will join us for this day of Dickens, to mark the

200th anniversary of Dickens’ birth, and to launch our brand new Dickens Heritage Collection Building.

Meeting at 11.45 at ‘Ye Old Cheshire Cheese’ Fleet Street, we will begin with a meal, scroll down to see the menu,  followed at 1.45pm by a informative stroll around Dickens’ London, led by Jean, the Dickens expert at London Walks, and finishing at the Dickens House Museum, less than a mile away, in time for an afternoon coffee. Cost: Each person pays for their own food and refreshments. Hazle Ceramics will cover the cost of the guided walk.

Our Day begins at the famous ‘Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese’ Pub

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese dates back to the 17th century, although a pub stood on this location as long ago as 1538.  The main room when you walk in feels and looks like it hasn’t changed

since it was rebuilt in 1667 with roaring fire in winter and dark wood.

This pub was a favourite haunt of Victorian author Charles Dickens. It is thought that the pub’s unique, gloomy character influenced many of Dickens’ darker characters; indeed Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is mentioned to in Dickens’ 1859 novel, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. A whole host of other famous patrons have frequented the pub over the centuries, including Samuel Johnson and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Click here to read reviews of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, and discover more about this historic pub.

After our meal, we will discover the London that Dickens knew and loved. This walk is a real eye-opener. It’s a sojourn into a lost city!   Jean, who guides the walk, will show us how this London – Dickens’s London – has kept the 20th century at bay. It’s a London of nooks and crannies and alleyways and gas lamps! It’s the London that Dickens brings to life so vividly in his works.

Click here for more information on London Walks

Our walk will bring us to The Charles Dickens Museum, based at 48 Doughty Street, the author’s only surviving London house, where we will have the chance to experience what Dickens’s home would have been like and learn more about the great novelist and social commentator. There is a delightful courtyard cafe at the museum, where we can finish our day with a coffee and a cake.

Visit the Charles Dickens Museum website, by clicking here

We do hope you will join us for what promises to be a memorable day!