London
, the capital
of the United Kingdom, has a recorded history that goes back over
2,000 years. During this time, it has grown to become one of
the most significant
financial and
cultural capitals of the world.
It has
experienced plague,
devastating fire
, civil war, aerial
bombardment and terrorist
attacks. See City of London
for details on the historic core of London.
Etymology
The etymology of London is uncertain. There have been many
different theories advanced over the centuries for the origin of
the name: most can be dismissed as fanciful on linguistic or
historical grounds, while a few have some measure of academic
plausibility. None have any true evidence.
Legendary foundations and prehistoric London
According
to the legendary Historia Regum Britanniae, of
Geoffrey of Monmouth, London
was founded by Brutus of Troy after
he defeated the incumbent giants Gog and
Magog and was known as , (Latin
for New Troy
), which,
according to a pseudo-etymology, was corrupted to Trinovantum. Trinovantes were the Iron Age tribe who
inhabited the area prior to the Romans.
Geoffrey provides
prehistoric London with a rich array of legendary kings, such as
King Lud ( see also Lludd, from Welsh Mythology ) who, he
claims, renamed the town CaerLudein, from which London was
derived, and was buried at Ludgate
.
However, despite intensive excavations, archaeologists have found
no evidence of a prehistoric major settlement in the area. There
have been scattered prehistoric finds, evidence of farming, burial
and traces of habitation, but nothing more substantial. It is now
considered unlikely that a pre-Roman city existed, but as some of
the Roman city remains unexcavated, it is still just possible that
some settlement may yet be discovered.
During
prehistoric times, London was
most likely a rural area with scattered settlement.
Rich finds such as the
Battersea Shield, found in the
Thames near Chelsea, suggest the area was
important; there may have been important settlements at Egham
and Brentford
, and there was a hillfort
at Uppall, but no city in the area of the
Roman London, the present day City of London.
Numerous finds have been made of
spear heads
and weaponry from the
Bronze and
Iron ages near the banks of the
Thames in the London area, many of which had
clearly been used in battle. This suggests that the Thames was an
important tribal boundary.
In 2002 a
dig for the Channel 4 series Time Team unearthed a series of timbers driven
vertically into the ground on the south bank of the Thames next to the SIS Building
in Vauxhall
which
suggests the presence of a bridge or jetty 3,000 years
ago.
Roman London
Londinium was established as a civilian
town by the
Romans about seven years
after the
invasion of AD
43. Early Roman London occupied a relatively small area,
roughly equivalent to the size of Hyde Park. In around AD 60, it
was destroyed by the
Iceni led by their queen
Boudica. However, the city was quickly
rebuilt as a planned Roman town and recovered after perhaps 10
years, the city growing rapidly over the following decades.
During the
2nd century Londinium was at its height and replaced
Colchester
as the capital of Roman
Britain (Britannia). Its population was around 60,000
inhabitants. It boasted major public buildings, including the
largest
basilica north of the
Alps,
temples,
bath houses,
amphitheatre and a large
fort for the city garrison. Political instability and
recession from the 3rd century onwards, however, led to a slow
decline.
At some time between 190 and 225 AD the Romans built the defensive
London Wall - around the landward side
of the city. The wall was about 3 kilometres (2 miles) long, 6
metres (20 ft) high, and 2.5 metres (8 ft) thick.
In the late 3rd century, Londinium was raided on several occasions
by Saxon pirates. This led, from around 255 onwards, to the
construction of an additional riverside wall.The wall would survive
for another 1,600 years and define London's perimeters for
centuries to come.
Six of the traditional seven city gates of
London are of Roman origin, namely: Ludgate, Newgate
, Aldersgate
, Cripplegate
, Bishopsgate
and Aldgate
(Moorgate
is the exception, being of medieval
origin).
By the 5th century the Roman Empire was in rapid decline, and in
410 AD the Roman occupation of Britain came to an end. Following
this, the Roman city also went into rapid decline and by the end of
the century was practically abandoned.
Anglo-Saxon London
Following the virtual abandonment of the Roman city, the area's
strategic location on the River Thames meant that the site was not
deserted for long. From the 6th century,
Anglo-Saxons began to inhabit the area.
