- Start at Borough Market (8 Southwark Street, SE1 1TL). From London Bridge station it's a two-minute walk — come out onto Borough High Street and the market is on your right. Have a wander, then leave along Stoney Street, the market's western edge.
- Turn left into Park Street and follow it west. This quiet backstreet was once the middle of the Anchor Brewery — watch the walls for the brewery's blue plaque, and a little further along, the plaque marking the site of Shakespeare's original Globe Theatre of 1599.
- Keep going to the end of Park Street, where it meets the river at Bank End — The Anchor (34 Park Street, SE1 9EF) is the riverside pub on your right, with one of the best Thames-side terraces in London.
- Retrace your steps along Park Street, turn right down Stoney Street and continue to Southwark Street. Turn left, and the long stone frontage of the Hop Exchange (24 Southwark Street, SE1 1TY) is shortly on your left — look up for the carved hop pickers, and through the gates for the galleried hall.
- Continue to the end of Southwark Street and turn right onto Borough High Street. A couple of hundred yards down on the left, through the old coach arch, is The George Inn (75–77 Borough High Street, SE1 1NH). Step into the yard — it's a working pub, so a mid-walk half is entirely in the spirit of things.
- Head back up Borough High Street a short way and turn right into St Thomas Street, passing directly beneath the Shard. Keep straight on past the Bermondsey Street junction onto Crucifix Lane, hugging the railway viaduct.
- At the end of Crucifix Lane turn right onto Druid Street. Follow the arches a couple of minutes to Southwark Brewing Co at no. 46 (SE1 2EZ) — the head of the Bermondsey Beer Mile, journey's end, and the meeting point for our Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour.
🏛️ Free · self-guided · about 2 hours
The Southwark Brewing Heritage Walk
Before the beer, the story. Walk it yourself, for free, in about two hours — from Borough Market to the site of the great Anchor Brewery, the Victorian Hop Exchange and The George Inn, a Grade I-listed coaching inn — finishing at Southwark Brewing on the Bermondsey Beer Mile, right where our tasting tour meets.
This one’s on us — no ticket, no booking. Our three guided tours are over here.
What you'll see
Two hours through brewing history
Walk it at your own pace, any day you like — five stops, roughly a mile and a half end to end. Step-by-step directions are below.
START
Borough Market
Begin in the heart of London's oldest food market. Traders have worked the southern end of London Bridge for around a thousand years, and the market settled on this site in 1756 — the green-and-gold Victorian ironwork came a century later. Medieval Southwark sat just outside the City's rules, so this is where London came for its inns, taverns, playhouses and breweries. That story starts here.
📍 8 Southwark Street, SE1 1TL — two minutes from London Bridge station. Enter from Stoney Street to start the walk.
STOP TWO
The old Anchor Brewery, Bankside
Park Street was once swallowed whole by the Anchor Brewery — founded around 1616 and, under Barclay Perkins in the early 1800s, the largest brewery in the world, famous for its porter. Dr Samuel Johnson was a fixture here in the Thrale family years, and when the brewery was sold in 1781 for £135,000 he coined the line about growing "rich beyond the dreams of avarice". It burned in 1832, rose again, merged into Courage in 1955 and was finally demolished in 1981 — today a blue plaque marks the site, a few steps from another plaque marking the original Globe Theatre of 1599. Finish this stop at The Anchor, the eighteenth-century riverside pub that survived it all, where tradition says Samuel Pepys watched the Great Fire across the water in 1666.
📍 Brewery plaque on Park Street, SE1 · The Anchor, 34 Park Street, Bankside, SE1 9EF
STOP THREE
The Hop Exchange
By the Victorian era the hops that flavoured Britain's beer poured into London Bridge by rail from Kent, and Southwark became the country's hop-trading district. The Hop Exchange of 1867 was its showpiece: a great galleried trading hall where hop factors struck their deals under a glass roof. Look up at the pediment carved with hop-picking scenes and the iron gates twined with hop vines. A 1920 fire cost it its upper storeys and it's offices now, so admire the Grade II-listed frontage from the street.
📍 24 Southwark Street, SE1 1TY — viewed from outside
STOP FOUR
The George Inn
Through an easy-to-miss archway off Borough High Street stands London's last surviving galleried coaching inn — rebuilt in 1677 after the great Southwark fire, Grade I listed and owned by the National Trust since 1937. Coaches for Kent and the south coast once rattled out of this yard; Dickens drank here and wrote it into Little Dorrit. It's still a working pub, so step into the yard — and maybe stop for a half before the last leg.
📍 75–77 Borough High Street, SE1 1NH
FINISH
Southwark Brewing Co
End in a railway arch on Druid Street, where Southwark Brewing carries the borough's 400-year brewing story into the present day — right at the head of the Bermondsey Beer Mile, and exactly where our Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour meets. Time it right and you can walk straight onto one.
📍 46 Druid Street, SE1 2EZ
Turn by turn
The suggested route
About a mile and a half, step-free throughout, and impossible to get badly lost — the railway viaduct is your handrail for the final leg.
🧭
Free and self-guided
No ticket, no booking, no fixed start time — just the route, the stops and the stories behind them.
🚶
Relaxed two-hour walk
An easy pace on foot through Borough and Southwark. Suitable for all, and good in most weather.
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Pairs with a guided tour
It finishes where our Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour meets — walk the history, then taste the beer.
Walked it? Now taste it
The walk finishes on the Bermondsey Beer Mile — the perfect place to pick up one of our three guided tasting tours, from £41.25 per person.
Good to know
Heritage walk FAQs
How much does it cost?
Nothing — it’s a free self-guided route. There’s no ticket and nothing to book. If you’d like a guide and beer included, that’s what our three guided tours are for.
How long is it and how far do we walk?
About two hours at a relaxed pace, roughly a mile and a half through Borough and Southwark, finishing on the Bermondsey Beer Mile. The route is step-free throughout.
Where does it start and finish?
It starts at Borough Market (8 Southwark Street, SE1 1TL), two minutes' walk from London Bridge station — the nearest station at both ends. It finishes at Southwark Brewing Co (46 Druid Street, SE1 2EZ), about fifteen minutes' walk back to London Bridge, or carry on down the Bermondsey Beer Mile. The full turn-by-turn route is above.
Does it include beer?
No — this one’s pure history. It finishes at Southwark Brewing though, so you’re well placed to carry on: our Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour meets in the same spot.
When’s the best time to walk it?
Borough Market is liveliest Wednesday to Saturday, and the Bermondsey taprooms are at their best on a Saturday afternoon — so a Saturday morning start works nicely.