Hi,
I am an architecture student working with a project investigating walking in the context of London.
I recently found out the gallery was originally a room for exercise. I was surprised by this, and even more intrigued when I looked at Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary online and find the following definition of gallery: 1. In architecture, a covered part of a building, commonly in the wings, used as an ambulatory or place for walking.
I am now curious what role walking has had through English (and more specifically London's) history, whether it's for leisure, religion, politics etc. Further, what areas/spaces/rooms have been used for it? I guess the first spaces designed for some form of passage must have been religious? I don't really now where to start looking, as I am no historian, nor English.
Thanks for any answers!
During early 19th century there were 'Pedestrains' who undertook endurance walking/running challenges. Pedestrians may place bets or be backed by gamblers/bookmakers. The most famous Pedestrian was Captain Barclay who walked 1 mile every hour for a thousand hours/miles. Running through the ages - Edward S Sears
Two books might help:
Frederic Gros, A Philosophy of Walking (trans. 2015)
Joseph A. Amato, On Foot: A History of Walking (2004)
Amato has a chapter that looks particularly relevant: "City Walking: The Genesis of the Urban Pedestrian in Nineteenth-Century London"
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wanderlust-History-Walking-Rebecca-Solnit/dp/1844675580 I haven't read this book but as far as I know it does an ok job. I'd imagine it covers the romantic craze for walking, started, I believe, by Rousseau; and spread in England--tho mainly as a countryside thing--by people like Wordsworth, Hazlitt ... as a retreat from the bustle of cities. However, the most famous walker of London was De Quincey, who described nightmarish wanderings through its labrynthine backstreets, high on opium. This later mutated into the idea of the "flaneur," but that is more of a French or American--through Poe, and his story the man of the crowd--twist on it (psychogeography is a further twist again). It was however later imported back to London again in the 1890s, through Francophiles like Arthur Symons, who believed that transitory urban encounters had great artistic potential, due to their seductive escape from respectability. There's a strong tradition of urban walks in 18th century literature too. John Gay's poem Trivia recounts everything he observed on one trip around the city; and Richard Steele, a important periodicalist, wrote an essay on 24 hours of walking through London. There are salacious literary "tours" of the city, which mix satire and social, geographical documentation, such as Ned Ward's The London Spy. And of course Samuel Johnson, the grand Panjandrum himself of the whole scene, loved to walk around the city, endlessly fascinated by its diversity. seems like a waste not the mention Ulysses--Dublin technically a British city at the time--the literary monument to walking around a city, for every possible reason you can think of. re: society, this is france but there is a Maupassant short story about a family that every sunday dressed up to the nines to walk up and down the town boardwalk, in order to maintain their respectable reputation.