zoetrope

So the marvelous, wonderful and enthralling rageprufrock is coming to London! We're thinking of organising a fannish meet-up for one of the nights - if you'd like to join us, please fill out the poll below! It will be in the evening on one of the following dates:

[Poll #1385154]

As you must all know by now, I'm a complete London geek. I love walking on streets that people have been walking on for hundreds of years, going to markets that have been there since Medieval times...

The City of London is the oldest area, original London if you like, and covers the area now used mainly for banking. The city of London, this part of modern-day London, was first founded by the Romans in 43AD.

They built the first London Bridge - which was the only bridge across the Thames until 1739 (the first stone London Bridge was built in 1176). The modern London Bridge was - according to recent excavations - built just yards from the much older bridges on the site.

The city built up around that, as a trading port, and in Medieval London the streets were cramped and bustling, each named after what the traders on that street sold. There was one street for chickens, one for tailors, one for bread and more and more... Today these streets are called Poultry, Threadneedle St, Bread St... in fact, many many of them have remained.

In 1666 Londoners were nervous about the bad omen of the numbers in the year. This was justified when, after a hot dry summer, a bakers shop in Pudding Lane (see how that works?! *g*) caught fire... and took the rest of London with it. The flames spread quickly through the narrow streets and wooden houses and decimated the city. In five days 87 churches and 13,200 houses had been destroyed.

Samuel Pepys wrote:
"So I rode down to the waterside, . . . and there saw a lamentable fire. . . Everybody endeavouring to remove their goods, and flinging into the river or bringing them into lighters that lay off; poor people staying in their houses as long as till the very fire touched them, and then running into boats, or clambering from one pair of stairs by the waterside to another. And among other things, the poor pigeons, I perceive, were loth to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies, till they some of them burned their wings and fell down."

In the end, the only way they could stop the first was to use gunpowder to blow up houses so that the fire had nothing to consume. By the end of the fire, four fifths of the city had been destroyed - including the wooden St. Pauls Cathedral - and many people lost all their belongings. Though fire was so destructive, it is also thought to have saved the city from the scourge of the Black Plague, which had killed almost 20% of the population the previous year.

Because so many people were homeless, the King had no choice but to order the rebuilding to happen as quickly as possible - his only proviso that the buildings be made only of stone, not wood, as a preventative measure. Therefore, the streets were rebuilt as-is, and a map of London before the fire is as recognisable as a modern map.

( An example beneath the cut )


When cincodemaygirl came to visit, she said she was amazed by how much history there was here, something which I had taken for granted to a certain extent. I frequently catch the bus down Bishopsgate and along Moorgate, past London Wall, streets that have been there for more than 500 years - and probably closer to 1000 - and each time try to remember the history that is all around, hoping to never again take that for granted.

And that's just another reason why I love London.

Past waxing lyrical about London.

( So, I went to see Howl's Moving Castle... Don't read if you loved the film and don't want me to harsh your buzz. )