LONDON

London as we know it would never have existed were it not for the Romans. In 47 AD, only four years after Claudian troops had invaded Kent and set up their capital in Colchester, the invaders spotted the potential of a seemingly unpromising patch of boggy ground further up the estuary, sprinkled with sand and gravel islands. The river here was narrow enough here to bridge, enabling the army to continue its push northwards. Being tidal, it was also deep enough to allow ships to come and go from the coast – making it an ideal place for a trading post.It’s believed that the army built its original crossing close to Westminster but later replaced this with a sturdy wooden bridge, the remains of which have been excavated just east of London Bridge. For 1,600 years, this was the only crossing for the Thames. Over the next ten years or so the settlement known as Londinium grew and prospered. A newly-constructed network of roads fanned out from the port, effectively linking Britain to the furthest reaches of the Empire. Foreign merchants, traders and displaced natives flocked to Londinium in search of opportunities. But this early prosperity wasn’t to last. In 60 AD, Boudica, queen of the Iceni tribe of Norfolk, chose Londinium as a key target for her revolt against Roman rule. Her timing was perfect – the Roman army was away, quelling an uprising on the Welsh island of Anglesey. Boudica and her rabble razed the whole 40 acres city to the ground, killing thousands of traders who had settled there. Her attack left a thick burnt layer of red ash in the soil which is clearly visible in archaeological excavations. It was the first great fire of London. It didn’t take the Romans long, however, to re-establish control. The strategic position of Londinium made it too important to abandon and so they quickly rebuilt it – this time, as a planned and walled Roman city.
This rebirth was the start of a golden age of trade. By 100 AD, vast quantities of goods were changing hands at Londinium, coming from and going to the far corners of the Empire. Luxury goods to meet the demands of increasingly sophisticated Roman Britains were common, such as wine and pottery from Gaul and Italy, olive oil from Spain, marble from Greece and, of course, slaves. But there was also a thriving export market for copper, tin, silver, corn, oysters and the thick woollen cloak known as the birrus Britannicus.
Ships were moored in deep water in the river and the goods transferred to stone or wooden quays in small boats. This system, known as lighterage, was instrumental in the development of the port we know today.
Rather than tolling the death knell for Roman London, Boudica’s revolt in 60 AD kick-started its golden age. Recognising the strategic military and commercial importance of the town, Emperor Nero appointed a procurator (or civilian administrator) to work alongside the military governor in re-establishing peace. The fire-ravaged settlement was then rebuilt in grand style as a properly planned Roman town.
The expansion was rapid and by the middle of the 2nd century, Londinium had replaced Colchester as capital of Britannia. There was development both north and south of the river, but the heart of the town was in the area we now call the City of London. Public life centred on a large forum – a combined marketplace, administrative hub and law court. The basilica – or town hall – at its centre was the largest west of the Alps. In fact, it was larger than St Paul’s cathedral. The centre line of the old forum is marked by present-day Gracechurch St.
Londinium also boasted a palace, a temple, bathhouses, an amphitheatre and a large fort. Building works over the last century have given archaeologists an opportunity to investigate many of these public buildings. The palace, for instance, an elaborate building with grand reception rooms and offices, lies beneath Cannon St station. It may well have been the procurator’s residence. The amphitheatre was discovered unexpectedly beneath the Guildhall. The fort, home of the city garrison, lies beneath the Barbican, while the remains of a temple to Mithras are near Wallbrook.
Development of the town had probably peaked by the time Emperor Hadrian visited Londinium in 122 AD. With a population of around 45,000 from all corners of the Empire, London was, even then, a cultural melting pot.
But by the 3rd century, Londinium’s star was on the wane, due to tightening recession and political instability across the Empire. A dwindling population could no longer support the cost of elaborate building projects and whole areas of the city were even pulled down. Barbarian incursions and pirate attacks were also becoming more common so, in about 200 AD, the Romans built a defensive wall around the city.
The settlement continued to shrink over the next two hundred years. In the early 4th century, London’s major public buildings were systematically demolished – perhaps as punishment for a rebellion against Roman rule – and the entire settlement south of the river was abandoned. The only building work of any significance was on the defences.
Over the next hundred years, soldiers were repeatedly siphoned away from Britannia to deal with barbarian invasions elsewhere. In 407 AD, Emperor Constantine II recalled the last of the troops. Three years later, Emperor Honorius refused one final request from the British for military aid. It was the official end of Roman rule – and the beginning of the end for Roman London. By the mid 5th century, Londinium has been completely abandoned.
Its plum trading position - at the mouth of the Thames and the heart of a network of Roman roads – makes London quite a prize. No wonder then it was so fiercely fought over throughout the Anglo-Saxon age.
Not long after the Romans abandoned the old city, the early Saxons moved in, building a new settlement which they called Lundenwic (wic being the Old English name for a trading town). For many years, archaeologists searched for traces of this early town. In the 1980s, they found it: not on the site of old Roman London but much further west. Work on the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden revealed a grid of streets stretching for 600,000 acres from the National Gallery to the Aldwych (or old town) and dating as far back as the 5th century. At this time, England wasn’t unified but split into seven separate kingdoms. London became a pawn in an on-going power struggle between the kingdoms of Essex, Mercia and Kent. By 730, Mercia had control of most of south east England, including London. But this apparent stability was short lived. By the 9th century, Lundenwic’s wealth attracted the unwanted attentions of the Danish Vikings. From 830 onwards, they sailed up the Thames and attacked with alarming regularity.
Only nine years after a particularly bloody raid in 842, a terrifying convoy of 350 longboats attacked London and burned it to the ground. By 871, the ‘great heathen army’ had set up camp for the winter in the city. The Vikings had total control of London. But in 879, they were forced to give the south of the country back to Alfred of Wessex and recognise him as King of all England. London was back in Saxon hands. That didn’t stop the Danish raids, however, and on Christmas Day 886, King Alfred the Great abandoned undefended Lundenwic and relocated within the protection of the old Roman walls. A plaque near the north end of the Millennium Bridge marks the site where Alfred set up a harbour and market.
The new settlement of Lundenburgh became a thriving hub of trade: excavations have uncovered evidence of wharves and giant warehouses. Thanks to its size and commercial wealth, London also became more important politically (although the official seat of government was still at Winchester). But after Alfred’s death, the Vikings began concerted attacks on London once more. It was only when the Danish king Cnut came to power in 1017 that the raids finally stopped. In a move that heralded London’s reputation for tolerance, Cnut united the Danes and the Saxons and encouraged Danish traders to settle in the city. After Cnut’s death, London returned to Saxon hands – this time under Edward the Confessor. Since he had been raised in Normandy, his reign attracted French traders to the city. It was Edward, a deeply religious man, who founded Westminster Abbey on an island in the Thames and moved his court there.
On Christmas Day 1066, having defeated Edward’s successor, King Harold, William the Conqueror was crowned in the new abbey. Winchester may still have been the official capital of England. But London was without a doubt it’s most important city.
Since Saxon times, London’s traders and craftspeople have organised themselves into guilds (from the Saxon word, ‘gegildan’ meaning ‘to pay’). But by the medieval period, guilds had taken on a central role in everyday life for people in London.
By the 12th century, groups of people in the same trade were drawn for the sake of convenience to live and work closely together. London’s street names often reveal who congregated where: the bakers near Bread St, for example, and the fishmongers - who did a roaring trade on a Friday when Catholics couldn’t eat meat – around Friday St.
Over time, these loose groupings became official Livery Companies, named after the elaborate uniform, or livery, they wore for ceremonies and processions. The oldest charter of incorporation is for the Worshipful Company of Weavers in 1155.
The main role of the guilds was to protect the quality and reputation of a trade and the members of a company. But since members lived and worshipped cheek by jowl, it was inevitable that parish business and religious observance would also come under their watch. (Even today, the livery companies look after much of the City’s heritage and are trustees of numerous charities.)
The guilds were very strict about how their members should behave. Accounts of the times tell that anyone found guilty of laziness, spending too much time in the tavern or enjoying spectator sports such as wrestling ‘shal be put of for euermore of this companye’. There are similar warnings for anyone who should earn themselves ‘an euel (evil) name’ or be accused of theft or breach of the peace.
The power, both economic and political, wielded by the medieval guilds was immense. By the early 14th century, no-one could practice a trade, set up shop, take apprentices or vote unless they were admitted to a livery company – and only citizens could be admitted.
Members of the guilds were appointed to the most important and influential positions in the community: the burghers, aldermen and even the Lord Mayor of London came from the ranks of, and were chosen by, the guilds. Richard Whittington, a member of the Mercer’s Guild and the real-life Dick Whittington, was elected Lord Mayor of London no less than four times by the guilds.
Although each guild had its own hall and coat of arms, such an influential body needed a communal meeting place. So in 1411, construction of London’s magnificent Guildhall began. Finished in 1440, it survived both the Great Fire of London and the Blitz. In fact, it’s the only secular stone structure dating from before 1666 still standing in the City.
As well as providing a venue for the guilds’ commercial business, the Guildhall was used for the civic and administrative duties of the guilds and their members. This included the Mayor, who held the post of Chief Magistrate. Many a famous trial – including that of Lady Jane Grey in 1553 – has been held in the Guildhall’s Great Hall, the third largest civic hall in England.
Financial trading in Tudor times was very different from today’s electronic world. In the middle of the 16th century, deals were still being done in the muddy streets of the City of London. That might have continued had one Sir Thomas Gresham not suggested copying the European way of doing things, by moving the trading into a purpose-built building. As luck would have it, this move pre-empted the Spanish sacking of Antwerp in 1576, destroying its position as the financial capital of Europe and allowing London merchants to fill the vacuum.
Gresham’s inspiration was the Bourse in Antwerp, where he had been Royal Agent for both King Edward VI and Queen Mary. Gresham was a very wealthy man, thanks to a sizeable inheritance and his own financial wheeler-dealing whilst in Antwerp. He invested a huge chunk of this fortune in a new London Bourse, which was built between 1566 and 1570 on land provided by the City Corporation between Cornhill and Threadneedle Street in the City of London.
