IanVisits turns twenty – two decades of exploring London

Published on 28th October 2026 by Ian Mansfield in Miscellaneous

ianVisits is 20 years old today. Happy birthday to me and all that jazz. Sadly, it’s the website’s anniversary, not mine, as I’m considerably older than that, with less hair, more wrinkles, and a bigger waistline. Anyway, twenty years ago today, I started a website and, rather unexpectedly, it’s still going.

The first article appeared on 28th October 2006, with no grand strategy, just a promise of assorted observations, ideas, and occasional technical ramblings as I worked out what to do with it.

I used to organise tours in another place, and after a fracas, I left and set up a website to keep doing that, with a small blog on the side. Organising tours dried up, but writing about what everyone else was doing took off instead. The name – ianVisits (interesting places) – survived the change of direction, minus the parentheses. Fortunately, visiting things remains a fairly accurate description of what I do.

Two decades later, it seems like a reasonable time to pause, look back, and thank the people who made it worth carrying on.

Over time, the website settled into its familiar mixture of transport, architecture, history, exhibitions and things to do around London. Someone once described it to me as if I were channelling the average BBC 4 viewer. Which I thought was quite nice.

Lots of odd nuggets of history, lots of transport, and thanks to the many people on construction sites who take time away from building things to answer this idiot’s obvious questions, reports from said construction sites. And of course lots of exhibitions to see. And sometimes there is simply an interesting door, and I want to know what is behind it.

And in a few months time, the 500th article about London’s alleys will be published. What started as an idea to force me to keep a fixed writing schedule has become a historical record of London’s passageways. In the process, I’ve learned so much about London in general, thanks to hours spent digging into the archives, old maps, planning documents, and goodness knows what other reputable sources I can find.

I like to think that, in my own small way, I’ve added to the wider corpus of knowledge about London’s history, and maybe I will be able to look back at the hundreds of articles as my very own magnum opus.

And of course the research into alleys can often trigger all the other weird stuff that becomes articles because I stumble upon them when researching something else entirely and – oh, gods, you should see my bookmarks folder.

The events calendar has become another substantial part of the website.

What started as a “well, I am going here, so I should tell people about it as well” has morphed into something much bigger. And that’s a very happy accident, and I am actually quite proud of it.

There are two sides of the coin to the listings guide.

The most important is obviously you, dear readers, finding things I think you might enjoy. Yes, it’s work, but it’s actually quite fun, as I am constantly seeing venues putting on events that look really exciting, and those moments of delight as I type them into my website admin tools are quite pleasurable.

And I do get feedback that people enjoy the listings, which is reassuring, because it means I am not as weird as I once convinced myself I was for enjoying these sorts of things.

But the other side of the coin is the venues.

Although I naturally list the big events, I’ve always focused on the smaller venues that might otherwise struggle to reach a wider audience and, in my own small way, send paying punters their way to top up their numbers with new customers.

London really does have such a huge variety of talks, tours, small exhibitions and occasional openings. Many have modest publicity budgets, and some would be easy to miss entirely.

I occasionally get feedback from venues that lots of ianVisits readers turned up, which is probably the most rewarding feedback I get here, because it means I got it right and you were likely to be interested in what I had found and thought to add to the website.

That still seems a good measure of what a website like this can achieve.

There is a particular pleasure in discovering that something assumed to be a bit niche has found a much wider audience. As a bit of a nerd, it’s very reassuring to know others out there also want to read about railway infrastructure, overlooked buildings, and the city’s many weird traditions.

I don’t know how many people buy tickets through the organisers’ own websites, but I get hints from booking platforms, vibes, and sometimes direct feedback. From that, I can glean a very rough guestimate.

With the caveat that this is akin to trying to work out what a cake will look like while holding some eggs and a bag of flour, a very rough guestimate is that ianVisits readers probably spend north of £4 million a year  on tickets to events.

That’s a lot of ticket money that goes to often local or smaller heritage charities. So well done to you for attending events and supporting so many charities at the same time.

Running the website also involves rather more work than I am comfortable with. It’s still not quite ready to hire more staff, and gods, I hope that happens soon. It is also finally a full-time job, which is a good thing, after running it for the first three quarters of its life as a part-time thing squeezed into evenings and weekends.

So thank you to everyone who reads, shares articles, sends suggestions, adds information in the comments, or politely points out a mistake. Thank you also to the people who get a baffling email from me asking about some weird thing I want to write about and think, yeah, that might be interesting and click reply.

And a particular thank you to those who support the website financially. Writing and researching the articles, maintaining the listings and keeping everything running all take time and money.

Your contributions help make that possible.

Whether you have been reading since the early days or arrived here this morning, thank you for being part of these twenty years.

There is still plenty of London left to visit.

I guess I’d better get on with it. But first… I want some cake.

While (bloody annoying) advertising revenue helps fund the website’s costs, online advertising is a rapidly shrinking way for websites to cover them, and the AI armageddon is making it worse. Despite Google’s protestations, it’s killing websites that rely on advertising to survive.

I don’t want to go behind a paywall, as that would reduce how many venues and charities I can support by promoting their events to a much wider public, although I haven’t ruled it out entirely.

That is why I have a DonorBox page where you can help cover the website’s costs and the time I invest in writing and research for the news articles. It’s similar to how many smaller websites are now seeking to generate income amid rising costs and declining advertising.

Whether it’s a one-off donation or a regular giver, every bit of support goes a long way toward covering the running costs of the ianVisits website and keeping you regularly topped up with doses of London news and facts.

If you like what ianVisits provides, then please support the website here.