Although early Anglo-Saxon settlement avoided the area immediately
around Londinium, there was occupation on a small scale of much of
the hinterland on both sides of the river. There is no contemporary
literary evidence, but the area must for some time have been an
active frontier between Saxons and Britons.
From the mid-6th
century, the London area was incorporated into the East Saxons kingdom, which extended as far west
as St
Albans
and included all of later Middlesex
, and probably Surrey
, too, for a
time. In 604
Saeberht of the
East Saxons converted to Christianity and London received
Mellitus, its first post-Roman bishop.
At this time Essex
owed allegiance to the Bretwalda Æthelberht of Kent, and it was under
Æthelberht that Mellitus founded the first St. Paul's
Cathedral
, traditionally said to be on the site of an old
Roman Temple of Diana (although Christopher Wren found no evidence of
this). This would have only been a modest church at first
and may well have been destroyed after he was expelled from the
city by Saeberht's
pagan successors.
Later in the 7th century a Saxon village and trading centre named
Lundenwic ("London settlement") was established
approximately one mile to the west of
Londinium.
The new
town came under direct Mercian
control in c.730 as the East Saxon kingdom of which
it had once been part was gradually reduced in size and
status. Mercian lordship was replaced by that of
Wessex
after
825.
Alfred the Great
Viking attacks dominated most of the 9th
century, and such attacks became increasingly common from around
830 onwards. There were attacks on London in 842 and 851.
In 865
the Viking "Great Heathen Army"
launched a large scale invasion of East Anglia
, and by 871 they had reached London, and are
believed to have camped within the old Roman walls during the
winter of that year. Although it is unclear what happened
during this time, London may have come under Viking control for a
period. In 878 however, English forces led by King
Alfred the Great defeated the Vikings at
the
Battle of Ethandun and forced
the Viking leader
Guthrum to sue for
peace. English rule in London was restored and within ten years
settlement within the old Roman walls was re-established to improve
defences, but known as
Lundenburgh. The Roman walls were
repaired and the defensive ditch re-cut. As the focus of the city
was moved back to within the old Roman walls, the older settlement
of
Lundenwic gained the name of
ealdwic or "old
settlement".
The name survives today as Aldwych
.
Alfred appointed his son-in-law
Æthelred, who was the heir to the
destroyed Kingdom of Mercia, as
Governor of
London and established two defended
Boroughs to defend the bridge which was probably
rebuilt at this time.
The southern end of the Bridge was
established as the Borough of Southwark
or Suthringa Geworc (defensive work of the
men of Surrey) as it was
originally known. From this point, the City of London began
to develop its own unique local government.
After Æthelred's death, London came under the direct control of
English kings. By the early 10th century London had become an
important commercial centre.
Although the capital of the Kingdom of England was in Winchester
, London became increasingly important as a
political centre. King
Aethelstan held many Royal Councils in
London and issued laws from there. King
Æthelred the Unready favoured
London as his capital and issued the
Laws
of London there in 978.
It was during the reign of Æthelred that Viking raids began again,
led by King
Sweyn Forkbeard of
Denmark. London was unsuccessfully attacked in 994, but numerous
raids followed. By 1013 London was being besieged and Æthelred fled
abroad. The ageing King Sweyn died just five weeks after having
been proclaimed King by the
witangemot,
but his son
Canute continued the
attacks and eventually overran the city.
A Norse saga tells of a battle during the Viking occupation where
Æthelred returned to attack Viking-occupied London.
According to the
saga, the Danes lined London Bridge
and showered the attackers with spears.
Undaunted, the attackers pulled the roofs off nearby houses and
held them over their heads in the boats. Thus protected, they were
able to get close enough to the bridge to attach ropes to the piers
and pull the bridge down, thus ending the Viking occupation of
London. There is some speculation that the nursery rhyme "London
Bridge is falling down" stems from this incident.
The Vikings however returned and Aethelred's son
Edmund Ironside initially managed to hold
back the invaders. However, he was eventually forced to share power
with Canute. When Edmund died Canute became the sole King of
England. After two short lived Danish kings, the Anglo-Saxon line
was restored when Canute's stepson
Edward the Confessor took up the throne
in 1042.
Following Edward's death, no clear heir was apparent, and his
cousin, Duke
William of
Normandy, claimed the throne. The Royal Council, however, met
in the city and elected the dead King's brother-in-law,
Harold Godwinson as King. He was crowned in
Westminster Abbey. William, outraged by this, then sent an army to
invade England.