The trading floor in the Flemish-style (and, in parts, Italianate) building was open to the elements, with piazzas for wet weather. Its bell-tower, crowned by a huge grasshopper, stood on one side of the main entrance, from which the bell summoned merchants at 12 noon and 6pm.
Although Gresham’s aim was to build somewhere to house a trading floor, his really smart move was realising that this wouldn’t be very profitable on its own. So he added two more floors on top and moved into the retail business, opening Britain’s very first shopping mall. This had about a hundred kiosks or shops, with each shopkeeper paying annual rent, giving Gresham, in theory, a nice steady income.
After a slow start, Gresham’s retail idea finally took off following the promise of a visit by Queen Elizabeth I in 1570. She ordered its change of name from the Bourse to the Royal Exchange. Thereafter it was known as much for the wonderful range of goods on sale as for the trading. Predictably perhaps, the new Exchange also attracted ‘idlers’ as well as traders and shoppers, to the distraction of the merchants going to the Exchange to do business.
Although its shopping was a pleasant diversion, Gresham’s Royal Exchange was key to the new wealth of the City. Queen Elizabeth I was quick to get in on the act: she licensed legal landing quays for goods on the banks of the Thames, ensuring the Crown got its share of the wealth, while underpinning London’s status as the new centre for trading.
In the late twentieth century, the Royal Exchange briefly reverted to its use as a centre for financial trading when, for nine years, it was home to the London International Financial Futures Exchange (LIFFE). However, the financial institutions have now moved away to purpose-built premises and the Royal Exchange is now purely an upmarket retail centre.
Imagine the sight: a huge wooden triangle with up to 24 bodies swinging from its beams by nooses, gasping their last breaths. From the middle of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, this was the spectacle that attracted thousands of spectators every week to London’s notorious Tyburn Tree.
Executions took place at Tyburn for almost 600 years, with the first recorded as William Longbeard in 1196 and the last as John Austen in 1783. In between, tens of thousands of highwaymen, robbers, forgers, murderers, traitors and other convicted men and women met their end at Tyburn. From the Reformation period onwards, this included many Catholics who would not abandon their faith.
The original Tyburn trees used for hangings were a row of elms alongside an underground stream called Tyburn Brook. But it was the huge triangular Tyburn Tree, erected in 1571 and made of thick wooden crossbeams 3m (9ft) long on 5.5m (18ft) legs, that is associated with the mass executions during the Tudor era and afterwards.
The site of the Tyburn Tree is said to be at what is now Marble Arch, at the north-east corner of Hyde Park. Some historians give a more precise location as slightly to the north-west at Connaught Square. In fact, many bodies were found there when the square was being built in the 1820s, so it’s possible that some Tyburn victims were buried right where they died.
Mass executions took place on Mondays, when prisoners were transported from Newgate Prison to Tyburn in an open wagon, often in their finest clothes. The procession, which was watched by a large and enthusiastic crowd, wound down Snow Hill, across Holborn Bridge into Holborn, down Broad St Giles into Oxford Street and on to Tyburn.
Once at Tyburn, those due to die were put onto a specially built horse-drawn carriage that was moved under the Tyburn Tree. Nooses were placed around their necks and then the carriage driven away, leaving the condemned suspended until they died. Reports tell of friends and relatives “tugging at hanging men’s feet so that they should die quicker, and not suffer”.
Hangings were witnessed by thousands of spectators who would pay to sit in open galleries erected especially for the occasion, as well as in rented upper-storey rooms in houses and pubs. After the corpses were cut down from the gallows, there was a rush to grab the bodies, as some believed their hair and body parts were effective in healing diseases. They were also sought after by surgeons for dissection.
In 1783, public executions were moved to Newgate Prison, as the crowds by the route to Tyburn started to disturb the increasingly fashionable areas close to Oxford Street.
The mass hangings at Tyburn are commemorated by a stone plaque in the ground on one of the Marble Arch traffic islands. Also close to the site, at 8 Hyde Park Place, is the Tyburn Convent. Founded at the beginning of the 20th century, it contains a Shrine of the Martyrs in remembrance of more than 350 Catholics who died at Tyburn during the Reformation.
Every city has its favoured centre of entertainment, and for a long time in London that was Southwark. In Tudor times, Southwark, including Bankside, was outside London’s city boundaries, and so beyond the control of the city elders. This made it a haven for prohibited activities, such as bear-baiting, bull-baiting, prostitution and unlicensed acting.
For centuries, London Bridge was the only permanent Thames crossing. So if you wanted to travel south from London, you had to go through Southwark. In the early medieval period, taverns to serve the tourist trade abounded and these, in turn, spurned London’s first red light district. It was only later that Southwark become the focus for theatre-goers.
The first purpose-built playhouse in London – known simply as The Theatre – was built by James Burbage in 1576, north of the river in Shoreditch. Ten more theatres opened outside the City during the remainder of the reign of Elizabeth I, including four in Southwark.
The Globe opened there in 1599, cementing Southwark’s reputation as the place to go for theatrical entertainment.
Although often considered William Shakespeare’s theatre, the Globe was built by the Lord Chamberlain’s company of players, later known as The King’s Men. As a member of the company, Shakespeare was merely a shareholder in the new Globe.
Alongside theatre, bear-baiting was a wildly popular Tudor pastime. Huge English Mastiff dogs would be let loose to attack a large bear that had had its teeth filed down and was chained to a stake in the centre of an open arena. Several dogs would be allowed to attack at once, until the bear tired. Bull-baiting with dogs was also common.
Bankside was the most famous place in England for bear-baiting, especially in the Paris Garden, now immortalised in the street bearing its name near the south end of Blackfriars Bridge. Baiting was only finally made illegal in 1835. Even then, one Member of Parliament argued that “the British constitution must stand or fall with the British bear garden”.
Another popular attraction was the Southwark Fair. It was established by King Edward VI in 1550 and held each year over three days in September until 1763.
Southwark’s entertainments were not popular with everyone. When the gallery of the arena in the Paris Garden collapsed in 1583, killing several spectators and injuring many others, the Puritans claimed it as a judgement of God, especially as it happened on a Sunday.
Royalty had mixed views on Southwark’s offerings. In 1503 Henry VII closed Southwark’s brothels and in 1519 Henry VIII ordered Cardinal Wolsey to purge London and Southwark of brothels and gaming houses. In 1546, Henry VIII again commanded that the brothels be closed, although this was overturned by his son Edward VI a few years later. Henry also forbade bull- and bear-baiting (although he gave permission for one of his own Yeoman to own a baiting pit). Unsurprisingly, both Tudor queens sought to punish sexual sins, but Elizabeth I was known to be very fond of bear-baiting, the bullring and cockfights.
Years before the Plague of 1665, Parliament, and even King James I, realised that improving hygiene for Londoners would be impossible without a proper supply of water. Simply using Thames river water wasn’t going to provide a solution. Instead, an impressive feat of engineering saw water brought from 20 miles away right into Londoners’ homes, via a canal known as the New River.
London’s population exploded in Tudor times: from about 120,000 in 1550 to 250,000 in 1600. In a seriously over-crowded city with no sewage system, hygiene was a major problem.
Londoners only had access to water from wells or from the (filthy) Thames, via a large waterwheel at London Bridge. Although Acts of Parliament had been passed in 1605 and 1606 to improve the situation, it was a challenge issued by King James that finally brought a response. The man who met that challenge was Hugh Myddleton, goldsmith, banker and friend of Sir Walter Raleigh.
Myddleton offered to build the water supply himself, which was quite an undertaking. Work started in 1609 and took four and a half years, during which he oversaw the construction of a canal that was around 40 miles long, 3 metres (10 feet) wide and 1 metre (3 feet) deep. The source of this canal, which became known as the New River, was a series of springs near Ware in Hertfordshire. From here, it flowed over a rambling route that had to follow the contours of the terrain to a reservoir in Islington, North London, known as New River Head.
Water was then taken from the reservoir into the city in pipes made from hollowed elm logs and then into individual houses through lead pipes. By 1670, up to two-thirds of houses in many parts of London had running water thanks to the New River.
Solving the problem didn’t just involve technical challenges: Myddleton also had to deal with objections from owners of land that he needed to cross. He soon ran out of money to pay them off. Luckily, the king stepped in and financed half of the costs in return for half of the profit.
The New River was opened with a ceremony hosted by Myddleton’s brother, who happened to be Lord Mayor of London at the time. And in 1622, Myddleton was rewarded for his efforts by the king, who made him a baronet. Because it was an open water course, the New River didn’t entirely solve the hygiene problem. But it did improve things. Now, having been shortened and straightened, it still provides water for some Londoners. It is mostly covered over and now stops at Stoke Newington. But you can still see some uncovered parts, visit the site of New River Head at the end of Myddleton Passage and tip your hat to Sir Hugh Myddleton at his impressive statue at the south end of Islington Green. The 28-mile New River Path offers an alternative way of appreciating Myddleton’s contribution to London.
Although Christopher Wren is most famously associated with London’s architecture in the Stuart period, Inigo Jones arguably made a more lasting impressing on building style. Jones was the man who introduced the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to Britain, ushering in an age of elegance and classical proportion and harmony.
Born in 1573, Jones, like many educated men of his time, travelled extensively in Europe, bringing back a wealth of ideas. He was especially taken with the work of Italian architect Andrea Palladio.
As Surveyor of the King’s Works to James I, one of Jones’ most important buildings was The Queen’s House in Greenwich. The first fully classical building in England, it was built in the Palladian style (although the main model for it was not actually by Palladio). The house featured a perfectly cube-shaped Great Hall with an impressive black and white marble tiled floor, along with the elegant ‘Tulip Stairs’, the first geometric self-supporting spiral staircase in the country. Compared with the red brick Tudor buildings that came before, it was nothing short of revolutionary.
Work on the house stopped when Anne became ill and died, then resumed when Charles I gave Greenwich to Queen Henrietta Maria in 1629. It was finally completed in 1635 and is now part of the National Maritime Museum.
Jones also built the New Exchange in the Strand, the Queen’s Chapel in St James’s Palace and the Banqueting House in Whitehall. The Banqueting House was designed in 1619 and features soaring columns and large windows. It also features huge ceiling paintings by Rubens. Commissioned in 1635, they are the only surviving in-situ ceiling paintings by the artist.
