Memorials of Old London Part 1

Memorials of Old London.

by Various.

Volume I.

PREFACE

In the year of grace one thousand nine hundred and nine the citizens of London are celebrating their Pageant, a mighty spectacle representing some of the stately scenes of splendour and magnificence which London streets have witnessed from the days of Alfred to the nineteenth century. It is perhaps fortunate that these volumes of the MEMORIALS OF OLD LONDON should appear when the minds of the people of England are concerned with this wonderful panorama of the past history of the chief city of the Empire. The Pageant will be all very beautiful, very grand, instructive and edifying, and profoundly interesting; but, after all, London needs no Pageant to set forth its attractions, historical and spectacular. London is in itself a Pageant. The street names, the buildings, cathedral, churches, prisons, theatres, the river with its bridges, and countless other objects, all summon up the memories of the past, and form a Pageant that is altogether satisfying. Many books have been written on the greatest city of England's Empire--some learned and ponderous tomes, others mere guide books; some devoted to special buildings and foundations, others to the life, manners, and customs of the citizens. This work differs from other books in that each chapter is written by an expert who has made a special study of the subject, and is therefore authoritative, and contains all the information which recent investigations have brought to light. It is not exhaustive. London contains so much that is of profound interest, that many additional volumes would be needed in order to describe all its treasures. The city of Westminster, the suburbs and the West End, have for the most part been excluded from the plan of this work, and possibly may be treated of in a subsequent volume. The domain of the city of London, not of the London County Council, provides the chief subjects of these volumes, though occasionally our writers have strayed beyond the city boundaries.

We have endeavoured to give sketches of London, its appearance, its life and manners, at various stages of its history. We have tried to describe its historic buildings, its fortress, its churches, the Exchange, and other houses noted in its annals. Monastic London is represented by the Charterhouse. Legal London finds expression in the histories of the Temple and the Inns of Court. Royal London is described by the story of its Palaces; and the old city life of the famous merchants and traders, artizans and 'prentices, is shown in our glimpses of Mediaeval London, the histories of the Guildhall, the City Companies, the Hanseatic League, Elizabethan London, and in other chapters. Old inns, coffee-houses, clubs, learned societies, and literary shrines present other phases of the life of the old city which are not without their attractions, and help to complete the picture which we have tried to paint.

All the chapters have been specially written for this work, and my most grateful thanks are due to each of the contributors for their valuable papers, as well as to those who have supplied photographs, old prints, or drawings. I desire especially to thank Mr. Philip Norman for his coloured sketches which form the pleasing frontispieces of the two volumes; to Mr. Harold Sands for his skilfully constructed plan of the Tower of London; and to Mr. Tavenor-Perry for his valuable drawings of St. Bartholomew's Church, Smithfield, and the bridges that span the Thames.

P. H. DITCHFIELD.

_Barkham Rectory, Berks., August, 1908._

LONDON IN EARLY TIMES

BY W. J. LOFTIE, B.A., F.S.A.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

I.--CELTIC LONDON

When we see the words "Celtic London" at the head of a chapter we naturally feel inclined to ask, "Was there such a place? Was there any Celtic London?" Although it is almost impossible to answer such a question by either "yes" or "no," it may be worth while to examine it briefly before pa.s.sing on to the domains of authentic history.

In the first place, there must have been some gathering of huts or houses, some aggregation of residences, to which a name could be applied, and it must have been important enough to retain its name after the Romans came--nay, to retain it even in spite of an attempt on their part to change it.

But though we must accept the existence of a London in the old obscure period when something very like modern Welsh was the language of the south-eastern part of Britain, and though we know that London was situated on a river which also had a Welsh name, we do not know directly on which side of that river it stood, and have nothing for it but to apply to the problem what a great authority has described as an historical imagination, and try if we can find a sufficient number of geographical or topographical facts to reduce the problematic side of the questions involved; and so to leave certain points, certain pedestals, so to speak, of firm ground on which we may place the foundations of the greatest city the world has seen.

