Burnt Londinium: traces of Boudica’s revolt beneath the City
Imagine a morning in a town less than twenty years old. There are no stone canyons or bank headquarters. Timber frames, woven panels packed with clay, shops, riverside warehouses and…
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2034 articlesThe London Mithraeum: a secret temple beneath Bloomberg Arcade
The working day is ending above Walbrook. Screens shine, office doors close and commuters cross the City. Downstairs the noise fades. Visitors descend towards the stone plan of a temple;…
The amphitheatre beneath Guildhall: blood and spectacle in Roman London
People cross Guildhall Yard between the Gothic front of the medieval hall and the art gallery. A broad ellipse of dark stone cuts through the pale paving. Most pedestrians treat it as…
Billingsgate Roman House and Baths: life beside the ancient Thames
Lower Thames Street feels like a transport cutting through the City. Traffic passes between offices and the river; Tower Bridge rises to the east; the Roman shoreline is almost impossible…
The London Stone: relic, boundary marker or heart of the city
Cannon Street is built for people who know where they are going. Trains arrive, office doors rotate, delivery bicycles thread between buses, and the stone that carries the city’s name waits…
Old London Bridge: houses, chapel, fire and traitors' heads
Stand on the present London Bridge and look downstream. The lost bridge did not occupy exactly the same line. For more than six hundred years a dense stone structure crossed the river a…
Smithfield and the death of Wat Tyler: fairs, tournaments and revolt
Begin with the empty space, not the dagger. In the morning West Smithfield feels like a pause in London’s dense fabric. Victorian market buildings stand on one side, a hospital and medieval…
St Bartholomew's: Rahere's dream, the priory and London's oldest hospital
Smithfield has a passage that edits time. From the square you see a timber-framed Tudor building above a stone arch. Walk beneath it and the market noise contracts. Ahead is the dark…
Westminster Sanctuary: when fugitives could shelter beside the Abbey
Stand between Westminster Abbey and the Supreme Court. This is now one of London’s most controlled landscapes: cameras, security arches, police officers, barriers and the timetables of…
Clerkenwell Priory: the Knights of St John and the district's buried memory
St John’s Gate looks like an entrance to a city that has disappeared. Two heavy, battlemented towers compress an arch through which an ordinary street passes. Bicycles, vans and people…
Anne Boleyn on Tower Green: a queen's final hours
Tower Green offers very little that can be seen from 19 May 1536. There is a clipped lawn, a row of Yeoman Warders’ houses, a chapel with Tudor windows and a circular glass memorial shaped…
The Princes in the Tower: disappearance, bones and five centuries of argument
Inside the White Tower, a plaque offers what appears to be a nearly perfect solution. It recalls that workmen in 1674 found the bones of two children near an old staircase. Their estimated…