The house was originally used for ‘masques’ and receptions but, when Rubens’ paintings started to show signs of damage, these entertainments were moved elsewhere. The Banqueting House was later the setting for the execution of King Charles I and was the only part of Whitehall Palace to survive the fire in 1698.
Jones’ contribution to London’s evolving landscape can also be seen at Covent Garden, where he created London’s first ‘square’ in 1630 and designed the church of St Paul. Jones also worked on St Paul’s Cathedral, but his restorative works and additions were lost in the Great Fire of 1666.
Jones’ trips to Europe taught him not just architectural ideas but also an important new way of building roofs. The innovation was called the king post truss – a central post held up by the rafters which allowed much larger roofs to be built. Later, this idea was extended by Christopher Wren and used in some of his celebrated designs.
In total, Jones designed 49 buildings. Sadly, only seven survive as monuments to his brilliance. His buildings were noted for being cool and sophisticated on the outside but full of colour and drama inside. More importantly, they were boldly different from what came before, introducing a style of architecture to England that is still influential today.
From medieval times, one word struck terror into the hearts of those who heard it: Plague! Infection with the plague was almost certainly a death sentence, with 60-80% of those who caught it dying.
The plague was nothing new. The first major epidemic was the Black Death in 1348-49. There were many outbreaks in Tudor times (most notably in 1563) and epidemics early in the Stuart period, in 1603 and 1625. But two things make the 1665 plague particularly notable. One was the sheer scale, with around 100,000 people dying in London (up to one-third of the total population). Second was the association with the Great Fire, which was wrongly assumed to have cleansed the city of the terrible disease.
The plague is commonly believed to have been carried by the fleas harboured by the city’s black rats. These bred easily among the crowded, filthy streets. However, a recent theory suggests it may have been caused by a water-borne intestinal disease. Whatever the cause, the fire didn’t get rid of it. The areas most affected by plague were the poor parishes to the east, north and south of the City. The Great Fire, on the other hand, destroyed areas within the City walls and by the river. Attempts to halt the spread of the plague became desperate. Entire families were locked inside their own houses if one of their number contracted the disease, with red crosses daubed on the doors. The alternative was to flee London, but this was often an option only for wealthy inhabitants – the King’s court included. No-one knows for sure how many left, but it’s believed that up to 15-20% abandoned the City.
One person who stayed in London throughout the 1665 plague was Samuel Pepys. Pepys’ diaries offer a firsthand account of living through that awful year. He tells of coming across sick people and corpses, his horror at the sheer numbers of dead, and then how the toll started to decrease as the weather grew cold at the end of the year. Those treating the ill were clearly at great risk. One solution they employed was to wear heavy coats (which would have prevented fleas from biting them) and a beaked mask, stuffed with herbs and chemicals to ward off bad smells (miasma) and purify the air they breathed.
With so many dying, corpses were commonly buried in huge communal graves, known as plague pits. The locations of some are known, while rumours exist about others. Liverpool Street Station is said to stand on a plague pit. Another allegedly lies between Knightsbridge and South Kensington stations, causing the Piccadilly Line to sweep in a great curve to avoid it.
The plague never swept Britain so violently again. However, there were minor isolated outbreaks. And the continuing filth and lack of hygiene resulted in epidemics of other illnesses over the next few centuries - cholera in particular. These caused the deaths of thousands more Londoners until the sewers and London’s rivers were finally cleaned up.
On 2 September 1666, the citizens of London woke to see the skyline above the city’s cramped wooden houses ablaze. It must have been a truly apocalyptic sight. Londoners had already lived through the devastating plague in 1665. So it was a tribute to their tenacity that they managed to pick themselves up again after the medieval city went up in smoke over just four days.
The fire started in a baker’s shop in Pudding Lane in the early hours of the morning. By the time it burned out on 5 September around 13,000 buildings had been destroyed, including the original St Paul’s Cathedral, 87 parish churches, the Guildhall, the Royal Exchange and 52 company halls. Between 65,000 and 80,000 people lost their homes, although thankfully only a handful were recorded as having been killed. The estimated cost of the fire was around £10 million.
Soon after the fire, several designs were put forward for the redevelopment of London; among them one from Christopher Wren, a favourite of King Charles II. A common theme was streets radiating out from the river and intersecting with others running parallel to it. However, a lack of money to buy the land and the need to rebuild quickly thwarted all the grand ideas. Instead, nearly 3,000 houses were built within the first three years, mostly back on the original layout. But rebuilding was an onerous task. Private householders and corporations had to rely on their own resources to rebuild properties, while public works were funded through taxes on coal.
The task of getting London rebuilt was given to a committee of six men, including Wren, known as the ‘Commissioners for Rebuilding’. Their role was to manage surveys of ruined properties and consider the form and scale of new buildings, and any alterations to the streets.
Widths of roads were set by categorising them and widening the major roads to reduce the risk of fires spreading in future. For the same reason, buildings had to be erected largely from brick and stone instead of timber, by proclamation of King Charles II. Guidelines were also issued for the height of houses (according to the type of street in which they were being built), how much wood could be used on the outside and any projections, such as bow windows. There was even a new rule insisting on the use of downpipes, to stop problems with rainwater cascading down from gutters.
Although others designed and rebuilt many properties in London after the Great Fire, Wren was the most prolific architect. In total, he designed and supervised the construction of 52 churches, 36 company halls, two great hospitals, the Royal Exchange, the Theatre Royal and St Paul’s Cathedral - which took 35 years to complete. Many of these still stand today. Wren was also one of the architects of the 62m (202 foot) tall Monument, a memorial to the Great Fire which stands close to the site where it started.
Cafe culture in London is nothing new. The last ten years may have seen a proliferation of places to buy a latte and flick through the daily papers, but the real coffee revolution was in the late 1600s and early 1700s, when as many as 3,000 coffee houses played host to caffeine-fuelled debate, wheeler-dealing and gossip-mongering on London’s streets.
Britain’s first coffee shop opened in Oxford in 1650. Two years later, a Greek servant named Pasqua Rosee brought the new drink to the capital, opening a shop in St Michael’s Alley, Cornhill. It was an overnight success and others were quick to copy. Previously, men had gathered in taverns to do business and exchange ideas. But they were often unpleasant, rowdy and – thanks to the ale – unproductive venues. Coffee, on the other hand, “will prevent drowsiness and make one fit for business”.
Soon, intellectuals, professionals and merchants thronged to the coffee houses to debate, distribute pamphlets, do deals, smoke clay pipes and, of course, consume a drink said to resemble “syrup of soot and essence of old shoes”. Newsletters and gazettes (the precursors of newspapers) were distributed in coffee houses and most functioned as reading rooms and notice boards announcing sales, sailings, and auctions to the businessmen who frequented them.
The best-known began to attract a distinct clientele. In 1688, Edward Lloyd’s coffee house on Tower St earned a reputation as the place to go for marine insurance. It later evolved into world-famous insurance market, Lloyd’s of London. In 1698, the owner of Jonathan’s coffee house in Exchange Alley began to issue a list of stock and commodity prices called “The Course of the Exchange and other things”: so starting of the London Stock Exchange. Auction houses Sotherby’s and Christie’s have their origins in coffee houses.
Physicians used Batson’s coffee house in Cornhill as a consulting room. Chapter in Paul’s Alley was the chosen rendezvous for publishers and booksellers. Scientists like Sir Isaac Newton and Professor Halley preferred the Grecian on the Strand. While the wits of the day, including the playwright Dryden, gathered at Will's in Russell Street, Covent Garden. Not everyone was in favour of the coffee houses – or ‘penny universities’, as they had become known. Women, in particular, objected to the amount of time their husbands spent in such establishments. In 1674, the Women’s Petition Against Coffee was launched, stating in a pamphlet that coffee, “made men as unfruitful as the deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought”. Despite earning substantial revenues from the sale of coffee, King Charles II tried to ban the establishments, condemning them as, “places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of his Majesty and his Ministers”. But the outcry was such that he was forced to withdraw his proclamation almost before the ink was dry.
By the mid 18th century, coffee shops began to wane in popularity as the nation’s tastes turned to tea drinking. Those that remained began to cream off a more aristocratic clientele by charging membership fees. The Gentleman’s Club had been born.
Every so often, a writer emerges whose literary musings describe contemporary life better than any other. In Queen Victoria’s reign that scribe was Charles Dickens. Not only was Dickens immensely popular during his own lifetime but, over a century later, it is still Dickens’ stories, letters and essays that bring Victorian London to life.
Charles John Huffam Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812, but moved to London permanently 10 years later. The Dickens family was not comfortably off. Eventually, his father was sent to debtors’ jail at Marshalsea Prison in Southwark (of which a fragment of wall can still be seen in Borough). So, at 12 years old, Charles left school for the first time and went out to work.
The Dickens family lived in Camden Town, later to be the home of the Cratchits in A Christmas Carol, the Micawbers in David Copperfield and Polly Toodles’ family in Dombey and Son. But the young Dickens moved to live near his father’s prison, visiting him regularly and getting to know other debtor families. Later, when he turned his hand to writing, his experiences would form the foundation for Little Dorrit, which was set in Marshalsea Prison. The horrors of prison as seen through young eyes also informed his second novel – Oliver Twist – in which young Oliver visits Fagan in Newgate Prison.
Victorian London was notorious for its prisons, and prison became a recurring theme for Dickens. So Pickwick was incarcerated in Fleet Prison in Pickwick Papers and the Kings Bench Prison housed Mr Micawber in David Copperfield. Dickens’ observations of the wild, baying crowds at executions at Newgate and Horsemonger Lane gaols were captured in Barnaby Rudge and a letter to the Morning Chronicle, respectively.
Thankfully, many of the aspects of Victorian London that Dickens immortalised have disappeared, such as the pitiless conditions in the workhouses famously woven into Oliver Twist. The noisy, heaving livestock market at Smithfield is described in less than flattering terms in both Oliver Twist and Great Expectations, even though it was moved during Dickens’ lifetime. And the numerous, enormous heaps of refuse that grew around London were recorded for posterity in Our Mutual Friend.
