The London Martyr’s Way – Tower Hill Scaffold to Tyburn Tree – 2 parts, 1 day each part, 3 & 5 miles. This might also be called the Way of Tolerance and Strength. It is a glad commemoration of men and women who, on these familiar streets, were ready to pay the ultimate price for their beliefs: Catholics persecuted by Protestants, Protestants by Catholics, believers by non-believers, kings by invaders, and people who sacrificed their lives for others.

One can only be moved by their soul-searching, their confidence and the blind inhumanity of their persecutors, which you will remember by visiting London monuments that have been raised to celebrate their courage. We walk in honour of those historic martyrs whose ends may have led to an abhorrence of persecution, and tolerance towards the expression of opposing and seemingly offensive views.

Much of the route follows the actual journey taken by the condemned on their way from the Tower to various places of execution, at Smithfield and, most famously, the Tyburn Tree. You will take in places of martyrdom, churches constructed around the memory of martyrs, sculptures dedicated to self-sacrifice, the route of the Tyburn river, sites of pilgrimage and prayer. You can finish with Vespers at Tyburn Convent- a magical place of perpetual prayer.

Watch Part II video here. London Real’s 3-min video of a BPT London pilgrimage here. Listen to a podcast with Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discussing the experience of a BPT guided London pilgrimage here. Porter.com article here.

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Instructions for using a GPX file to show you the route offline on your smartphone

Buy book: Pilgrim’s Guide to Sacred London

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Memorial to Abolition of Slavery – granite sugar canes engraved with Lemn Sissay’s poem ‘Gift of Cain’.

Leadenhall Market

Self-wounding Pelican in St Michael’s Cornhill

St Stephen’s, Walbrook

The flow of the Tyburn conduit

St Mary le Bow

St Lawrence Jewry, Guildhall

Postman’s Park

Site of Newgate Prison and Scaffold, now Central Court of Justice

Henry VIII Statue, Smithfield

St Bartholomew the Great Interior

Lady Chapel, St Bartholomew the Great (only place in London where an apparition of Virgin Mary is recorded)

Charterhouse

St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place

Thomas More plaque – St Aneselm & St Cecilia, Holborn

Jesuit Martyr Memorial, St Giles in the Fields, Holborn

St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church, Soho

All Saints, Margaret Street Altar

St James’, Spanish Place

Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church, Farm Street

Animals at War Memorial, Park Lane

Tyburn Tree on Marble Arch Roundabout

Nun in constant living remembrance of the martyrs, Tyburn Convent, Marble Arch