Four free, self-guided Time Hunters walks around the City of London.
Oh, pleased to see you! Come in, come in! My name is Professor Horatio Pendulum. Keeper of the Timeaporium Clock Shop – repairer of ancient timepieces, collector of impossible objects… and, regrettably, the person responsible for what may soon become the greatest disaster in London history. There’s no easy way to put this. I may have accidentally caused a rift in space time!
You see, hidden beneath the Timeaporium, I’ve built a machine known as the Chronosphere – a magnificent invention designed to peer safely into history itself. But I overloaded it and it’s created some time fragments across London. History is leaking. Past and present are becoming tangled together like knotted clock springs. Objects, people and places from different centuries have scattered themselves across the city.
I need some help to restore everything to its rightful place in time. Can you help and become a Time Hunter? You just need to follow some riddles found by the Chronosphere to track down time fragments that have been thrown into famous landmarks, ancient ruins, forgotten corners and curious monuments, to put things right.
The four trails
1. A Monument to a Garden
A Monument to a Garden begins at the Monument, built to remember the Great Fire of London, and winds through the hidden alleys, markets and courtyards of the eastern City of London before finishing on Seething Lane Garden, where someone once dug a hole to hide his cheese from the Great Fire.
Twelve stops, a fold-up treasure map, a pocketful of riddles and missions, and around 400 years of history to hunt down along the way.
Download the map and handbook (PDF) · See every stop on Fun Kids
2. The Circular Trail
For almost 2,000 years, people have arrived in the City of London looking for safety, work and a fresh start. Roman settlers, Saxon knights, Dutch and French families fleeing persecution, and the Kindertransport children who stepped onto the platforms at Liverpool Street just before the Second World War.
The Circular Trail follows their footsteps from Liverpool Street Station to Hope Square. Nine stops, a fold-up map that cracks across six different centuries, and a set of riddles and missions to solve as you go.
Download the map and handbook (PDF) · See every stop on Fun Kids
3. A Bridge to the Barbican
A Bridge to the Barbican is a free, self-guided Time Hunters walk that begins at Holborn Viaduct — the world’s first flyover — and winds through the old streets of Smithfield, past London’s oldest hospital and its 800-year-old meat market, before climbing into the concrete canyons of the Barbican and finishing at St Giles Cripplegate.
Ten stops, a fold-up treasure map, a pocketful of riddles and missions — and nearly 1,000 years of history to hunt down along the way.
Download the map and handbook (PDF) · See every stop on Fun Kids
4. A Garden to the Guildhall
A Garden to the Guildhall begins in the rose garden of Christchurch Greyfriars and wanders the City’s hidden gardens and churchyards, past a stretch of Roman wall, a park full of everyday heroes and a Shakespeare memorial, before finishing at the Guildhall, where London has been governed for 800 years.
Nine stops, a fold-up treasure map, a pocketful of riddles and missions, and almost 2,000 years of history to hunt down along the way.
Download the map and handbook (PDF) · See every stop on Fun Kids
How the hunt works
Print the map. Each trail is a single sheet of A3 that folds down to pocket size — a fractured map of the City on one side, and an activity handbook on the other with a card for every stop.
Listen to the podcast. Every stop has a riddle, read aloud in the Time Hunters podcast, that points you to the next place on the trail.
Hunt down every stop. There is no route drawn on the map — on purpose. The best ways through the City go down tiny alleys and courtyards, and we didn’t want to give them away. Follow the numbers and explore.
Solve the missions. Each stop sets a mission — a plaque to find, a carving to count, a detail to spot. Grown-ups get a printable answer key to check them.
The map is torn into coloured shards, one for each era: Medieval, Tudor, Great Fire, Georgian, Victorian and Modern. Cross from one colour to another and you’ve time-travelled.