Even London’s weather made it into Dickens' novels. For example, the awful Victorian London fog, which in 1873 was so bad that 19 pedestrians died from walking into the Thames and other bodies of water, makes an appearance in Bleak House. But there are many places that Dickens wrote about which still exist. These include numerous churches and bridges, Fleet Street and the surrounding area, Covent Garden, the Bank of England, British Museum, Guildhall, Monument, St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.
So popular was Dickens that his monthly publications could sell 50,000 copies and after he died in 1870, 4.24 million copies of his books were sold in the next 12 years. You can find out more about Dickens’ London at the Charles Dickens Museum in Bloomsbury, the only surviving London home of the quintessential Victorian author.
Despite London’s position in a corner of an island off the tip of mainland Europe, it has become a major international transport hub. Its airports offer flights across the globe, led by Heathrow to the west, which is the world’s busiest international airport. Meanwhile, road and rail systems fan out from the capital across Britain and even into Europe.
Most of this incredible transport network has been built since the Second World War. In the 1920s and 30s, the capital had an airport in Croydon, south London. But after the War a much bigger site was needed. So Heathrow, formerly home of RAF Heston, was chosen to be London’s new airport. Initially, passengers waited in former military marquees, but these were replaced by buildings in the 1950s. Terminal 1 opened in 1969 as the jet age arrived and annual passenger numbers reached 5 million. Now, over 67 million passengers travel from Heathrow to over 180 destinations in over 90 countries.
London’s second airport was to be Gatwick Airport, to the south. Opened in 1958, Gatwick was the first airport in the world directly accessible by air, rail and road. It now carries over 30 million passengers a year.
Not satisfied with two airports, London boasts two more at Luton and Stansted to the north, plus London City Airport three miles east of Canary Wharf. Luton, in particular, became associated with package holidays, allowing millions of Londoners to realise their dreams of travelling abroad.
The post-war years also saw the growth of motorways carrying people to and from the capital. Britain’s first full-length motorway opened in 1959. The ‘M1’ connected Watford to Rugby, but was later extended north and further south into London. Later, London was connected to Southampton via the M3, to West Wales via the M4, to Cambridge by the M11, to Dover by the M20 and to Birmingham by the M40.
Possibly the capital’s most famous motorway is its ring-road – the M25. As far back as 1905 there had been proposals for an orbital road for London. The 1944 Abercrombie report recommended no less than five ring roads, of which just one and a half (the North Circular and the M25, which was a combination of two) were eventually built. The M25 is the longest city bypass in the world at 117 miles. Its distance from Charing Cross varies from 13 to 22 miles. By the time the last stretch was opened by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1986, it had cost nearly £1,000 million to build.
The final major boost to international travel came when the Channel Tunnel project reached fruition in 1994. The first design for a tunnel was put forward in 1802 and the first attempt to excavate one was in 1880. Construction on the current tunnel finally started in 1987 and in November 1994 passengers boarded the first commercial Eurostar service to Paris. A month later, a car-carrying service opened, offering a quick and easy alternative to taking your car to the continent by ferry.
Loved and derided in equal measures, London’s suburbs grew out of the need for more housing for the capital’s booming population. They also spawned the daily ritual – and often misery - of commuting long distances into central London for work.
One route, in particular, became synonymous with this evolution: the Metropolitan Railway that ran up through north-west London into what became known as Metro-Land. The Metropolitan Railway was the first Underground line in 1863. By 1889 it had reached Chesham and by 1892 it had extended out to Aylesbury (although this line now only runs as far as Amersham). Then, in 1904 an electrified line branched off to Uxbridge while the spur line to Watford was opened between the wars. But to boost its profits, the Metropolitan Railway needed more passengers. So in the early 1900s, it developed its first housing estates in Wembley Park and at Cecil Park in Pinner, on land it had acquired next to its railway lines.
In 1915, advertisers coined the phrase ‘Metro-land’, painting a picture of rural charm within easy reach of the city to entice people to settle there. It worked. Londoners came in their droves to live the suburban dream in new estates in Neasden, Wembley Park, Northwick Park, Eastcote, Rayners Lane, Ruislip, Hillingdon, Pinner, Rickmansworth and Amersham, built by Country Estates, a separate company set up by the Metropolitan Railway in 1919. Of course, suburbs weren’t just created along one Underground line. Edgware, Finchley, Epsom and Purley were just a few of the many other ‘villages’ that became subsumed into London.
Minimum standards for building in the new suburbs were set in the Tudor Walters Report of 1918. This adopted ideas from the garden city movement and planned-suburbs like Letchworth and Hampstead Garden Suburb. They included the maximum density of houses and their arrangement. The report even recommended a minimum number of bedrooms and living rooms, as well as a fixed bath. The style of buildings in the new suburbs varied, but there was a strong leaning towards ‘mock Tudor’, perhaps as some form of nostalgia or to emphasise the countrified location of the new dwellings.
The effect on each area varied but all of them grew massively. Amersham increased in size several times, the population of Harrow Weald grew from 1,500 to 11,000 and Pinner grew from 3,000 to 23,000 in just a few decades. And not all of them were completely urbanised. Chorleywood, for example, later benefitted from the establishment of the Green Belt.
The extensive advertising for Metro-land is some of the most distinctive of the early 20th century – if not always the most truthful... For example, Neasden was promoted as a place where “peace and quiet prevail” – after the opening of the North Circular Road in 1922. In general, there was a lot of emphasis on non-urban aspects of what were really housing estates. Metro-land may have started as an escape from city life, with its noise and pollution. But over time, most of it has become just part of London’s urban sprawl.
Binge drinking isn’t anything new. The Gin Craze that swept 18th century London spawned as many social problems and fuelled as much public outcry as anything we read about in the papers today.
In over-crowded, slum-ridden Georgian London, gin was the opium of the people. For a few pennies, London’s poor found entertainment and escapism from cold and hunger at the bottom of a glass. In 1730, around 10 million gallons of gin were being distilled in the Capital each year and sold from 7,000 dram shops. In fact, it’s estimated that the average Londoner drank a staggering 14 gallons of the stuff a year!
Invented in Holland, gin only became popular in England when Dutch-born William of Orange took the English throne in 1688. By the end of the century, we were at war with France. So, to protect our economy and help the war effort, the government put a heavy duty on the import of spirits and lifted restrictions on domestic spirit production. In doing so, they created a healthy market for poor quality grain – which could only benefit the many landowners who sat in Parliament. The resulting trade also created a rich source of tax revenue.
The effects were devastating. Gin was blamed for misery, rising crime, prostitution, madness, higher death rates and falling birth rates. The vice-chamberlain Lord Hervey remarked that, "Drunkenness of the common people was universal, the whole town of London swarmed with drunken people from morning till night." In one notorious case of 1734, a woman named Judith Dufour collected her two-year-old child from the workhouse, strangled him, dumped the body in a ditch and sold the child’s new set of clothes for 1s and 4d to buy gin.
As public outcry grew, the government was forced to take action. The 1736 Gin Act taxed retail sales at 20 shillings a gallon and made selling gin without a £50 annual licence illegal. In the next seven years, only two licences were taken out. Whereas reputable sellers were put out of business, bootleggers thrived. Their gin, which went by colourful names such as ‘Ladies Delight’ and ‘Cuckold’s Comfort’, was more likely to be flavoured with turpentine than juniper. At worst, it was poisonous, containing horrifying ingredients such as sulphuric acid.
In 1751, artist William Hogarth published his satirical print ‘Gin Lane’, which depicted such disturbing scenes as a gin-crazed mother, covered in syphilitic sores, unwittingly dropping her baby to its death down some cellar stairs while she takes a pinch of snuff. Aided by powerful propaganda such as this, the 1751 Gin Act was passed. This was more successful. It lowered the licence fee and forced distillers to sell only to licensed retailers trading from respectable premises.
A change in the economy also helped turn the tide. A series of bad harvests forced grain prices up, making landowners less dependent on income from gin production. They also forced food prices up and wages down, so the poor were less able to afford their drug of choice. By 1757, the Gin Craze was all but dead.
When you are confident that you are the best in the world, the natural reaction is to show off your talents to anyone who will come to watch. So it was in the mid-nineteenth century, when British success in engineering, inventing, science and the arts was displayed to huge acclaim in a massive temporary exhibition. Even the building that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851 was a marvel of engineering.
The Great Exhibition was remarkable right from the start, as it was put together in a very short time. It was the brainchild in 1848 of civil servant Henry Cole, a member of the Society of Arts, but took off when it gained support from Sir Robert Peel. Once Cole got Prince Albert’s backing and royal consent in January 1850, he encouraged the belief that it had been the Prince’s idea, as a way of attracting exhibitors and visitors.
The building to house the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park was designed by Joseph Paxton. Paxton had been chief gardener at the Duke of Devonshire’s country home, Chatsworth in Derbyshire. The iron and glass structure was based on his novel greenhouse designs, but was much bigger at a symbolic 1851 feet (564 metres) long. It covered 10.5 hectares (26 acres) and even housed two trees growing on the plot. Despite the innovative design, it was built in only nine months and cost just £80,000. Once built, it was nicknamed ‘Crystal Palace’ by Punch magazine.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert conducted the first ever royal walkabout on the opening day of the Great Exhibition, 1 May 1851. Inside, visitors were treated to 100,000 exhibits from around the world. Displays included industrial inventions, medical artefacts, labour-saving devices, arts, such as photography, and all kinds of novelties. Visitors could gawp at tinned foods, a stuffed elephant and a locomotive, as well as the massive Koh-I-Noor diamond and an envelope-folding machine. Scientist Jean Bernard Léon Foucault even hung a pendulum from the roof to demonstrate the rotation of the earth.
During the six months that it was open, over 6 million people visited the Great Exhibition, including many from abroad. Queen Victoria was a frequent visitor, even joining the huge crowds attracted by the one shilling tickets sold from 24 May. Visitors were catered for with refreshment courts and the novel public lavatories, which cost a penny to use.
