London blue plaques

Self-guided walks

London's blue plaques are not spread evenly: in a few neighbourhoods they stand within a couple of hundred metres of one another, close enough to string into an afternoon. These four walks do that. Each one lists its stops in walking order with the distance between them, and every stop links to that plaque's page and its place on the map.

• Bloomsbury Writers & Thinkers

  Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia, WC1

  Dickens, Darwin and the Bloomsbury Group in one square mile.

  8 stops · about 3.0 km · about 38 minutes' walking

• Chelsea Riverside

  Chelsea, SW3 & SW10

  Oscar Wilde, Bob Marley and a mile of the Thames.

  8 stops · about 1.7 km · about 21 minutes' walking

• Mayfair: Handel to Hendrix

  Mayfair & St James's, W1 & SW1

  Two musicians, two centuries, one wall.

  7 stops · about 2.9 km · about 36 minutes' walking

• Hampstead Village

  Hampstead, NW3

  Painters and poets on the hill, ending at the Heath.

  8 stops · about 2.3 km · about 28 minutes' walking