Our first facts are meagre enough. We have three words; no more. They are Lon, don, and Thames. We are like the Oriental lady in the legend of St. Thomas of Canterbury. She knew but two words of English--Gilbert and London. We know three words, and, keeping them in our minds, wander down the Thames till we find the place to which we can fit the other two words. But, first, we must make an attempt to translate them into modern English. The Welsh _Lynn_ is p.r.o.nounced _lunn_. _Dun_, or _down_, has pa.s.sed into English. _Thame_, or _thames_, occurs in many parts of England, everywhere denoting the same thing, and, according to most authorities, being practically the same as the English word _tame_. The name of the Tamar will occur to the mind as well as Thame. In the case of the Thames, the name may very well have come over from the Continent with the early traders--the Angles, for instance, or the Danes--and have thus pa.s.sed into British use. A great authority, Mr. Bradley, is said to have mentioned that Lynn in London may be a personal name. The ordinary interpretation is so simple that it seems hardly worth while--unphilosophical, in fact--to search for another. Lynn, p.r.o.nounced Lunn, is a lake. Dun is a down or hill. London, as the first syllable may be taken adjectively, will mean the Lake Hill. Where, then, is the hill which stands by a lake?

If we consult a map which includes the lower Thames, and has the levels clearly marked or contoured, and follow the coast line from, say, Kew Bridge, we come to no higher ground for more than six miles, the surface varying from one foot above the ordnance datum of high water to seven.

Hills are visible in the background, but none at the water's edge, until we reach that on which St. Paul's stands. Mylne gives it as forty-five feet high, and that on which, close by, the Royal Exchange stands he marks as forty-eight. If we could denude this region of its myriad houses, we should see a plain extending back to the higher ground from the site of the Temple Gardens--that is, to Clerkenwell. Ludgate, rising nearly fifty feet in a steep slope from the river's edge, would appear something great in such a landscape, backed, as it would have been, to the eastward by a still higher down, with the narrow stream of Walbrook rus.h.i.+ng to the Thames, between them. No other height would stand so near the water's edge, or would be visible within a couple of miles, on this left bank of the river. So much for our "down." But where is our "lynn"?

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROOF TILE (ROMAN).]

If we could see Southwark and the region immediately to the south of it similarly denuded, we should find that, across the Thames from the double down, an archipelago of islets extends from what is now Bermondsey westward to Lambeth. The dry ground would be seen dotted here and there, while every tide, every flood, every increase of water from the upper Thames, would make the whole region into a mora.s.s. The main stream of the great river, coming eastward round a bend from Westminster, would deepen its channel under the down, leaving the opposite islets in shallow water, and spreading, according to the first author by whom the place is mentioned, "at every tide would form a lake."

Here, then, Dion Ca.s.sius, writing in the second century, describes for us the site of Southwark. He furnishes us with what we want--the "lynn"

for our "down," the Lon for the Don. We do not know for certain whether this Celtic London was on the double hill or among the islets opposite--whether, that is, the town was on the lynn or on the dun.

There is, however, a certain amount of evidence that it was on the lynn. A British road seems to have been already in existence--the road which led from Dover toward Chester. Where did it cross the Thames? If we could make sure of the answer, our three facts would become four.

There was no bridge in this Celtic period to carry the road across the Thames. At the same time, we know that a crossing was made; and, if we judge by the course and direction of the road, it must have been at or very near what is now called Westminster. Here the shoal-water, as sailors say, was on both sides of the river. The islets, many of them covered at every high tide, existed where a landing was called by later settlers the Lambhithe. Other landing-places are denoted by such names as Stanegate, Toothill, Merefleet, Pollen Stock, Thorney, Jakeslea and others, all Saxon, which tell us of the condition of both banks of the Thames at a very remote period. From this we may safely argue--first, that the amount of water coming down being approximately the same, it had a much wider district to cover; and, secondly, that it was much more shallow. These names also show that, in crossing, the road from Dover had in Saxon times certain landmarks to follow, while the use of the word Toot, our word "tout," shows that guides existed, who could be called upon to help travellers across. All these items are more or less obscurely mentioned by Dion Ca.s.sius, and show that wheresoever Celtic London stood, whether on the left or the right bank, Aulus Plautius chose the easternmost of the double hills for his bridge head; and when the wall was built, a couple of centuries later, it took in the western hill as well, while the bridge rendered the ford at Westminster useless, and the Watling Street was diverted at the Marble Arch along Oxford Street, instead of running straight down Park Lane to the ford at Westminster.