After the exhibition closed, the building was taken down and re-erected at Sydenham in South London. Although the Crystal Palace burned down in 1936, the Great Exhibition left several legacies. The building’s nickname lives on as the name of the area where it stood for over 80 years and a London football club. Separately, the proceeds from the Exhibition were used, along with public money, to buy land in South Kensington. Later, this became the site for the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum (where you can see a modern-day Foucault pendulum) and the Royal Albert Hall.
Beefeaters, ravens and a gruesome history – no wonder the Tower of London is one of the capital’s most iconic buildings, attracting more than two million visitors a year. But its role as a tourist attraction dates only from the Victorian era. Before that, it served as a fortress, a royal residence, a home for the Royal Mint and the Crown Jewels, a storehouse for military paraphernalia and weapons and, of course, a notorious prison.
From the outset, the Tower was designed to invoke fear and awe. Over 27m tall and built from luminous Caen stone, William the Conqueror’s White Tower must have looked alien and forbidding to the newly-defeated English – who were forced to build it in the 1070s. William’s successors – most notably Henry III and his son Edward I - extended and strengthened the fortress throughout the Medieval period. By 1350 the Tower had taken on the impressive form we know today, complete with daunting defences, royal accommodation, a major branch of the Royal Mint and even an exotic menagerie with lions.
In 1483, 12-year-old Prince Edward and his younger brother Richard - The Princes in the Tower - were imprisoned by their uncle, the Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III). They were never seen again. In the 1930s, two skeletons found buried beneath a staircase in the 1600s were attributed to the - probably murdered - princes.
But it was during the Tudor period that the Tower entered the bloodiest period of its history. Its cells and torture chambers were rarely empty of political and religious prisoners in the aftermath of Henry VIII’s revolutionary break from the authority of the Pope in Rome.
Those imprisoned at his Majesty’s pleasure included politician Sir Thomas More (1534), Henry’s second wife Anne Boleyn (1546), and Protestant reformer Anne Askew (1546). More was beheaded after refusing to accept Henry as head of the new Church of England. Boleyn fell out of favour after failing to produce a male heir and, accused of incest and adultery, was beheaded within the Tower’s walls. While the unfortunate Askew was so weak from torture on the rack for failing to implicate Queen Katherine Parr and her ladies as heretics, that she had to be carried in a chair to the stake where she was to be burned.
At almost every stage since in London’s history, the Tower has had a starring role. In 1605, it played bleak host to Guy Fawkes after the disastrous plot to blow up Parliament. It was an important pawn in the Civil War. After the Restoration, it became a permanent home to the new Crown Jewels. Even during the two World Wars, the Tower played its part. It survived a direct hit during the Blitz, while the filled-in moat was used for growing fruit and vegetables. Several spies were also held and executed there: in 1941, German Josef Jakobs became the last person to be executed within the Tower’s walls.
Today, the prisoners, the mint, the menagerie and the jewels are all gone. Fortunately, the ravens remain – since legend has it that if they should leave, the Tower and the kingdom will fall.
By the nineteenth century, the volume of trade on the River Thames and the increasing size of ships meant that London’s port needed to move down river to wider and deeper shores. Unloading mid-river or in the quays was getting difficult and dangerous, with collisions frequent and plundering rife. And, as London and its empire grew, it needed its port to grow too.
So, during the nineteenth century, private companies built a huge complex of docks in London. By the time Victoria became queen, several docks had already been built or expanded, the first new one being the West India Docks at the Isle of Dogs in 1802. Each dock was built for a specific purpose. For example, the West India Docks was restricted to sugar and other imports of the West Indies trade, and had sole rights to export back there. The Millwall Docks, which opened in 1868, were set up for the unloading of cheap foreign grain that poured into Britain after the repeal of the Corn Laws.
Further down the river, the last docks within the boundaries of London were the Royal Docks. These included the Royal Victoria (1855) and the Royal Albert (1880). The Victoria Dock was the first to be linked to the new railways, with rails running along its quays. At 1.75 miles long, the Royal Albert Dock was specially designed to accommodate the large iron and steam ships that were replacing sailing ships. Together, the Victoria and Albert Docks made a giant artificial waterway across East and West Ham.
Even further downstream, the Tilbury docks in Essex were opened in 1886 by the East and West India Dock company – the last great docks built by private enterprise. The downside of the expansion of the docks was the exploitation of the workforce. Immigrants came in from Ireland and abroad, as well as workers from the countryside, providing a constant supply of labour. They were housed in terrible conditions and set to work for long hours with poor wages.
The problem was compounded by the fluctuating workload, itself caused by unpredictable arrivals of the ships, as well as seasonal variations. Most labour was casual, with dockers employed by the day. Those who did manage to get any work found it to be dangerous and degrading. So it was no surprise that in the 1870s dockers went on strike, getting wages raised from four pence (1.7p there were 12 pennies in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound at that time) to five pence (2.1p) an hour. But it was the Great Dock Strike in 1889 that marked a new chapter in British trade union history. This time, skilled workers came out in sympathy for the casuals’ successful demand for a ‘tanner’ or sixpence (2.5p) an hour and a minimum of four hours’ work at a time.
Working conditions may have been poor, but London’s docks were in the ascendant. By the end of the nineteenth century, they handled one third of all UK imports and played a major role in the Empire.
Every so often, London’s landscape becomes drastically transformed – and it’s not always of Londoners’ choosing. Just like the Great Fire nearly 300 years before, the Blitz during World War II totally decimated parts of the capital. This time, however, it was no accident.
By September 1940, London had already experienced German bombing. But the Blitz started in earnest on the afternoon of 7 September when the German Luftwaffe filled the skies in the first major daytime raid on London. Nearly 350 German bombers (escorted by over 600 fighters) dropped explosives on East London, targeting the docks in particular. Around 450 people died and 1,300 were seriously injured.
The night-time raids that followed were just as terrible and deadly. Night after night, for nearly two months, the bombers returned. The Strand, the West End and Piccadilly were attacked. St Thomas’s Hospital, St Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, Lambeth Palace and the House of Commons were all hit. Between September and November, almost 30,000 bombs were dropped on London. In the first 30 days, almost 6,000 people were killed and twice as many badly injured.
The most notorious raid took place on Sunday 29 December. The focus this time was the City of London. The area from Aldersgate to Cannon Street and Cheapside to Moorgate went up in flames. Nineteen churches, including 16 built by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London, were destroyed. Miraculously, however, St Paul’s survived. Of the 34 guild halls, 31 were decimated. And when Paternoster Row, centre of London’s publishing industry, was destroyed, around 5 million books were lost.
In the end, around one third of the City was laid to waste. However, many of the main businesses streets, such as Cornhill and Lombard Street, suffered little damage and the Bank of England and the Stock Market were not hit.
The air raids continued sporadically, with major raids on 16 and 19 April 1941. More than 1,000 people were killed on each night in various areas across the capital. Finally, on 10 May, bombs fell on Kingsway, Smithfield, Westminster and across the City, killing almost 3,000 and hitting the Law Courts, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, many of London’s museums and the House of Commons. The Blitz only ended in May 1941 when the German Luftwaffe were redeployed to take part in the invasion of Russia.
Within the ruins there were some amazing discoveries. These included a Roman wall at Cripplegate, Roman relics at Austin Friars, an underground chamber below St Mary le Bow, a Gothic doorway at St Vedast’s and a seventh century arch at All Hallows Church. Nevertheless, the devastation caused by the Blitz was phenomenal and long-lasting. In Stepney, for example, 40% of the housing was destroyed.
It took years for some bombsites to be filled in with new buildings, before which they were reclaimed by plants, wildlife and children. In the end, though, London was rebuilt from the ashes, just as it had been after the Great Fire.
London has long been a city of two ‘ends’: the affluent, elegant West End and the gritty, industrious East End. To some extent, this divide came about naturally over time. But early town planning also had a part to play. In particular, the efforts of one man: the brilliant architect, John Nash.
Many of his building may now be gone, but Nash’s imprint on London is indelible. He was responsible for transforming Marylebone Park (Henry VIII’s old hunting ground) into Regent’s Park, and laying out the elegant terraced housing that edges it. He created the long curve of Regent’s St, topped and tailed by Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus, and, in doing so, established one of Europe’s most prestigious shopping areas. He remodelled Buckingham Palace and was the original designer of Trafalgar Square. His genius lies not just in the beauty of his buildings and the grandness of his vision but in the fact that he made it happen at all.
The idea of ‘planning’ London was nothing new in the Georgian period. After the Great Fire, Christopher Wren had tried, and failed, to impose order on the rebuilding of the capital. But he was thwarted by the jumble of shops and houses that soon sprang up again on the old medieval street plan. By the late Georgian period, London’s architecture and layout were conspicuously failing to reflect the city’s growing in importance on the world stage. It was increasingly crowded and smelly, with the rich of Mayfair rubbing shoulders with the poor and disreputable of Soho. There was a growing feeling that something had to be done.
The Prince Regent (later George IV) appointed three architects to plan what he called his ‘improvements’. The most influential of these was his close friend, Nash, who had made his name in Wales building fine country houses in the ‘picturesque’ style for wealthy and influential clients.
This apprenticeship served him well in London. His skill at mixing styles, yet making everything sit effortlessly in its setting, suited London’s eclectic nature. And his good connections proved invaluable in the shrewd property speculation that was needed to fund the Prince’s ‘improvements’.
But perhaps the most lasting legacy of Nash’s work is the way his grand ceremonial route from St James’s Park in the south to Regent’s Park in the north cut a slice through London, separating the rich from the poor. This was no accident. Nash himself said he wanted to create a line ‘between the streets and squares occupied by Nobility and Gentry’ and ‘the narrow Streets and meaner houses occupied by mechanics and the trading part of the community’.
His original plan was never fully completed. Some parts were built by other architects, adding their own stamp in the process. And even those parts he did complete have struggled to survive: on Regent’s St, All Soul’s Church is the only Nash original still standing. But his place as London’s if not England’s most influential town planner is impossible to deny.
