ANCIENT LONDON

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 88, Issue 310, 30 December 1944, Page 8

ANCIENT LONDON

NEW VIEWS REVEALED BY BOMBING FRAGMENT OF ROMAN W ALL. London, Nov. 16. ’’The centuries fall away as the war approaches its climax, 01 its end, and disclose new views of old London,” writes a special correspondent of The Times. “Some of these are already well known, as in the area immediately around St. Paul's. Others are less known, and yield a rich harvest of interest. I’he long past as well as the present and future of London are here, and we may look back and forward as no man has done since 1660. ’ For this is nd the first time that war am desolation have come to London—four times at least in 20 centuries, with other minor incursions. Demolition following widespread destruction. hrs now opened up wide views both of venerable sites and of the history that delonged to them. This is proud and ancient ground. Londonens may fittingly share in the staunchness.

“Let us confine ourselves to a single district. It is easily found and some hint of it may be gleaned as you pass along Cheapside. North of that thoroughfare to the boundary of the city beyond the Barbican and between Foster lane and Old Jewry with its continuation in Coleman Street,, lies a region where the air battles of 1940 and 1941 have left little standing. Among the survivals is part of the oldest London of all. "It is not all loss. It can, indeed, be said that in one place what the enemy has spared the zeal of the demolition squads has removed. Enough remains standing to inflame the ardour of archaeologist and historian, and, what is more, the ordinary citizen. For we are dealing with historic frontiers, the limit of the Fire of London and the site of old London Wall, here nearly corresponding. For the first time since the days of Charles the Second the frontier has become a visible and tangible thing. LONDON WALL. “There is a point where the Wall, coming westward from the direction of Bishopsgate turns sharply at s right-angle almost due south nearly to Gresham Street, where it turns again south-westward. At this sharp angle stands the bastion to be seen before 1940 in the rectory garden o£ St. Giles Cripplegate. Other buildings hemmed it in. on the west and south. The church where Cromwell was married and Milton buried is just beyond the Wall, roofless and burnt. Near by a garden flourishes on a foundation of rubble, tended by men of the National Fire Service, who are deservedly proud just now of their tomatoes; they rear pigs and poultry, too.

“This bastian has long been known, though little visited. In its isolation it is far more commanding than it was. The map of the later Roman London begins to unfold itself. We may turn southward and find a more exciting thing. Two other bastions have been revealed, together with important fragments of the Wall and a clear demarcation of more, as far as the next angle close by the Wren church of St. Anne a'nd St. Agnes, Gresham Street.

“No learning is needed to follow this stretch of wall and bastion, though it is not easy to pick the way, and street names have vanished with the buildings. A considerable reach of the Wall is without any sign of ancient masonry; nevertheless, the high boundary walls of demolished warehouses mark it all clearly—these have been the boundaries of property since property exisfed.

“The two bastions are those marked 8.13 and 8.14 in the Inventory and Map in Vol. 11l of the London series of the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments. No. 13 is the more northerly. No. 14, the more southerly and much more complete, was recorded in The Times of October 12, 1942, in a letter from Mr. Sydney R. Jones, and on October 15 by a photograph taken in January, 1941, by Mr. Sydney Tatchell. This showed a semi-circu-lar structure of three stages or more. The lowest stage and part of the next were the only portion where old work was visible in the photograph. The lowest stage was of ancient masonry or brickwork and about half the next above it. The structure was pierced by modern windows, and plaster concealed the fabric beneath. “AUTHENTIC FRAGMENT”

“Complete demolition was prevented when the facts were brought to the notice of the Ministry of Works. What remains to-day is the lowest stage

only. Though doubtless the most worth preserving, it is to be regretted that the whole structure was not carefully examined before any of it was destroyed, for this was an authentic fragment of the Wall vouched for by the very fact tlxat it had escaped restoration. “Adjoininig Bastion 8.14 and north of Falcon Square, we can see for the first time, a highly interesting portion of the Wall itself. It stands approximately 20ft. above the ground, and has been partly repaired in brick. But some of the facing is original—that is to say Roman, not medieval. This is indicated by surviving courses of Roman title. Elsewhere tile is mingled with rag stone in an evident reuse of .older material. Where the facing remains intact at this point at least four courses of tile, and parts of others, can be seen filled in with small squared stones. “The other bastion (B. 13 has less to show—only a projection of modern brickwork above the ground sufficient to indicate the remainder of a semicircle. Below the ground, however, the bastion is complete, made of rough masonry and containing parts of tiles. Broken fragments lie on the lower level which may once have had their place in the Wall and in history. “Roman London insists on its domineering position in all this scene. But i the whole of the later London belongs !to it up to our time; and this also is Ito become historic. The Wall itself i brings up Alfred, who repaired it after I Danish inroads and has been called the second founder of London. The dedications of churches, some of which were not rebuilt after the Fire, imply a Saxon foundation where records fail. Cheapside is the East Chepe or market of the later Middle Ages; in 1300 it was still open on the north. Elizabethan London filled most of this area with huddled wooden houses. It comes close to us in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, where the monument to Henry Condell and John Heminge, Shakespeare’s fellow-actors and editors of the First Folio, stands beside the skeleton of the church where they are buried.”