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[HOME: LONDON] [BACK: INTRODUCTION] [NEXT: PRE-INDUSTRIAL SEGREGATION]

Figure 1: A Bird's-Eye View of London from below the Bridge. Source: Leapman, 1989.

Roman London

There is evidence to show that London was not a Celtic settlement, therefore it began as a Roman town established right after Emperor Claudius’ invasion of Britain in AD 43 (Leapman, 1989). The name during this time period was Londinium, from the Celtic world meaning fierce (Leapman, 1989). Due to trade and topography, Londinium was built where it was and surpassed Colchester, which was the first Roman capital (Leapman, 1989). The Thames river allowed development and trade into the interior, as well as barred the way to any intruder coming from the Kent coast, like both Julius Caesar’s and Claudius’ armies did (Leapman, 1989). The river was broader and shallower than it is today, with marsh lands on both sides (Leapman, 1989). By AD 50 a permanent bridge, near the location of the present London Bridge, was developed across the river (Leapman, 1989). This was built from between the foot of the bridge and the eastern side of the little Walbrook stream where London grew (Leapman, 1989). This location allowed London to grow in all directions. London progressed as a commercial settlement and entrepot not as a military or tribal city, but it still maintained a military presence (Leapman, 1989). The street layout of London is not Roman but a Saxon design (Leapman, 1989). London’s prosperity in business and trade made it Roman Britain’s “most flourishing city” (Leapman, 1989, p. 10). In the middle of the second century, London reached its peak of prosperity when Cripplegate fort was being constructed (Leapman, 1989). The population of Roman London consisted of mainly first generation immigrants from other provinces of the empire or Romanized Celts working as merchants, craftsmen, officials, seamen, soldiers or slaves (Leapman, 1989). The population was connected through the Roman administration and the Latin language (Leapman, 1989). Around AD 200 the great city wall was built from the Tower area around to the mouth of the Fleet River (Leapman, 1989). A riverside wall was erected in the fourth century and the wall was to identify London for over a thousand years (Leapman, 1989). Beginning in 369 and into the decade after 401, London started to crumble, economic activity crumpled, the waterfront silted up and the poor population started to move into other towns (Leapman, 1989).

Figure 2: Map of Roman London. Source: Leapman, 1989.

Medieval London

A Saxon London existed in the seventh century between the Roman city and Westminster, with shipping and trading sites along the Strand River (Leapman, 1989). A significant characteristic to remember from medieval London is its churches and parishes (Leapman, 1989). In 604, Christianity returned to London when King Ethelbert founded St. Paul’s Cathedral (Leapman, 1989). At times there were over one hundred churches and parishes more than any other equivalent European city (Leapman, 1989). Churches began as simple structures, but developed into a Gothic style of architecture symbolizing the wealth (Leapman, 1989). Secular organization was side by side with the parish system in the twelfth century and the rich men in London, as well as many other medieval cities, were arguing for self-government and subjective taxation (Leapman, 1989). Henry Fitzalwin was London’s first mayor in 1191 and the city was becoming one of the greatest ports of the world (Leapman, 1989). London’s main source of trade was furs, skins and slaves and the Vikings dominated the seas (Leapman, 1989). Cloth, wine, linen, fish and later wool were traded when Europe was opened to freer trade (Leapman, 1989). In medieval London credit was essential (Leapman, 1989). The Jews, who had arrived with the Normans, specialized in loaning to monarchs and merchants (Leapman, 1989). Foreign and native groups lived together and the Milanese were skilled in financing foreign trade (Leapman, 1989). The exact population of medieval London is unknown, but can be estimated around 40, 000 – 50, 000 people, same as the Roman peak, in the 14 or 15th century (Leapman, 1989). This large number meant London was one of the largest cities in Europe behind Naples, Venice and Paris, but a plague in the 1340s drastically reduced the population (Leapman, 1989).

Tudor London

London experienced exceptional increase in immigration and expansion under the Tudors (Leapman, 1989). During this time period, London was walled and gated with very little open space because of the dense population, which jumped to over 200,000 in 1600 (Leapman, 1989). London Bridge, the busiest and most valuable through road in the city, was inundated with buildings and shops (Leapman, 1989). Tudor London consisted of a larger land area than either Roman or medieval London due to the suburban building by Kings Henry VII and Henry VIII (Leapman, 1989). In the 1500s and for the next two centuries, there were many mansions and villas along the Thames to take advantage of the river for transportation (Leapman, 1989). With the beginning of the Reformation, the city of London turned secular and church building immediately stopped in 1530, only resuming after the Great Fire (Leapman, 1989). The dynamics of the city were also changing after the Reformation. There were very few houses of a large scale being built in the city core, instead the rich citizens wanted more peace, space and health accessible outside the city walls (Leapman, 1989).

