Have you ever wondered where London came from? The start of the day is as good a time as any during which to contemplate the beginnings of the city.
Those of us who are still living in the capital in 2043 will surely hear all about it. That year will mark the 2,000th anniversary of the founding of the city, and the festivities will no doubt rival London’s other great parties, such as the 1951 Festival of Britain and the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.
Our city was established and named Londinium by a wave of conquering Romans around 43AD. No one is certain where the name came from, though it is likely to reflect an earlier Celtic origin. Before the Romans, there is no evidence of any sizeable settlement, but that’s not to say nobody was here...
It’s difficult now to imagine the land before the city, but there are places where the ancient landscape asserts itself still. Take a walk along King’s Cross Road, for example, from Clerkenwell towards the terminus. See how the road meanders and twists? Notice how, after a while, the sideroads climb steeply away from you? You are walking along the valley of the River Fleet, and those gradients were cut from the clay many millennia ago. This primeval landscape has made its mark on the buildings as well as the street pattern. When you reach King’s Cross station, seek out the new concourse. Its sweeping saucer shape is no accident. The roof was made this way to fit the curve of the neighbouring Great Northern Hotel (a good place to grab an early morning coffee, by the way). The hotel, in turn, has a curved profile because it follows the turn in the medieval Pancras Road. Why does the road bend at this point? Because it followed the banks of the River Fleet. The engineers who worked on the new concourse didn’t know it (I asked them), but their building ultimately takes its modern form because of a river that existed before anyone had heard of stations, or railways, or London. (We might take things back one stage further, by observing that the river’s course would have been determined at the end of the last ice age, when glacial meltwaters first carved out the Fleet Valley; and then to make the connection that the concourse resembles a giant glacier – but then we really are straying into the shadiest realms of psychogeography.)
You can find evidence of ancient rivers all over London. The Walbrook once flowed through the heart of Roman London. Its contours are still present in the valley between Ludgate and Cornhill, and a street named Walbrook follows its course. The Tyburn made its way through Marylebone and Mayfair before disgorging into the Thames at Westminster. A cursory glance at a street map readily reveals its meander – look for the twisty likes of Marylebone Lane and Bruton Lane, which stand out against the grid-like street patterns of the West End. In south London, the Effra gave shape to Brockwell Park, runs round the boundary of the Oval and bequeathed its name to any number of roads, schools, pubs and cafés. Whole books have been written on the subject. Most of these rivers have long been culverted and turned into sewers – visible just at the Thames, where giant floodgates only release them in storm conditions. But they are still down there, waiting for a time when humans have abandoned London, and the ancient landscape can reassert itself.
There are other ancient sites around town, although time and tide have mostly erased the evidence. The Vauxhall and Nine Elms area is particularly noted for its prehistoric finds. A few years ago, timbers from 4,500BC were found in the riverside mud, just next to where the Effra meets the Thames. Whether this was a type of fishing pontoon or an early bridge is debated. You can only see the timbers during the lowest tides each year. Nearby, archaeologists working on the new US Embassy site discovered Paleolithic remains (as far back as 10,000BC) left by hunter-gatherers. It’s not uncommon for flint tools of this era to be recovered from the Thames, though it requires a trained eye to interpret them.
Several locations in Greater London have ancient associations. Horsenden Hill near Sudbury Town tube was home to an Iron Age community some 2,500 years ago. The view from the top is spectacular, all the more so considering that it has been appreciated since before the Roman conquest. This, in fact, is a great spot to watch the dawn, with the sun rising just to the side of Wembley Stadium. Meanwhile, a trip to Epping Forest (Theydon Bois tube) will reveal the remains of two Iron Age forts, hidden among the trees. Loughton Camp and Ambresbury Banks are both from around 500BC, retaining ditches and earthworks excavated 15 generations before Julius Caesar ever spied Britain. They are poorly signposted and require a bit of map-work, but this means you’ll probably have them to yourself. There is no better spot in London to contemplate the ephemeral nature of life, and our tiny part in the turning of the centuries.
We can go still further back. As you walk around London, pay close attention to the stonework, especially on buildings made from white Portland stone. Many of these blocks contain tiny imperfections, with peculiar helical forms. These are the traces of ancient gastropods, bivalves and other small creatures that gave up their lives many millions of years ago. You can find these fossils on numerous buildings, including the Guildhall and the southern entrance to Green Park tube, which features particularly honeycombed stone. Strange to contemplate, but St Paul’s Cathedral rests on the shells of a million ancient sea snails. You won’t be told that by the tour guides.
For its earliest years, London was engirdled and bounded by its old city walls. You can still trace their route around the Square Mile via a series of (rather dated) plaques. Outside Tower Hill tube station stands a tall section of surviving wall, presided over by a statue of Trajan, the emperor whose reign coincided with the first flourishing of Londinium as a major trading city. You can’t follow the walls immediately north because of a new development, but head up Cooper’s Row and into the courtyard of the Grange Hotel (it looks private, but there’s a right of way). Here you will find London’s most impressive section of wall. It towers over the courtyard and even incorporates an arch one can walk through. Much of the stonework is medieval, but if you look down into the pit you’ll see the tell-tale red bricks of Roman origin.
The relics do not surface again until the revealingly named street known as London Wall. Fragments can be seen along this road, and are best glimpsed from the Barbican highwalk (where it still exists – another new development has dismantled part of it). The stretch towards the Museum of London is particularly bountiful, as we reach the part of Londinium that once contained a garrison fort. Remains of that structure can be seen along Noble Street and, on rare occasions of access, in the basement of the London Wall Car Park. The museum itself has a large Roman gallery (due for renewal soon), and an outlook on to a section of wall.
From here the wall headed south towards the Thames. No fragments remain above ground, but some pieces still exist in the basements of buildings along the route. The famous Old Bailey gets its name from the wall (a bailey is an enclosed courtyard), and indeed I’ve seen significant remains of the wall down in its basement, which are sadly not open to the public.
There are numerous other places to glimpse the legacy of the Roman Empire. Perhaps the most impressive ruins are to be found in the basement of the Guildhall Art Gallery (Bank), where stones from Londinium’s amphitheatre were uncovered in the 1980s. This would have been a site of gladiatorial spectacle, and London’s first sporting arena. The remains are eerily lit, and it’s not unusual to find yourself completely alone down there.
Two churches, St Bride’s on Fleet Street (Blackfriars) and All Hallow’s-by-the-Tower (Tower Hill), also contain remnants of Roman structures in their crypts. The latter also houses a wonderful model of the Roman city, dating from the 1920s before the amphitheatre was discovered. Leadenhall Market, meanwhile, is built on the site of the old Roman Forum, the huge marketplace said to have been the largest structure north of the Alps. All that remains can be found in the small basement hairdressers on the corner of Gracechurch Street – book yourself an appointment and prepare to travel through time.