As for facts in the history of Celtic London, we have none. The late General Pitt Rivers recorded the discovery of piles, of origin possibly before the Roman period, in the street called London Wall, and also in Southwark, some nine feet below the present surface. A few articles of Roman make were found mixed with a few bone implements of a ruder type.

This, the only authentic discovery of the kind, does not prove more than that some of the Britons lived among the Romans, and the date is quite uncertain. As to their dwellings before the Romans came, we have remains in various places from which we can but gather that, though some ancient race in these islands built up such rude but vast temples as Stonehenge, the dwellings of the people who lived by the Walbrook, or in Southwark, were mere wigwams. A hollow was dug in the ground, and where stones were plentiful, which cannot have been the case on the site of Lynn Dun, a few were used in the flooring. Over the hollow the house was raised--a bank of earth, perhaps roofed with boughs and trunks, and with some means of making a wood fire. Rings of bra.s.s and sc.r.a.ps of pottery are often found in the hollows, but of such discoveries in London the records are silent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RED-GLAZED POTTERY (ROMAN).]

II.--ROMAN LONDON

With the coming of the Romans, we might expect to find ourselves on firmer ground than in our vain endeavours to learn something about the early Britons in London. But if we date the Latin discovery of Britain with the coming of Julius Caesar to the southern coast of our island in 55 B.C., it is evident that before the expedition, which was eventually commanded by Aulus Plautius in A.D. 43, nearly a century elapsed, and that during all that time there is no mention at all of London. To use Dr. Guest's cautious words: "The notion entertained by some antiquaries that a British town preceded the Roman camp has no foundation to rest upon." In the chapter on Celtic London I have endeavoured to show that the British town, if there was one, stood, as Ptolemy a.s.serts, on the Cantian side of the river. The Romans seldom or hardly ever chose a Celtic site for a new building, but, to quote Guest again, "generally built their _castellum_ two or three miles from the British _oppidum_."

On this principle, the new building of Aulus would be either a couple of miles from the Celtic town, or separated from it at least by the width of the Thames. If we suppose, as is more than probable, that Lynn Dun was in Southwark, and that some settlement was also among the shallows and islets crossed by the Dover Road and named by the Anglo-Saxons the Watling Street, the Roman general, by building London Bridge and by making a strong fort on the hill at the northern end of it, laid the foundation of Roman London.

The new city, which speedily rose round the bridge head on the northern side of the river, was of considerable dimensions by the time it is first mentioned--namely, in A.D. 64. This is by Tacitus, who describes it as full of merchants and merchandise. At the same time, except for the pretorium at the bridge head, there were no defences. Anything like a walled town must have been among the islets on the southern side; but, from the character of the Roman remains found in Southwark and St George's Fields, it is probable that the British town there was not of any importance, and answered to Julius Caesar's contemptuous description: "The Britons call a thick wood, enclosed with a rampart and a ditch, a town." The new Roman fort at the northern end of the bridge, with its suburb of merchants' houses along the Walbrook, is the London of history, and the first we hear about it is that--while Camalodunum was a Roman Colonium, and Verulam a Municipium--London was only a Prefectura.

This is the opinion of Pennant; but Tacitus, who first names London as being in existence at all and who lived and wrote about A.D. 90, expressly mentions it as abounding in merchants and business. Dr. Guest was of opinion that the Roman fort was made in A.D. 43. It stood above the outfall of the Walbrook, its western wing being where Cannon Street terminus is now, and its eastern extremity reaching to Mincing Lane.

