Highways and Byways in LondonCook, Emily Constance Baird
History
Highways and Byways in London
Cook, Emily Constance Baird
London (England) -- Description and travel
As for the ancient highways of London, very possibly these did not
differ greatly in their course from our modern ones; for the
Anglo-Saxon race has always been very conservative in rebuilding its
new streets, regardless of symmetry or directness, on the lines of the
destroyed ones. At any rate, we know that the original church of St.
Paul's--the first of three built on this site, founded by Ethelbert
about the year 610--and that of Westminster--altered, rebuilt, and
enlarged by successive kings--must have early sanctified these spots,
and necessitated thoroughfares between the two. Nay, even in Roman
times, temples of Diana and Apollo are believed to have adorned these
historic sites. It is strange, indeed, that the old, long-vanished
Roman wall, pierced only by a few gates, and the ancient street-plans
laid down by the Roman road surveyor, should still keep modern traffic
more or less to the old lines. A few new streets have recently been
made from north to south, but still the main traffic goes from east to
west, owing to the paucity of intersecting thoroughfares. The city of
London, as laid out in Roman times, remained, through Saxon and Norman
dominion, practically of the same extent and plan as late as the time
of Elizabeth, in whose reign there were as many houses within the city
walls as without them. Roman influence is still dominant in modern
London. The large block of ground without carriage-way about Austin
Friars is a consequence of the old Roman wall having afforded no
passage. And possibly many of the narrow, jostling City streets have
in their day reflected the shade and sun of Roman "insulas," each with
its surrounding shops, just as, later, their dimensions may have
shrunk between the overhanging, high-gabled houses of Tudor times, to
widen again under the tall Stuart palaces of the Restoration.
[Illustration: _Sandwich-board Men._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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