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Offered languages
- English
This self-guided ghost walk will take you on a chilling journey through the creepies places in Southwark. Along the way, you'll learn about the bishop who owned licensed brothels here, debtors who died in the Marshalsea, and fifteen thousand paupers that went into one graveyard.
The Questo app makes you the newest recruit of a paranormal bureau and gives you its Bankside file, unsolved since 1956. At 13 stops from the Clink to the original Globe site, the dead make their case: a priest starved in the Clink, the licensed women known as the Winchester Geese, a prison keeper tried four times for murder, the poor women operated on in a church roof. You check what they claim against the record, and not every legend survives.
Each stop has a hands-on challenge, from a blue plaque to a galleon carving hidden under a sticker.
Most players take two hours over the 2.1 km. Start at any hour, with hints and our 24/7 team on call.
What's Included
Meeting and pickup
The game starts at the Clink Prison Museum. After booking, we'll message you a code and activation link. Activate with your own email, then log in to the Questo app with that email. No message? Open the Questo app, tap "Bought a quest somewhere else?" and enter your booking reference number.
The game ends on Park Street, at the outline of the original 1599 Globe Theatre in the paving.
Itinerary
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1The Clink Prison Museum
The case opens on Clink Street, outside the museum on the site of the bishop's prison. You'll find the blue plaque and read how the site was chosen for it. The Clink stood here for six hundred years, long enough to give English its word for every jail since, and a priest named Laurence Vaux starved inside.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
2Winchester Palace
A few steps on, one wall of the Bishop of Winchester's great hall still stands, rose window and all. You'll complete a note about that window using a text on the wall nearby. The bishop licensed the Bankside brothels from this hall under ordinances dated 1161, then refused to bury the women.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
3Golden Hinde
Squeezed into the dock next door is a full-size replica of Drake's galleon, the Golden Hinde, and the real ship shows you which carved animal a sticker hides in your photo. A few steps on, Southwark Cathedral is four hundred years older than everything around it. You'll match a statue outside to the right one of four photos, and inside lies John Gower, Chaucer's friend, who designed his own tomb down to the three books under his head.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
4Borough Market
Under the railway viaducts, Borough Market has traded on or near this spot for about a thousand years. You'll find what's been erased from a photo of an old merchant's sign. Parliament abolished the market in 1755, so the parishioners bought a patch of land and started it again the next year.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
5Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret
On St Thomas Street, a church tower hid a room nobody on the street knew about for ninety-four years: an 1822 operating theatre built into the roof. A scrambled message points you to the heads above the door. Nearly half the poor women operated on up there never came out.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
6
Back on Borough High Street, a rhyming riddle about the hanging sign of the George, London's last galleried coaching inn, gives you a name. A little further down, Chapel Court hides the Marshalsea debtors' prison under its paving, and you'll restore a question with every vowel crossed out. In 1729 Parliament counted 300 dead here in a single quarter, and the keeper was tried for murder four times and acquitted four times.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
7St George the Martyr
Beside St George the Martyr, an alley runs along the last surviving wall of the Marshalsea. You'll go round to a small black door and fill in the missing first word of its stone plaque. Thomas Bliss, a carpenter jailed over nine pounds, tried to climb that wall with a rope, and they cut it while he was on it.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
8Red Cross Cottages & Garden
Red Cross Garden is the first thing on the route built to be kind: a pond, a bandstand and six red-brick cottages, laid out by Octavia Hill in 1887. You'll spot the extra detail in a photo of its welcome sign. Hill went on to co-found the National Trust, which is why the George Inn is still standing.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
9Crossbones Graveyard & Garden of Remembrance
The gates of Crossbones Graveyard are covered in ribbons, beads and notes. You'll use a number code on the text by the gate to get a five-letter password. About 15,000 people lie under this road, the Winchester Geese among them, and on the 23rd of every month strangers gather here to read out their names.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free -
10Shakespeare's Globe Theatre
On Park Street, a plaque high on a wall remembers the day in 1850 when brewery workers chased an Austrian general known as the Butcher down to the river, and you'll find what's missing from your copy. The file closes around the corner, at the outline of the original 1599 Globe in the paving, a short walk from the rebuilt theatre.
9 minutes • Admission ticket free
Additional info
- Service animals allowed
- Public transportation options are available nearby
- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
- A charged smartphone with internet is required to play the game in the Questo app
- Comfortable walking shoes are recommended
Tags
Cancellation Policy
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
Cancellation Policy
- For a full refund, you must cancel at least 24 hours before the experience’s start time.
- If you cancel less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time, the amount you paid will not be refunded.
- Any changes made less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time will not be accepted.
You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance of the experience for a full refund.
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