These limits were determined in a paper by Arthur Taylor in _Archaeologia_ in 1849, and were confirmed during the building of Cannon Street Station. The road from the bridge divided in East Cheap and pa.s.sed out towards the spot now called from the Marble Arch, where it joined the old road which the Saxons subsequently named the Watling Street, now Park Lane and Edgware Road, as to one branch; and as to the other, the Ermin Street, which led towards Lincoln. The Roman governor probably lived in his Pretorium, where, at the north-west corner, close to the celebrated London Stone, remains of pavements and buildings have been found. At the south-eastern corner, too, but at a lower level, another pavement, which still exists under the Corn Exchange, may have been part of a bath. There are no remnants of a church or a temple, but some antiquaries fancied they saw relics of a Roman basilica, or judgment hall, among the fragments of masonry removed for the station.

There were no burials within the walls, but they begin, even among the pavements and villas, just outside the limits marked by the wall of the Pretorium. That it was defended by the stream of Walbrook on the west, and by a wide fosse on the northern side, seems certain. The Mansion House, in 1738, was built on piles "in a ditch," according to Stukeley.

This fosse probably communicated with the Walbrook, and from what Stow says, seems to have had a certain amount of stream through it.

"Langborne Ward," he says, "is so called of a long borne of sweete water, which of old time breaking out into Fenchurch streete, ran down the same streete and Lombard streete to the West end of St. Mary Woolnothe's Church, where turning south, and breaking it selfe into many small shares, rilles or streames, it left the name of Shareborne, or south borne lane (as I have read) because it ranne south to the river of Thames."

Stow's interpretations of names often read like bad jokes, not to say bad puns. We remember his Matfelon, his Sherehog, his Cripplegate and other curiosities of the kind. Sherborn Lane has now disappeared, but there can be little doubt the "burn" or "bourne" was a relic of the fosse of the first Roman London. It divides two wards, so was as ancient as those wards--namely, Cornhill and Langborne; and if there was any stream through it fell into Walbrook, between the parish church of St.

Mary on the Woollen Hithe and St. Mary of the Woolchurch Haw. This corner, then near the modern Mansion House, was the north-western corner of the little fort, Dowgate was at the south-western, and Billingsgate at the south-eastern corner, while Mincing Lane, perhaps at Fenchurch Street, completed the rectangle. What formed the defence on this, the eastern side, we have no evidence, but it was probably one of the "shares, rilles, or streames" which so puzzled Stow. The Walbrook was 248 feet wide.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROMAN SANDALS (FOUND IN LONDON).]

It is evident, then, that the Roman London Bridge was well protected, but the town which grew round it lay open to any attack. Such a contingency was the rebellion of Boadicea, when Suetonius abandoned the bridge fort and open town and held to Verulam and Camalodunum, which had walls. We do not hear anything about the repairs of the bridge when the rebellion was over. It probably, as in so many other places, consisted of a few piers of ma.s.sive masonry, and great beams, probably wide apart, formed the roadway. The line of coins found in the Thames may have been dropped as offerings to the river-G.o.d, or merely by careless pa.s.sengers.

They dated back to republican times, and ended only with the last years of the Roman occupation, long after the introduction of Christianity. It may be mentioned here that in the catalogue of Roach Smith (1854), from which we have borrowed some ill.u.s.trations, is an account of a box which had perished, but which had contained tiers of iron coins, plated with silver, oxydised together in ma.s.ses, being obviously base money coined to pa.s.s current in Britain in the reign of Claudius, A.D. 41. It was discovered in King William Street, almost the centre of the old fort.

