Jubilee Walkway

The walkway was originally opened as the Silver Jubilee Walkway to commemorate Queen Elizabeth II’s accession, with the Queen herself opening it on 9 June 1977. The silver thread running through the name refers not just to the jubilee itself, but to a vision of the Thames as the spine and setting of London, a linking silver thread drawing together the West End, South Bank, East London and the City. It was created by environmentalist Max Nicholson as an urban trail and lasting memorial to the celebrations surrounding the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, as one of the initiatives of the London Celebrations Committee.

The name endured a subtle change. On 24 October 2002, during the Queen’s golden jubilee, the renamed Jubilee Walkway (the word Silver was dropped as appropriate) reopened after refurbishment. That single word drop marked a passage of time: the silver had tarnished into gold. The walk now commemorates not one jubilee but two, and the word Jubilee alone carries the accumulated weight of both celebrations.

The walkway was created by environmentalist Max Nicholson as part of the London Celebrations Committee for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, spearheaded by their environmental sub-committee. Max Nicholson outlined the idea in March 1976, envisioning a linking silver thread to revive the Thames as the spine of London. This was ambitious urban placemaking decades before the term existed—not a park, not a monument, but a continuous thread connecting the city’s fractured parts.

What began as an ambitious conceptual project slowly became concrete reality. At the time of the Queen’s initial opening in 1977, the walk was far from complete, but as every organisation sprung up converting warehouses into other facilities along the River Thames, a prerequisite of planning permission was that they had to make their riparian stretch walkable. This was clever policy: every development became a forced contribution to the walking route. The walkway’s completion wasn’t announced with great fanfare—it accumulated, piece by piece, over 17 years. The South Bank section grew from a fragmentary network into a continuous promenade.

The Jubilee Walkway is fundamentally democratic. It was designed to encourage the best way of getting to know London on foot and to reassert the full equality of the walker with others moving by other means. No ticket required. No reservation. No gatekeepers. The trail passes Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the Tate Modern, Southwark Cathedral, and a hundred smaller landmarks, but none of them are the point—the point is the walking itself, the rhythm of discovery.

As warehouses along the River Thames were converted into other facilities, a prerequisite of planning permission became that organisations had to make their riparian stretch walkable, turning development into stewardship. The Jubilee Walkway Trust continues this work, maintaining the 50 interpretation panels and the thousands of silver discs embedded in the pavement, each one a small compass pointing walkers toward discovery.

Walk the Jubilee Walkway today and you move through a landscape of layered stories. The Jubilee Walkway is thought to be the first city trail in the world and has been enjoyed by literally millions of people for more than 40 years. It remains the capital’s most popular walking trail and one of London’s seven top walking routes designated as the Strategic Walks Network. The SE1 section follows the Thames, and the route runs along the SE1 riverside between Lambeth Bridge and Tower Bridge.

The Jubilee Walkway Trust continues its work of maintenance and interpretation. In the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, the Walkway was extensively refurbished, with several gold discs added to mark historical events. Modern technology hasn’t replaced the pavement markers; instead, discs featuring the cross of a crown point in the direction of travel, while gold discs mark out special events in history. The walkway remains a lesson in what public infrastructure can be when it’s designed around the needs of those on foot.