London’s East End has always had a dark side. On the surface, we think of it as a tight-knit community inhabited by chirpy Cockney barrow boys and flower girls, playfully peppering their sales patter with rhyming slang. But beneath that is a more sinister tale: one of overcrowding, poverty, violent crime, grimy industry and social unrest. This is the East End that emerged in the Victorian Age and that lingers still in the popular imagination.
East London has always been the poor relation of the West End. From the earliest times, it attracted trade and industry, thanks to its proximity to both The Thames and the River Lea. In particular, ‘dirty’ industries like tanning and tallow works clustered in the east, downwind and outside the city walls where ‘noxious’ trades were banned.
Despite this, the area remained a relatively pleasant place to live and work. That is, until the Victorian age…
As the British Empire expanded under Queen Victoria, so did trade and heavy industry. In 1827, the new St Katherine Docks opened, and with it, the need for large numbers of dock workers. There was no shortage in the East End. Alongside a swelling local population, the area had long attracted immigrants fleeing political unrest and religious persecution: most notably, Jews and French Huguenots in the 17th century. Between 1870 and 1914 they were joined by thousands of Jewish settlers from Poland, Romania and Russia who fled to England to escape Tsarist pogroms.
The elegant Huguenot houses of Spitalfields were divided up into tiny, inadequate dwellings, and even newly-built housing soon became over-crowded and run down. Wages were pitiful, thanks to unscrupulous employment practices such as casual labour and piecework. Disease was rife: in 1866, a cholera epidemic swept the East End, killing 3,000 people.
Those who could claw their way above the poverty line soon moved out – aided by the arrival of the railways – leaving behind the highest concentration of the poor and underprivileged anywhere in London. When social reformer Charles Booth produced his extensive survey of the living conditions of the poor in 1887, he concluded that 13% of the East End population was chronically poor and, of those, “a part must be considered separately, as the class for whom decent life is not imaginable.”
No wonder then, that crime, immorality, drunkenness and violence were so rife. Gangs, prostitutes and robbers roamed the unlit alleys that, by the late 19th century, had become known as ‘The Abyss’. Perhaps the area’s darkest moment came in the late summer and early autumn of 1888, when Jack the Ripper carried out a series of grisly murders on Whitechapel prostitutes. He was never caught.
Despite – of perhaps because of – the misery, the local ‘Cockneys’ (as East End dwellers became known) developed an indomitable spirit and a reputation for humour. Nowhere is this more evident than in the playful distortion of the English language known as Cockney Rhyming Slang. The ‘secret’ language is thought to have originated in the 1840s among street traders (costermongers) as a means of concealing their often dodgy dealings from the newly-formed police force – while having a laugh at their expense. Whatever its origins, phrases like ‘have a butcher’s’ (butcher’s hook = look), ‘telling porkies’ (porkies = pork pies = lies) and ‘on my tod’ have given our language a rich legacy that lasts to this day.
For millions of visitors, Buckingham Palace – official residence of the Royal Family and backdrop for the Changing of the Guard – is one of the iconic sights of London. But the building so familiar to us today is the product of many years’ extending and remodelling, with varying degrees of success.
The original building was far more modest. Built as a private townhouse for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703, Buckingham House was bought by George III in 1761 for his wife Queen Charlotte to use as a cosy family home. Work on remodelling the re-named Queen’s House began in 1762 under Sir William Chambers, at a cost of £73,000.
The decision to upgrade from a house to a palace came a little later, when George III was succeeded by his son, the famously extravagant George IV. In 1826, he persuaded Parliament to stretch the agreed renovation budget from £150,000 to £450,000 and appointed architect John Nash to create a palace fit for a king.
Nash demolished the north and south wings and rebuilt them on a larger scale around a courtyard, complete with an impressive marble arch (the Marble Arch that now stands at Hyde Park corner). The project was a PR disaster. By 1829, the costs had crept up to half a million pounds, and Nash found himself out of a job.
All that remains of Nash’s work is the suite of state and semi-state rooms he added to the west-facing garden side of the old main block. The King never moved in…
In fact, the Palace was unoccupied until Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837. The new queen soon discovered that the opulent interiors masked some serious shortcomings. The chimneys smoked so badly that the fires couldn’t be lit, leaving residents freezing. Ventilation was so poor that the rooms smelled musty and there were fears that installing gas lighting would risk blowing up the entire ground floor! There was also a serious lack of nurseries and visitor bedrooms. Architect Edmund Blore solved that problem by adding an attic floor along with a new wing – the East Front, which includes the balcony famously used by the Royal Family for public appearances.
Pollution soon took its toll on Blore’s façade and in 1913 it was replaced with a tough Portland Stone frontage, designed by Sir Aston Webb. Work was completed just before the outbreak of the Great War.
The Palace’s last phase of remodelling was less intentional: it was bombed no less than seven times. Most famously, a direct hit destroyed the chapel in 1940.
The Palace today is still very much a working building. It has 775 rooms: including 19 state rooms, 240 bedrooms, 92 offices and 78 bathrooms. Over 50,000 guests a year pass through its doors for royal ceremonies, state visits, investitures and garden parties. Day-to-day, it functions as offices for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh’s personal staff. And, of course, during the summer months the State Rooms are one of London’s hottest tourist attractions.
For the wealthy Georgian man or woman about town, the highlight of the year was the London Season. Running from late January to early July, the Season was a social whirl of balls, dances, theatre outings and other events designed to see and be seen. It was also the ideal place for the wealthy to find suitable matches for their marriageable children (hence it being nicknamed ‘the Marriage Mart’).
A daily highlight of the London Season was the time between half past four and seven thirty known as ‘the Fashionable Hour’. At this time, the cream of English society (members of the 2,000 or so aristocratic families known as The Ton) paraded around Hyde Park, greeting friends, flirting and generally showing off their exquisite clothes, horses and carriages. Rotten Row, with its royal connections (the name is a corruption of La Route du Roi), was the place to be seen.
Fashion, as a means of displaying wealth, was an essential part of the Season. In the Georgian period, no wig was too high or too heavily powdered. Fine silk brocades, lace, and high heels – even for the men – were the order of the day. Fashionable London ladies took their inspiration from aristocrats like Marie Antoinette of France or Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. A feted beauty and trend-setter, Georgiana’s taste for extravagantly high wigs topped with long feathers was widely copied. Ladies had to be extremely careful not to crush their headwear against the ceiling or set light to it on the chandeliers.
However, the French Revolution brought about a sea change in fashion at the end of the 18th century. No-one wanted to be associated with the excessive dress of the aristocracy. Instead, Regency ladies embraced simple, classically-inspired muslin dresses with high waists and flowing skirts. Without the need for whalebone stays to nip in the waist, for a short time, women enjoyed more comfort and freedom, if less warmth.
For men, it was the age of the Dandy. Led by George ‘Beau’ Brummell, a close friend of the Prince Regent, the Dandy was epitomised by his wit, taste, impeccable manners, unswerving loyalty and, of course, his elegant dress. Although of limited means himself, Brummell’s style and charm soon made him the darling of London’s fashionable set. He set the trend for elegance and simplicity, defining a well-dressed man as one who drew no attention to himself. Instead, he favoured plain, dark, well-cut coats over sparkling white linens, topped with an intricately-tied neckcloth. Among his many fashionable innovations was the footloop, designed to stop gentlemen’s pantaloons from wrinkling.
After Brummell fled to France to escape his gambling debts, the clean elegance of his ideas began to creep towards extravagance. Neck wear, in particular, became more exaggerated. Collars became so high and stiff that they completely covered the ears and gentlemen had to turn their entire bodies rather than just their heads. In 1818, The Neckclothitania was published, satirising the many elaborate, and often bizarre, ways of tying a cravat.
After the end of World War II, London was a city in desperate need of large-scale rebuilding. As ever after a period of destruction, architects and planners saw the opportunity for remodelling at the same time. And while all this was going on, the population reorganised and rejuvenated itself.
Across London there was a huge amount of damage due to the war, and particularly the Blitz. Even before the war ended, planners such as Patrick Abercrombie came up with proposals to reconstruct the capital, with a balance between housing, industrial development and open spaces. This eventually gave rise to estates such as Lansbury in Poplar and Loughborough in Brixton.
Abercrombie’s ‘County of London Plan’ also included a more careful definition of the ‘Green Belt’; a strip of land encircling London that is made up of parks, farmland and recreation grounds, and subject to strict regulations concerning building and development. Further out, Abercrombie proposed the construction of satellite towns around an ‘Outer Country Ring’. In fact, many Londoners moved out to the eight ‘New Towns’ such as Stevenage and Harlow after the war.
Back in London, the first 10-storey council housing block opened in Holborn in May 1949. High-rise housing –another Abercrombie recommendation - was touted as the solution to London’s growing population, replacing housing lost during the war and London’s slums. By the 1960s, over half a million new flats had been built, many of them in tower blocks. The first major public building to be constructed in London after the War was The Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank. Opened as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951, it later became the first post-war building to be awarded Grade I listing.
In the centre of the capital, the Corporation of London was faced with reconstructing the area between Moorgate and Aldersgate that was obliterated in just one night of the Blitz. Out of the ashes rose the Barbican, comprising office blocks, an arts centre, a museum, housing and a school. At the time it was Europe’s biggest reconstruction project, although it was a while coming: it only officially opened in 1969 and wasn’t completed until 1975. Within just a few years of the end of the War, the cultural landscape of London started to change too. On 21 June 1948 a ship called the Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury with almost 500 Jamaicans on board. They were the first of waves of African and Asian immigrants over the next few years. Some were coming to join or rejoin the RAF, while others were escaping unemployment at home or simply wanted to visit ‘the mother country’.
This was promoted as an opportunity to help Britain recover. Among the major employers were the new National Health Service and London Transport. Some of those arriving on the Windrush were given temporary accommodation at Clapham Common and eventually formed a community in nearby Brixton. Others settled in Notting Hill, now home of the annual Carnival celebrating the cultures and traditions of London’s Afro-Caribbean communities.
It is hard to imagine any modern city without a visible and effective police force. But although there were already police in London by the turn of the nineteenth century, it was only the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 that set the pattern for policing as we know it today.
