Lost London
Authors: Richard Guard
For Kirsty, Oliver, Isaac and Alfred
Seized by a compulsion you long to discover Drayton Park.
Go there at once and miss a turn.
The London Game
, Seven Towns Ltd, 1972
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Michael O’Mara Books Limited
9 Lion Yard
Tremadoc Road
London SW4 7NQ
Copyright © Michael O’Mara Books Limited 2012
All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means
(electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this
publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-84317-803-3 in paperback print format
ISBN: 978-1-84317-896-5 in EPub format
ISBN: 978-1-84317-895-8 in Mobipocket format
Designed and typeset by Design 23
Picture research by Judith Palmer.
Jacket picture sources:
Antiquities of London and Its Environs, Antiquities of Westminster
, both by John Thomas Smith;
Father Thames
by Walter Higgins;
London
by Walter Besant;
Knight’s London, Vols. I, V, VI;
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction
, Vols. XII & XIX;
Old and New London
, Vols. I, II, VI, by Walter Thornbury and Edward
Walford;
The Old Bailey and Newgate
by Charles Gordon;
A Short History of the English People
, Vol. II, by J. R. Green. Page 24
www.clipart.com
Adam and Eve Tea Gardens
Tottenham Court Road
Astley’s
Westminster Bridge Road
Bedlam, or St Bethlehem’s Hospital
Liverpool Street
Chippendale’s Workshop
Covent Garden
Coldbath Fields Prison
Clerkenwell
Crapper and Company Ltd
Chelsea
The Devil Public House
Fleet Street
Don Saltero’s Coffee House
Chelsea
Field of the Forty Footsteps
Russell Square
Goodman’s Fields Theatre
Whitechapel
The Great Globe
Leicester Square
Hippodrome Racecourse
Ladbroke Grove
Hockley-in-the-Hole
Clerkenwell
Holy Trinity
Minories Tower Hill
Islington Spa, Or The New Tunbridge Wells
Lillie Bridge Grounds
Earl’s Court
London Bridge
Some Notable Decapitated Heads Displayed Thereon
Old Clothes Exchange
Houndsditch
Old Slaughter’s Coffee House
Covent Garden
Rainbow Coffee House
Fleet Street
Rillington Place
Ladbroke Grove
Silvertown Explosives Factory
West Ham
London is a very old and magnificent city – but its buildings are not that ancient. Although it has been inhabited for 2000 years few traces are left from that time. Tiny
sections of the old wall and the London Stone from which the Romans measured distances throughout the land are all that remain. Mosaics, foundations and artefacts have been frequently uncovered,
but there’s no colosseum, amphitheatre or Parthenon to mark 400 years of Roman rule.
The medieval period too has little to show for itself – a few churches claim to have been established in the 10th century, but the oldest existing building is William the Conqueror’s
White Tower, the original Tower of London, built in 1085.
A series of rapid expansions and terrible disasters have stripped the capital of its age old monuments. Most famous is the Great Fire of 1666 which destroyed 90 per cent of the old city. Over
ten thousand new dwellings were built in its aftermath – none are left – the German Blitz destroyed the last of these.
Much of the city built between the Great Fire and the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 – the city immortalized in the works of Charles Dickens – was swept away with modernizing and
moralizing zeal. Massive urban development consumed the fields where city dwellers once took their pleasures. The railways sliced through ancient thoroughfares and demolished districts that had
stood for hundreds of years. Many fabulous and remarkable buildings were simply removed because they were old.
Now only a few glorious pockets of 18th century London remain. It would be a fool’s errand to attempt to describe all that has been lost – indeed it would be
impossible. This humble book only aims to amuse its readers by describing some of the buildings and streets, the jobs and habits, the markets, fairs and pastimes that have made London what it is
today, the greatest city in the world.
London has been the epicentre of so many important historical events – in politics, in the arts, in science – that for lovers of the capital the very streets seem to reverberate with
echo of voices past. In compiling this book I have attempted, where possible, to find a contemporaneous quote that brings the location and the time and place back to life, so that the reader will
be able to walk the city’s streets and people them with the great rush of humanity that have called London their home for the last 2000 years.
RG, E
AST
D
ULWICH
, 2012
