Underbelly is not a history company.

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History just happens to be the evidence.

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We started with one idea: that nothing in a city is an accident. Not the height of a wall, not the width of an alley, not the reason a particular building still stands three hundred years after it should, by rights, have been pulled down. Every one of those was a decision, made by someone who wanted something, and who usually got it.

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Most walking tours will tell you when a building was built. We're more interested in what it was built to hide, protect, or convince you of. Nothing you pass in a city is neutral — not the wall, not the street name, not the institution behind the door. Somebody decided it should look exactly the way it looks, and that decision is almost always more interesting than the building itself.

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Dates come up. Kings come up. We're not pretending otherwise. But they're never the point — they're just where a story happens to sit, not the reason we're telling it. We're far more interested in why something survived, why something got covered up, and why your city still runs on the same logic it always has, just with better lighting.

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By the end, our only real hope is a fairly specific and slightly annoying one: that you won't be able to walk past a church, a bollard, or a bank again without wondering what it's not telling you.

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That's it. That's the whole company. Currently, also, the whole staff.

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— Marc. Lifelong Londoner, one year spent guiding other people's tours before deciding to build one entirely out of the stories I actually stopped for.