In the mid-eighteenth century the novelist and playwright Henry Fielding had put together the Bow Street Runners. In 1798 river police were introduced to combat the rising crime that accompanied the growing trade on the Thames. And there were local parish police and watchmen trying to keep the peace too. Now step forward Sir Robert Peel, the Home Secretary responsible for getting the Metropolitan Police law through parliament.
Peel modelled his ‘New Police’ force on the river police. They were based at ‘Great Scotland Yard’ in a Whitehall courtyard and received regular pay, whereas Fielding’s Runners relied mainly on rewards from courts and victims for their income.
The Metropolitan Police soon became known as ‘Bobbies’ or ‘Peelers’. Initially, they numbered 1,000 and policed a population of less than two million. By the end of the century, there were nearly 16,000 police in London serving a population of over seven million.
A Peeler’s uniform was a strange mix. As ‘servants’ of the people, they wore tailcoats, which were a non-military blue. But because they needed an air of authority, they wore top hats, strengthened with an iron ring at the crown. These were replaced in the 1850s by helmets, which were more practical but still visible. The ‘stock’ around their neck was stiff, to guard against garrotting. And from a heavy leather belt hung handcuffs, a wooden truncheon and a cutlass in a scabbard. They also carried a rattle - changed for a whistle in the 1880s - to summon help. Inspectors were issued with a pistol.
Policemen ‘on the beat’ had to walk a regular route at a steady pace of around 2.5 miles an hour, earning yet another nickname: PC Plod. The beat was intentionally small, so that they would become familiar locally (although they were not allowed to integrate by having a drink in the pub). Previously, the Bow Street Runners had been found to be congregating with ‘villains’ in taverns, as well as receiving money and goods. Any Bobby found doing so was dismissed, so that within four years only one sixth of the original men remained.
Despite the success of the Metropolitan Police, a separate police force was established in the City and enshrined in law in 1839. This force still polices the Square Mile today. City Police can be distinguished by different markings on their caps and buttons.
During Victoria’s reign, the Metropolitan Police were quickly accepted by some parts of society but struggled for authority over others. Some police still got caught lining their own pockets or acting inappropriately. But the continuing existence of the Met today shows that Peel’s organised police force was exactly what a major capital city really needed.
On 19 January 1917, in the darkest days of the Great War, a massive explosion rocked London’s East End. Shockwaves could be felt in Essex, while the blast itself was heard as far away as Southampton and Norwich. But the firestorm wasn’t caused by the sinister German Zeppelins that were making increasingly frequent appearances on London’s skyline. In fact, the roots of capital’s biggest ever explosion were much closer to home: a TNT factory in Silvertown.
From the outset, the management of the former Brunner, Mond and Co. chemical works expressed their concern about government plans to turn their plant over from the production of caustic soda to TNT for munitions. TNT is a highly unstable substance and the factory was in a crowded urban area. The Metropolitan Building Act of 1844 made it illegal to carry out ‘harmful trades’ inside the boundaries of London. But Silvertown was just outside this boundary, and its plentiful supply of labour and easy access to ports made it too good a location to overlook. In September 1915, the management caved to government pressure and the plant was soon making nine tons of TNT a day.
Sadly, the management’s concerns were founded. The explosion that ripped through the factory on that fateful Friday evening instantly destroyed part of the factory and several nearby streets. It showered molten metal across several miles, starting wild fires that could be seen as far away as Kent and Surrey.
More than 900 homes near the plant were destroyed or badly damaged in the disaster, leaving thousands of people homeless. Between 60,000 and 70,000 buildings were damaged to some extent, including a gasometer over the river in Greenwich which blew up, spewing 200,000 cubic metres of gas into the air in a massive fireball. Factories, docks and warehouses were also decimated. The eventual repair bill was around £250,000 – a staggering amount of money at the time.
Even more serious was the human cost. Seventy three people died that day. More than 400 were injured, 94 of them seriously. One man lost his wife and four children, aged between 10 and 13. The dead also included many firemen from the local station, along with dock and factory workers and children, asleep in their beds. But the death toll could have been much worse: by a stroke of luck, the explosion happened at just before 7pm, after most people had left the factory for the day and before they had gone to bed (most of the damage to homes was to the upper floors).
The precise cause of the explosion has never been found and rumours abounded of sabotage by a German spy or that the factory had been hit by a German bombing raid. The most likely explanation is much more mundane – that fire broke out in a melt-pot room and quickly spread to railway wagons where 50 tons of TNT was waiting to be moved. The inquiry found that the site was totally unsuitable and that Brunner Mond had failed to look after the welfare of its staff. The government chose not to publish the findings until the 1950s.
Just three years after allied forces marched into Berlin to effectively herald the end of WWII, London prepared to host the world’s greatest sporting event. Officially known as the Games of the XIV Olympiad, the 1948 Olympics were like nothing ever seen before. With rationing still in force and an economy recovering from the demands of war, the wartime attitude of 'make-do and mend' typified the spirit in which these Games were held.
Twelve years had passed since the Olympic flame had resided in Berlin, and by 1948 the world was a very different place. Battle-scarred and still in recovery, Britain put themselves forward to host the Olympics for the second time in its history, having previously hosted the event in 1908. A global event unlike any other, Britain saw an opportunity to demonstrate to the world that the worst effects of the war were now behind them. London saw off competition from four American cities, including Los Angeles and the Swiss city of Lausanne to the host the Olympics.
By no means a lavish spectacle, the Games cost just £730,000 to put together and came to be known as ‘The Austerity Games’. No new venues were erected nor was there an Olympic village to house the athletes. Male competitors stayed in military camps in Uxbridge, West Drayton and Richmond, while female competitors were housed in London colleges. Local athletes stayed at home and many commuted to the Games via public transport.
As food and clothing rationing were still in force, competitors were encouraged to buy or make their own uniforms. Athletes were, however, provided with increased food rations, which equated to around 5,500 calories a day instead of the normal 2,600. In true spirit of the Games, many countries pitched in to help increase provisions, with Denmark providing 160,000 eggs and the Dutch sending over a hundred tonnes of fruit.
Under the banner of the famous quote by the founding father of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the eleventh modern Olympic Games was declared open on 29 July in Wembley Stadium. A trumpet fanfare and a 21 gun salute roared out as 80,000 spectators gazed on eagerly from their seats.
The wonders of the event were broadcast for the first time on British television, as the BBC paid 1,000 guineas (£1,050) for the broadcasting rights. However, only those fortunate enough to afford a television and live within a 25-mile radius of the only transmission station at Alexandra Palace in North London could actually enjoy the spectacle. Nonetheless, this new medium helped to promote the Games in a way never seen before by the British public, as the spirit of the event captured the nation.
A total of 4,104 athletes were to take part from a record number of 59 nations with over 90% of all competitors being male. Germany and Japan were not invited to participate due to their roles as aggressors in WWII and whilst the Soviet Union was invited, they declined to send any athletes to compete.
The most successful athlete at the Games was Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands. Otherwise known as the “The Flying Housewife”, the 30-year-old mother of three, whom many believed was too old to compete, took home four gold medals in the 100m and 200m, 80m high hurdles and the 4x100m relay. Another record breaker was American, Bob Mathias who became the youngest gold medalist to win a track and field event at the tender age of 17. The British pair of Dickie Burnell and Bert Bushnell defied all odds to take gold in the men’s double skull, having been thrown together just a month before. This was the last Olympic gold for rowing Britain was to win until Steve Redgrave and his teammates won in the coxless four 36 years later.
As the Games of the XIV Olympiad came to a close, Britain finished with a total of 20 medals, 3 of which were gold and good enough for a final position of 12th. The US walked away in pole position as their medal haul reached 84, including 34 gold medals.
If there was one invention that changed the layout of London more than any other, it was the steam train and its railway. Almost the entire railway network, which is still in use today, was established during Queen Victoria’s reign.
London’s first railway line opened in February 1836 between Spa Road in Bermondsey and Deptford. The extension to the terminus at the south end of London Bridge opened on 14 December 1836 and to Greenwich on 12 April 1840: trains ran along London’s longest viaduct (4 miles) carrying passengers to the delights of Greenwich in just 12 minutes. This slashed the journey time by riverboat or omnibus. No wonder then that around 650,000 passengers travelled the route in its first 15 months.
To build a new railway, you had to demolish a lot of buildings - so it was easier to get approval for lines that ran mainly through poorer areas. This puts the locations of many London railway termini into context. Property was cheaper south of the river, for example, which explains why London Bridge was chosen as the first terminus.
But even the affluent City had to concede the inevitable coming of the railways, and the first permanent City terminus was opened in August 1841 at Fenchurch Street. Around 3,000 people had to be evicted from the East End to make way for this line.
The 1840s saw a railway boom, when permission was sought from Parliament for 19 lines in London, each with its own terminus in the City or Westminster. The idea of one large central station was also considered. In the end, only two of the 19 termini were permitted and in 1846 railway exclusion zones were set up on both sides of the river. Only Waterloo station snuck through the new red tape: with permission already granted before the new ruling, it opened within the southern zone in 1848.
Long distance train travel arrived in London in 1837, with the building of the Euston terminus at the end of the line from Birmingham. Other major termini soon followed, with Paddington opening in 1838, Fenchurch Street in 1841 and King’s Cross in 1850.
The growth of the railways had a dramatic impact on London. It squeezed the City’s residential population out, making way for a major commercial centre. It signalled the end of the old coaching inns. It caused central London traffic to rocket, as passengers travelled across town between termini and into work. (This was eventually alleviated by the construction of London’s Underground system, starting with the Metropolitan Railway.) And the huge termini, and the lines into them, split districts and communities forever.
Railway development stalled in the early 1850s. But not for long. In October 1860, Victoria Station opened, connecting the capital to Brighton and Dover. Before a wider central London exclusion zone could be approved in 1863, permission had been granted for Charing Cross, Ludgate Hill and Cannon Street termini, with bridges bringing trains across the Thames from the south. Thanks to the trains, Londoners’ horizons were broader than ever.
For a few years in the 1960s, London was the world capital of cool. When Time magazine dedicated its 15 April 1966 issue to London: the Swinging City, it cemented the association between London and all things hip and fashionable that had been growing in the popular imagination throughout the decade.
