Real-life locations of A Christmas Carol

Nothing captures the festive season like A Christmas Carol – and the classic Dickens novel is set largely in the City. Here’s where to find the ghosts of Christmas past.

“Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change”

The Royal Exchange was a place of business in Charles Dickens’ day, and Scrooge would have been well known to the merchants and traders there. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come takes him to the ‘Change to see what they might say about him after his death.

It all looks very different these days – today, it houses a luxury shopping mall.

“Down a slide on Cornhill”

Dickens doesn’t name the exact address of Scrooge and Marley’s counting house, but it’s thought to be in one of the lanes off Cornhill – and if you visit these historic alleyways, they certainly feel very Dickensian.

Cornhill is mentioned in the book when Bob embraces the spirit of Christmas and goes sliding down the street 20 times with the local boys before running home “as hard as he could pelt”.

“Not the little prize turkey: the big one”

At the end of the novel, Scrooge, now a reformed character, buys a prize turkey for the Cratchit family. The Victorian Leadenhall market, built on the site of a medieval poultry market, would have been just the place to go.

If you visit Leadenhall today, you can still see the hooks where traders used to hang chickens, geese and turkeys back in Dickens’ day.

“The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge”

Again, Dickens doesn’t name the church, but St Michael Cornhill, overlooking the alleys off Cornhill where Scrooge’s counting house was located, is a likely contender.

The gothic tower is the work of Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, who rebuilt the church after the Great Fire of London.

Feeling literary? Get in touch to book a walking tour of the Square Mile with a Dickensian twist.

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