Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its PlacesThornbury, Walter
History
Old and New London, Volume I: A Narrative of Its History, Its People, and Its Places
Thornbury, Walter
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- History
The line of the Roman walls ran from the Tower straight to Aldgate;
there making an angle, it continued to Bishopsgate. From there it turned
eastward to St. Giles's Churchyard, where it veered south to Falcon
Square. At this point it continued west to Aldersgate, running under
Christ's Hospital, and onward to Giltspur Street. There forming an
angle, it proceeded directly to Ludgate towards the Thames, passing to
the south of St. Andrew's Church. The wall then crossed Addle Street,
and took a course along Upper and Lower Thames Street towards the Tower.
In Thames Street the wall has been found built on oaken piles; on these
was laid a stratum of chalk and stones, and over this a course of large,
hewn sandstones, cemented with quicklime, sand, and pounded tile. The
body of the wall was constructed of ragstone, flint, and lime, bonded at
intervals with courses of plain and curve-edged tiles.
That Roman London grew slowly there is abundant proof. In building the
new Exchange, the workmen came on a gravel-pit full of oyster-shells,
cattle bones, old sandals, and shattered pottery. No coin found there
being later than Severus indicates that this ground was bare waste
outside the original city until at least the latter part of the third
century. How far Roman London eventually spread its advancing waves of
houses may be seen from the fact that Roman wall-paintings, indicating
villas of men of wealth and position, have been found on both sides of
High Street, Southwark, almost up to St. George's Church; while one of
the outlying Roman cemeteries bordered the Kent Road.
From the horns of cattle having been dug up in St. Paul's Churchyard,
the monks, ever eager to discover traces of that Paganism with which
they amalgamated Christianity, conjectured that a temple of Diana once
stood on the site of St. Paul's. A stone altar, with a rude figure of
the amazon goddess sculptured upon it, was indeed discovered in making
the foundations for Goldsmiths' Hall, Cheapside; but this was a mere
votive or private altar, and proves nothing; and the ox bones, if any,
found at St. Paul's, were merely refuse thrown into a rubbish-heap
outside the old walls. As to the Temple of Apollo, supposed to have been
replaced by Westminster Abbey, that is merely an invention of rival
monks to glorify Thorney Island, and to render its antiquity equal to
the fabulous claims of St. Paul's. Nor is there any positive proof that
shrines to British gods ever stood on either place, though that they may
have done so is not at all improbable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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