OLD LONDON HISTORY

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume XLV, Issue 3190, 3 February 1928, Page 5

OLD LONDON HISTORY

NOW LOST FOR EVER.

THE DEBRIS OF CENTURIES.

The great building operations going on at present throughout London, but especially in the city, have produced a situation which is not generally appreciated. Archaeology in the City of London is having its last chance. Or, as archaeologists themselves prefer to put it, the last chance for gaining information about the first days of London is passing away without even being seized.

The reason of this lies in the character of the test-building methods. Previous generations of builders built in greater or in lesser part upon the foundations of those who came before them. But the foundations of the buildings now being raised are going down far deeper, not on to the debris of previous generations, but right through every layer of soil. The buildings will rest upon virgin depths which have never borne the weight of man's handiwork before.

Great piers of reinforced concrete are descending to unprecedented deeps through the layers of British, Norman, Saxon and Roman civilisations, to the natural strata, so that all human evidence upon these sites is being destroyed irretrievably^

For example, as the three great underground floors of the new Bank of England are being created, the soil, said a prominent archaeologist, in a conversation with a Daily Mail contributor recently, is being carted away. The writer says: "It would be a useful and worthy act if, both there and wherever operations are being carried out in the city, someone with archaeological training were posted by the city authorities to observe the soil ere it was displaced for the last time.

"There would be no question of interfering with, the excavations. A competent man could sit at the edge of the pit or find an unobtrusive corner within it and just make notes of what he saw. If anything were found it could be shown, to him. However, it is not upon such chance finds that stress is laid. Archaeologists have changed. Treasure trove means less to them now than the gathering of historic information, which by their training they are able to deduce from looking at sections of soil, by making comparisons between strata.

"Archaeologists, watching the Bank of England work, have noted that the earliest piles supporting buildings in this area were held up by Eoman debris. From this it can be deduced that there was not here, as supposed, a Celtic village, Every age leaves a layer of debris behind it, and if there had been an earlier village it is reasonable to assume that its debris would have supported the piles.

"The modern concrete piles under the bank but carry on ancient tradition and necessity. Owing to the infiltration of water from the Wall Brook successive races have been obliged to build upon piles. The Soames building, now being destroyed, was raised ion plies like its predecessor, and so it goes back through history. There has been a perfect forest of piles beneath the bank's site, and the same thing is, it would seem, true of the Mansion

House."