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London History, Visits and Accommodation

At the Museum of London in 2005 I watched a video which described the history of the site of London. The video took time all the way back to the Ice Ages, when an ice front a mile high advanced into the area of what is now north London.It was during the Ice Ages,and the warmer periods between them, that the site of London came into being. The warmer interglacial periods during the Ice Ages created huge floods of melt water, and these floods deposited thick layers of gravel in the area of what is now the Thames. The gravel drained better than the surrounding clay, and it is on the gravel areas that people first settled. Pieces of a 250 000 year old skull have been found at Swanscombe near Gravesend. These remains date from the last interglacial period but one. At Acton, Stoke Newington, Hampstead, Putney and Brentford there are prehistoric remains, indicating scattered human presence before the arrival of the Romans, but there is no evidence of a settlement on the site of central London itself.

London was founded by the Romans. When Julius Caesar and his expeditionary force reached the Thames for the first time in 54BC the site of London represented the lowest fordable place on the river Thames, and nothing else. There was no town on the marshy site of London, and with the possible exception of Hengistbury Head, there were no towns in Britain as a whole. The closest Britain got to a town at this time was, in the words of Julius Caesar, "a central rallying point from hostile incursion, formed of some inaccessible piece of woodland that had been fortified with a high rampart or a ditch."

London Bridge

When Britain was invaded properly in 43AD, by the emperor Claudius, a supply base was quickly set up on the site of London, and a bridge was built. The site of this bridge is now occupied by London Bridge - although the river was much wider then, and the bridge longer. London Bridge in its various incarnations is, therefore, nearly two thousand years old.

Modern streets continue to follow the first roads laid out by the Romans. See our Roman Roads page for more details. The settlement grew rapidly into a town called Londinium, until in 60AD Boudicca, queen of the Iceni tribe destroyed the town during a huge rebellion against Roman rule. This event was so violent that evidence of it exists in London today as a bright red layer of soil, half a meter thick, and generally about four meters below modern street level. The red colour is the result of oxidised iron in the burnt clay.

London recovered from this catastrophe, and by the end of the first century it was probably the largest town in the province, and was the centre of the road network, as it is today. Disaster for London was to strike again three hundred years later when the Romans finally withdrew. The Saxons who invaded following the withdrawal were not an urban people. It is unclear what happened to London during those chaotic years but it is likely that the area within the Roman walls was left as a largely deserted ruin. Outside the city walls, beyond the ruined and hazardous Roman water front, a trading settlement grew up, often referred to in contemporary documents as Lundenwick. In the mid ninth century Viking raids led to the abandonment of Lundenwick and the gradual reoccupation of the walled city, now known as Lundenburg. The memory of the old trading settlement survives in modern London as the name Aldwych, meaning "the old wic."

London Wall, outside the Museum of London

The wall itself, frequently rebuilt, survived into medieval times, when increasing traffic left it increasingly redundant. Only small parts of the wall are now left, and can be viewed at Tower Hill, just outside Tower Hill underground station, and at the Museum of London, where a small section of the wall from the north west corner survives. The former gates remain in the names of the areas where they once stood, Aldgate, Ludgate, Newgate, Aldersgate, Cripplegate, Bishopsgate. The fourteenth century author Geoffrey Chaucer lived in rooms over the Aldgate.

 

 

 

 

Westminster

From 886 to 1216 London was regenerated on its Roman site. King Alfred began the resettlement in 886 with the establishment of a harbour and market near the north end of the present Millennium Bridge. If you walk along the Thames Path on the north bank between London Bridge and the Millennium Bridge you will pass a plaque erected in 1986 to comemorate the one thousandth one hundredth anniversary of this new settlement.

In the mid eleventh century Edward the Confessor moved his principal residence and seat of authority away from the walled city to what was then the desolate island of Thorney. Here he built Westminster Abbey, and Westminster Hall, creating the centre of British government which has endured ever since. The only decline in Westminster's dominance came during the reigns of Edward the First, Second and Third, when their wars with Scotland temporally moved some government activity north to York.

Edward the Confessor died shortly after the abbey was consecrated in December 1065. The following year on Christmas Day, William the Conqueror was crowned at the abbey following his victory at the Battle of Hastings. Every subsequent monarch has been crowned at Westminster Abbey.

Under Norman rule London continued to grow. William built the Tower, and the bridge was rebuilt. Sometime between 1176 and 1209 the bridge underwent further major development, when a stone bridge replaced the older wooden structure. This London Bridge was a wonder of the medieval world, the first bridge of any size built of stone since the Roman period. London Bridge stood until 1831, covered with houses, shops, and two chapels.

London developed as the centre of government, and the governance of London itself reflected the slow evolution of authority as it is seen today. The self governing Corporation of London dates back to William the Conqueror who whilst building the Tower to subdue the population, also realised it was wise to try and get Londoners on his side. His letter to the bishop, and citizens of London promising that the laws and customs of the city "be preserved as they were in King Edward's time," still survives at the Corporation of London Records Office. This self governing status was greatly strengthened in 1189 when Londoners were rewarded for giving up Richard the First's rebellious chancellor William de Longchamp. This man had taken refuge in the Tower, after trying to buy Londoners' support by reducing their taxes. London was rewarded for its loyalty with the grant of the "commune", an association of town's people with independent government. King John who succeeded Richard tried to ignore London's special status, but in 1215 he found himself compelled to grant a charter allowing Londoners to vote for their own mayor. Later that year King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta in which the right of citizens were put in writing for the first time in the history of British law. The history of London's government is therefore an illustration of the slow evolution of the rule of written law, and the rights of citizens in the face of the power of their rulers.

