Art and About: The Cato Street Conspiracy – A Walk

We will start at Edgware Road Underground station by considering a discovery nearby in 1820, a police chase and an arrest. We will walk to the location of the plot on Cato Street itself and stare at the hayloft ( now worth well in excess of £1 million) where the conspirators made their plans and were surprised on the fateful night of 23rd February 1820. We will then stroll south past the long- vanished site of the barracks from where soldiers were called to crush the plot and ask how they could they possibly have got themselves lost on a 500 yard journey. We will finish at Grosvenor Square where the plotters were planning to carry out a devastating attack on the British cabinet. Throughout we will study some of the very detailed and often contradictory evidence for

who did what, when and with what intent. We ask who the conspirators were and what did they believe. What were they hoping to achieve? Was it revenge for Peterloo? Was it a nostalgic backward-looking plot or was it revolutionary. Was it provoked deliberately by government? It is a thrilling story.