London’s remarkable metamorphosis from a gloomy, grimy post-War capital into a bright, shining epicentre of style was largely down to two factors: youth and money. The baby boom of the 1950s meant that the urban population was younger than it had been since Roman times. By the mid-60s, 40% of the population at large was under 25. With the abolition of National Service for men in 1960, these young people had more freedom and fewer responsibilities than their parents’ generation. They rebelled against the limitations and restrictions of post-War society. In short, they wanted to shake things up…
Added to this, Londoners had more disposable income than ever before – and were looking for ways to spend it. Nationally, weekly earnings in the ‘60s outstripped the cost of living by a staggering 183%: in London, where earnings were generally higher than the national average, the figure was probably even greater.
This heady combination of affluence and youth led to a flourishing of music, fashion, design and anything else that would banish the post-War gloom. Fashion boutiques sprang up willy-nilly. Men flocked to Carnaby St, near Soho, for the latest ‘Mod’ fashions. While women were lured to the King’s Rd, where Mary Quant’s radical mini skirts flew off the rails of her iconic store, Bazaar.
Even the most shocking or downright barmy fashions were popularised by models who, for the first time, became superstars. Jean Shrimpton was considered the symbol of Swinging London, while Twiggy was named The Face of 1966. Mary Quant herself was the undisputed queen of the group known as The Chelsea Set, a hard-partying, socially eclectic mix of largely idle ‘toffs’ and talented working-class movers and shakers.
Music was also a huge part of London’s swing. While Liverpool had the Beatles, the London sound was a mix of bands who went on to worldwide success, including The Who, The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Rolling Stones. Their music was the mainstay of pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline and Radio Swinging England. Creative types of all kinds gravitated to the capital, from artists and writers to magazine publishers, photographers, advertisers, film-makers and product designers.
But not everything in London’s garden was rosy. Immigration was a political hot potato: by 1961, there were over 100,000 West Indians in London, and not everyone welcomed them with open arms. The biggest problem of all was a huge shortage of housing to replace bombed buildings and unfit slums and cope with a booming urban population. The badly-conceived solution – huge estates of tower blocks – and the social problems they created, changed the face of London for ever. By the 1970s, with industry declining and unemployment rising, Swinging London seemed a very dim and distant memory.
In London, at 8.50am on Thursday 7 July, three bombs exploded simultaneously, destroying sections of three different London Underground trains. One was detonated just outside Liverpool Street station, the other outside Edgware Road and the third between Kings Cross and Russell Square. Around an hour later at 9.50am there was an explosion on the top level of a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square near Kings Cross, caused by a similar device to the ones used on the underground.
The explosions left 52 innocent people dead and over 700 injured. Chaos erupted across the capital, echoing the horrific terrorist attacks faced by New York four years before, on 11 September 2001. The worst bombing in London since WWII, it brought the city’s public transport network to a standstill, with the complete closure of the underground system and Zone 1 bus networks forcing thousands of commuters to walk the long journey home.
In the immediate aftermath of the bombings victims on the tube used fire extinguishers to break down train doors. Passengers on the Piccadilly line train between King's Cross to Russell Square who were able to walk felt their way in the darkness down the length of the tunnel back to ground level. Confusion and shock struck London on this summer morning with the three separate incidents initially being blamed on train collisions, electrical failures and power surges. The following day the Metropolitan Police stated that it could not be ruled out that the attacks were "the result of suicide bombings".
The bombers were later confirmed to be Muslim extremists. 30 year old Mohammad Sidique Khan, 24 year old Shehzad Tanweer, 19 year old Germaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain the bus bomber was only 18 years old. Following the events of 7/7 all four bombers were found to be British citizens said to be leading normal every day lives, including Khan who was a respected teaching assistant in his native Beeston, Leeds.
Two of the bombers also resided in North Yorkshire near to where the organic peroxide based devices were later found to have been constructed. On 12 July police discovered much of the bombing equipment still in tact in a rented flat in the Hyde Park area of Leeds.
Khan, Tanweer and Hussain were all of Pakistani descent and Jamaican-born Briton Germaine Lindsay of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was a convert to Islam. The investigation into the bombings found that both Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer had previously spent several months in Pakistan where it is very likely that they were in contact with Al-Qaeda and went through extensive extremist training.
In September 2005 the television station Al-Jazeera broadcasted Mohammad Sidique Khan speaking in a pre-recorded video message, revealing his motives for becoming a "soldier" - "Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight".
The 7/7 bombings were subsequently linked with the attempted bombings of 21 July 2005. Only two weeks after the initial attacks, failed devices were found in similar locations; one on a double-decker bus and three others on trains on the London Underground. There was some speculation that the attacks on 21 July were the work of the same Islamist cell, although another theory is that the would-be bombers were simply copycats.
When the verdict of the inquests into 7/7 was released in May 2011, it was welcomed by the victims’ families, but some said that they still feel there should be a full inquiry into the bombings. Despite the fact the Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, promised that all evidence would be published, this has yet to happen.
As with the terrible events of 9/11, there are conspiracy theories surrounding the events of that day, including so called "co-incidences". One example concerns British crisis management specialist Peter Power, who on that very day had planned a crisis management simulation drill.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks candlelit vigils were held in the capital and the Union flag was flown at half mast in remembrance of those who died. In 2009, the Prince of Wales paid tribute to the bravery of the bereaved families and survivors of the bombings as he unveiled a memorial in Hyde Park dedicated to the 52 people who died on 7 July 2005.
Imagine the smell that three million Londoners could make if their toilets poured into overflowing cesspools or drains in the street, or if they emptied chamberpots out of their windows. It’s unthinkable now, but that was reality in 1855.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Victorians knew this wasn’t healthy, but not why. When Queen Victoria came to the throne, only half of London’s infants lived to their fifth birthday. Diseases such as cholera were rife in the capital.
The first recorded case of cholera in England was in Newcastle in 1831, and there were major outbreaks in 1849 and 1854. But there was no cure and no treatment. Since Roman times, it had been thought that diseases like malaria – and, by extension, cholera – were spread in the air by ‘miasmas’ or terrible smells. This was why the Romans had built sewers – to get rid of the smells, not the sewage.
It took some clever deduction by Dr John Snow, later immortalised at a Soho pub, to find the true cause. Having attended many patients during the 1849 outbreak without contracting cholera himself, he realised that it could not be transmitted through the air. Then, the pattern of an outbreak in 1854 in Soho allowed him to track the source to a popular water pump in Broad Street (now Broadwick Street). Particularly telling was the fact that none of the 70 workers in the local brewery died, as they only drank beer.
Although Snow was unaware of it, a sewer was leaking into the Broad Street well. Sadly, such cross contamination between the sewage system and water supplies was typical. Only when the problem was literally forced up the noses of MPs at their new Houses of Parliament during the ‘Great Stink’ in the summer of 1858 did something get done about it. Parliament gave £3 million to the Metropolitan Board of Works to sort out the problem. The task was taken on by chief engineer Joseph Bazalgette, who designed and constructed five major brick-lined sewers measuring 132 km (82 miles); three north of the river and two to the south. These connected with existing sewers and pumping stations were built at strategic locations to keep the sewage flowing.
Bazalgette’s sewers are partly hidden beneath the vast embankments alongside the Thames, including the Victoria and Albert Embankments. These changed the shape of the river and you can still see stranded water gates at various points that mark its original edge.
Building London’s sewers was the biggest civil engineering project in the world at the time. Sadly, delays to allow the embankments to also house new Underground lines meant that a final cholera epidemic hit London in 1866. The sewers were completed around 1870, with two extra sewers added about 1910. Still in use today, they can handle up to 1.8 billion litres (400 million gallons) of sewage a day. Although they are in great need of repair and replacement, London without them is unthinkable.
In 1951, 100 years after the hugely successful Great Exhibition brought crowds to the capital, Britain again hosted a huge celebratory event. This time, though, the Festival of Britain was designed to lift spirits after World War II and celebrate Britain’s resilience and achievements.
This Festival was not a single event on one site, but took place across Britain from May to September. And unlike the Great Exhibition, it was purely about Britain and the British people. There were fixed and travelling exhibitions, along with local initiatives and special events. But it was the London installations that became synonymous with the Festival. In 1951, people were still suffering shortages and living with rationing caused by the War. Bomb damage was visible everywhere. So the Festival offered the opportunity not just to celebrate, but also to replace remnants of war-torn London with new, exciting attractions – mostly temporary, but some permanent.
By the Thames, 27 acres of the South Bank was transformed from an industrial wasteland into one of the Festival’s main sites. Pavilions celebrated who the British people were and what they did. The 111m wide, 28m tall exhibition-filled Dome of Discovery was the largest dome in the world at the time. Elsewhere they could look into the future, experiencing 3D films and stereophonic sound. And for many, the Festival marked the first time they had seen a television set.
Everything at the South Bank was specially designed for the Festival, from the water features and works of art to the benches and litter bins. Most importantly, after the greyness of the post-war years, the Festival of Britain put colour back into people’s lives. There were colourful pavilions, displays and signs everywhere, and the tall, slender, space-age Skylon was lit up from inside like a beacon every night.
Most of the structures were designed to be temporary, but the Royal Festival Hall was built to last. Poet John Betjeman described the Festival Hall as “forbidding outside”, suggesting that the architects “seem to have lost their nerve and missed the gaiety of the merry exhibitionists outside in the sun”. But the inside was totally different. “Amazing,” exclaimed Betjeman; it “must be the finest Concert Hall in the world”.
While the South Bank installations looked forward, the 100th anniversary of the Great Exhibition was celebrated in Battersea by recreating a Victorian pleasure garden. The Festival Pleasure Gardens featured huge tented pavilions hosting theatre, dancing and music hall events. There were ornamental pagodas and arcades with cafes and shops. And there were Victorian-style attractions such as Punch and Judy shows, acrobats and a steam railway.
The new Lansbury Estate in Poplar, East London - a 30-acre ‘Live Architecture Exhibition’ was another highlight of the Festival. This, along with the South Bank riverside walk, the Royal Festival Hall and part of the Science Museum, are the only major legacies to survive in London.