 

There are very few buildings in London that predate 1666. This was the year of the Great Fire which destroyed nearly the entire city. The fire started on the 2nd of September in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane, and raged for five days. The half timbered, thatched roofed buildings of seventeenth century London burnt very easily. It quickly became apparent that the only way to stop the fire was to pull down houses in its path. Lord Mayor Bludworth prevaricated, wondering who was going to foot the bill for the demolished houses. Charles the Second had to intervene personally and order demolition to start. Early efforts failed to work, and in desperation houses were blown up with gun powder. The fire eventually burnt out at Temple Chruch in Holborn. There are good displays and information about the Great Fire of London at the Museum of London.

 

 

 

View from the Monument

The site of the baker's shop where the Great Fire started is marked today by the Monument built by Christopher Wren - or to be precise the 202 foot high Monument is 202 feet away from the site of the shop. Wren was responsible for a large part of the regeneration of London following the fire, building forty nine new churches, which included the St Paul's Cathedral that we see today.

 

The evolution of London as a physically decent place dominates the history of the city in the nineteenth century. Living conditions in nineteenth century London were appalling. Large areas were given over to "rookeries" where people would be packed together in what today would be called shanty towns. The narrow streets of Seven Dials at St Giles, now in the fashionable West End, were once amongst the worst slums in London. A survey in the 1840s found two thousand eight hundred and fifty people people living here in ninety five decrepit houses. These conditions bred disease, and between November and December 1847 half a million Londoners were infected with typhus, out a population of two and a half million. By the summer of 1858 the rapidly expanding population, and the popularity of the new flush toilet, had resulted in a crisis known as The Great Stink. The Metropolitan Board of Works had been inaugurated in 1855, and under the direction of the engineer Joseph Bazalgette work started on a proper sewerage system for London. As well as building the revolutionary sewer system Bazalgette laid our Garrick Street, Queen Victoria Street, Southwark Street, Shaftsbury Avenue, Charing Cross Road, and Northumberland Avenue. He built Hammersmith Bridge, Putney Bridge, and Battersea Bridge, and laid out Clapham Common and Battersea Park. He also directed the building of huge Thames embankments which held his low level sewers, accommodate today's District and Circle Underground lines, and provide space for roads, and public gardens in the centre of London. Bazalgette is a modern Christopher Wren and deserves to be more widely known. His sewers saved millions of people from death by water bourne disease. His work for the Metropolitan Board Of Works coincided with a general social shift away from the laissez faire individualism of the early nineteenth century towards a more modern conception of state intervention for the public good. Perhaps this is symbolised best by Victoria Embankment Gardens off Villiers Street. Before the Embankments were built this run down area had been owned by the Crown. On completion of the Victoria Embankment the Crown wanted this now valuable land for speculative building. Bazalgette, and the newsagent proprietor WH Smith opposed this. Why should the crown benefit from the sale of land made valuable at public expense? Prime Minister Gladstone fought hard for the Crown, but Bazalgette and WH Smith won the argument. The Embankment Gardens were built, and remain to this day a memorial to the notion of public good prevailing over exclusively private interests. In fact the very existence of London owes much to the unification of fragmentary, self interested authorities which followed on from Bazalgette's large scale projects involving the whole of the metropolis. The Times said in 1885 "There is no such place as London at all...(it is) rent into an infinity of divisions,districts and areas." (Quoted The Great Stink Of London by Peter Ackroyd P58) Bazalgette's work, to some extent, helped overcome this division. A small memorial to Bazalgette stands beneath the railway bridge running into Charing Cross station. The lamp posts on the Victoria Embankment are the original cast iron posts in the shape of dolphins. They are now one of the few surviving structures which still carry the Metropolitan Board of Work's initials "MBW."

London today is the physical and symbolic centre of the country, still lying at the centre of the road system as it did in Roman times. Compared with other great cities London has a uniquely important position within its country. In the late sixteenth century London was thirteen times bigger that the second largest city in England. By 1901 it was still six times bigger than its nearest rival. In the 1930s over one fifth of the whole population of England and Wales lived in London. Some attempts have been made to reduce London's overwhelming dominance. Important civil service functions have been moved to other cities. The Royal Mint, for example, which has a history in London dating back to King Alfred, was moved to Cardiff between 1968 and 1975. London, however, remains the centre of Britain. All the great symbols of state can be found there, the buildings and locations which a country uses to define itself. These symbols have a considerable power, as realised by the thirteenth century king Edward the First, who made sure he destroyed all such symbolic buildings in Wales and Scotland, to centre the country on London. Hitler also realised the power of national symbolism, and made a determined effort to destroy Britain's most famous buildings during the Second World War. Whatever Britain might be, much of its identity lies in the Tower, Westminster Abbey, and the other great buildings of the capital.