Forged _denarii_ of lead or bra.s.s formed the larger part of those found in the Thames. The bridge was probably in a line with Botolph Lane, the old London Bridge of Peter of Colechurch being higher up, and the present London Bridge higher again. The Roman Bridge, frequently repaired, and frequently, too, broken down--as when Anlaf, the Dane, sailed up the Thames with his fleet in 993--was finally removed in favour of the nineteen arches and a drawbridge, which subsisted until 1831. (The site of the Roman Bridge is discussed in a paper on "Recent Discoveries in Roman London," in volume lx. of _Archaelogia_.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GATES OF THE CITY: ALDERSGATE AND BRIDGEGATE.]

Such, then, was Roman London during the greater part of the Roman occupation of Britain--as it is still, a city of suburbs.

Of the date of the building of the wall we have no certainty. A recent writer finds fault with my cautious statement in _Historic London_ that "in 350 London had no wall," and would subst.i.tute 360. The wall was certainly built about that time or a little later, but may have been begun long before. It is evident that such a piece of work was not completed in a single year, even under the Roman Emperors. Perhaps--it is too easy to form theories--Constantine (Stow says _Helena_) projected it and left it to be finished by his successors. It had been completed by the reign of Theodosius, about A.D. 368.

The course of the new wall, according to Stow, was from the Tower to Aldgate, thence to Bishopsgate, and from Bishopsgate to Aldersgate, with a postern at Cripplegate. Next came Newgate, and Ludgate was towards the Fleet--the wall ending at the Thames. The whole length was two miles and a half and 608 feet. Stow did not know that several of the gates he named--Aldgate, Cripplegate, Aldersgate, and Ludgate--were not Roman.

Nor did he know that Ludgate means a postern, and Crepulgeat a covered way, both these gates being probably of late construction, though possibly of the time of Alfred. The exact site of the wall and the two landward gates seems to be indicated by the old ward boundaries, but modern investigators have neglected them. There was another Roman settlement, namely, at Westminster, where the abbey stands on the site of some older buildings. Roman concrete forms the foundation of the older part of the church and the dark cloisters. The pavement of a dwelling was found under the nave, and a sarcophagus, bearing a rudely carved cross, showed that the town was not walled. The Romans possibly built here on account of the ford, and we may be sure that at times, when the only bridge was under repair or unfinished, the crossing here for the ancient road, which the Saxons named the Watling Street, was found convenient. There is mention of the buildings on Thorney in a charter at the British Museum (Kemble, D.L.V.), apparently a thirteenth century forgery, but of interest as showing that a tradition survived.

King Eadgar is made to say that a temple of abomination had been destroyed to make way for the church of St. Peter. Such a temple, if one existed, was more probably Saxon than Roman.

As to the houses and buildings of Roman London within the walls we know very little. Sir W. t.i.te enumerated a large number of mosaic pavements, some of them of considerable size, and scattered over a wide area, but apparently not marking any fine or magnificent public buildings.

Stukeley made a plan showing where, in his opinion at least, remains of such buildings should be found; but, to put it briefly, remains of the kind have been conspicuous by their absence on his eight sites. Stukeley is, in fact, a very untrustworthy authority. He thought, with Stow, that Algate, the mediaeval name, meant Oldgate, or, as Stow wrote it, Ealdgate, whereas it was in reality one of the latest. The name probably denoted a gate open to all without toll.

The remains of the wall, which still or lately existed, have been carefully examined by Mr. Norman, of the Society of Antiquaries, and Mr.

Francis Reader. Their account of various excavations is in volume lx. of _Archaeologia_, and ill.u.s.trated by a series of plans, sections, and other drawings by Mr. Reader, who seems to have proved that the marsh on which Moorfield was laid out in 1605 did not exist in the early Roman time, but was caused by the building of the wall.

III.--SAXON LONDON

If we know but little about Roman London, we know still less, if possible, about Saxon London. So far as it was inhabited at all, it was the capital of the kings of Ess.e.x, and is so described in a very few doc.u.ments. On this account it was an episcopal see. How the Saxons became possessed of it we do not know. Probably Stow's account may be accepted as the most likely:--