Figure 3: London Bridge in 1616. Source: Leapman, 1989.

From the Great Fire to the Regency

The seventeenth century saw London emerging to the identifiable city it is today due to the Great Fire and other smaller institutional changes (Leapman, 1989). The Great Plague and the Great Fire drastically changed the city of London. The Great Plague occurred in 1664 – 1665, which claimed over 100,000 lives of citizens of London (Leapman, 1989). The Great Fire in September 1666 destroyed everything within the walls of the City of London and some surrounding areas as well as a huge arc from the London Bridge (Leapman, 1989). This resulted in devastation in London’s dense historic centre with ninety percent of the churches and seventy percent of the houses destroyed (Leapman, 1989). These two events marked a turning point in the history of London because many of those who survived had moved out of the city and did not return. London “never regained its former importance as a centre of population” (Leapman, 1989, p. 16). The Great Fire redesigned the city of London. Due to the extensive damage, the city could be rebuilt with the planners thinking long-term (Leapman, 1989). The Georgian West End was not an exclusive area because living conditions did not allow class segregation with servants living right next to masters and mistresses (Leapman, 1989). Older districts, such as Georgian London, were unsafe, poverty stricken and unsanitary (Leapman, 1989).

Figure 4: The Monument, built in 1677, was designed to commemorate the Great Fire. Source: Leapman, 1989.

Figure 5: The Bank Station in the city was subject to a direct hit from German bombers on January 11, 1941. One hundred civilians were also killed as a result of the German bomb. Source: Leapman, 1989.

In the eighteenth century aristocratic landowners gained power at the expense of the monarchy. London’s high point of aesthetic success in city planning came with the Regency (Leapman, 1989). In 1800, London’s population topped a million people, making it the largest city in the world as well as the largest manufacturing centre in the world (Leapman, 1989).

Victorian London

At the time Queen Victoria took the throne in 1837 London was a “network quite parochial communities” (Leapman, 1989, p. 27). Craft or casual workers outnumbered factory workers or clerks and people rarely left their locality, but the high density and roughness of the core encouraged people to live as far from the centre as possible (Leapman, 1989). In 1855, the Metropolitan Board of Works, consisting of candidates elected from parishes or district boards, was created as the first step towards a representative government for London (Leapman, 1989). The board did not have much money and received a great deal of bad press, but did manage to accomplish plenty for London; most noteworthy was the main drainage system (Leapman, 1989). The London County Council replaced the Board of Works in 1889 (Leapman, 1989). The London County Council had a policy of dispersal which encouraged people to move outside the centre into the suburbs (Leapman, 1989). An sudden increase in banking, insurance and finance in 1875 led to more clerks who could afford to live in the suburbs and commute to work, especially with the completion of the railways (Leapman, 1989). Victorian London was the largest and richest city in the world (Leapman, 1989).

Twentieth Century London

In the twentieth century between the two world wars London consisted of two cities, the core, “volcanic, turbulent, self-renewing as ever, with its tarnished necklace of residential districts, rich and poor, around it”, (Leapman, 1989, p. 35) and beyond, “the lava flow of ‘semi-detached London’, creeping out over Middlesex, Essex, Kent and Surrey, lapping round towns and villages on its path” (Leapman, 1989, p. 35). Until 1965, Inner London was governed by a two-tier organization of metropolitan boroughs and the London County Council (Leapman, 1989). The London County Council never controlled any fundamental services, such as the Port of London, and was eventually replaced in 1965 by the Greater London Council, which covered a larger area (Leapman, 1989). The Greater London Council was abolished in 1986 with the deregulation of financial markets (Leapman, 1989). The bombing of Britain in World War II brought great destruction to London. Post World War II saw the rebuilding of London, similar to the situation that occurred after the Great Fire, in which the plan was to make the core of the city less dense, free from industry giving space for growing families (Leapman, 1989). The core of London was set up to be a centre for office and service employment (Leapman, 1989). The population in 1987 was 6.77 million people (Leapman, 1989) and currently has over seven million residents. Today, just like the rest of its history, London has the same enthusiasm for growth, development and regeneration that it had since the first London Bridge was built (Leapman, 1989). The 24.3 millions visitors and resident Londoners prove that London is “the most successful international city in the world” (Leapman, 1989, p. 40).

Figure 6: London at Night. Source: bayareahomegirl, 2009.