Norman and Medieval London
.PNG/300px-London_1300_Historical_Atlas_William_R_Shepherd_(died_1934).PNG)
London in 1300.
The
Norman invasion of Britain in
1066 is usually considered to be the beginning of the Medieval
period.
William,
Duke of Normandy, killed English
king Harold Godwinson in the
Battle of
Hastings
. Although he burnt down Southwark, south of the bridge, he avoided London, instead
waiting to the north-west at Berkhamsted
until the city officials in London recognised him
as King. They quickly did so, and William responded by
granting the city a formal charter.
Under
William (now known as William the Conqueror) several royal forts
were constructed along the riverfront of London (the Tower of
London
, Baynard's
Castle
and Montfichet's Castle
) to defend against seaborne attacks by Vikings and
prevent rebellions. William the
Conqueror also granted a
charter in 1067
upholding previous Saxon rights, privileges and laws. Its growing
self-government became firm with
election
rights granted by
King John in 1199
and 1215.
In 1097
William Rufus, the son of
William the Conqueror began the construction of 'Westminster Hall'.
The hall
was to become the basis of the Palace of Westminster
which, throughout the Medieval period, was the
prime royal residence.
In 1176
construction began of the most famous incarnation of London Bridge (completed in 1209) which was built on the site of
several earlier wooden bridges. This bridge would last for
600 years, and remained the only bridge across the
River Thames until 1739.
May 1216 saw the last time that London was truly occupied by a
continental armed force, during the
First Barons' War.
This was when the
young Louis VIII of France
marched through the streets to St Paul's Cathedral
. Throughout the city and in the cathedral he
was celebrated as the new ruler.
It was expected that this would free the English from the tyranny
of King John. This was only temporarily true. The barons supporting
the 29-year old French prince decided to throw their support back
to an English king when John died. Over the next several hundred
years, London would shake off the heavy French cultural and
linguistic influence which had been there since the times of the
Norman conquest.
The city, like Dover
, would
figure heavily into the development of Early Modern English.
During the
Peasants' Revolt of 1381
led by
Wat Tyler, London was invaded.
A group
of peasants stormed the Tower of London and executed the Lord
Chancellor, Archbishop Simon
Sudbury, and the Lord
Treasurer. The peasants looted the city and set fire to
numerous buildings.
Tyler was stabbed to death by the Lord Mayor
William Walworth in a confrontation
at Smithfield
, thus ending the revolt.
During the medieval period London grew up in two different parts.
The
nearby up-river town of Westminster
became the Royal capital
and centre of government, whereas the City of London became the
centre of commerce and trade. The area between them became
entirely
urban by 1600.
Trade and commerce grew steadily during the Middle Ages, and London
grew rapidly as a result. In 1100 London's population was little
more than 15,000. By 1300 it had grown to roughly 80,000. Trade in
London was organised into various
guilds,
which effectively controlled the city, and elected the
Lord Mayor of the City of
London.
Medieval London was made up of narrow and twisting streets, and
most of the buildings were made from combustible materials such as
wood and straw, which made fire a constant threat. Sanitation in
London was poor. London lost at least half of its population during
the Black Death in the mid-14th century. Between 1348 and the
Great Plague of 1665 there
were sixteen outbreaks of
plague in
the city.
Tudor London (1485-1603)
| Wyngaerde's "Panorama of London in 1543" |
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The
Tudor period from 1485 until 1603
was a dramatic period of English history. Three of the monarchs of
the
Tudor dynasty (
Henry VII,
Henry VIII and
Elizabeth I) played important roles
in transforming England from a comparatively weak European
backwater into a powerful state that in the coming centuries would
dominate much of the world. The period saw the end of the
Wars of the Roses the
English Reformation and the
Elizabethan era.
The
Reformation produced little
bloodshed in London, with most of the higher classes co-operating
to bring about a gradual shift to
Protestantism. Before the Reformation, more
than half of the area of London was occupied by
monasteries,
nunneries
and other religious houses, and about a third of the inhabitants
were monks, nuns and friars. Thus
Henry VIII's "
Dissolution of the
Monasteries" had a profound effect on the city as nearly all of
this property changed hands. The process started in the mid 1530s,
and by 1538 most of the larger houses had been abolished. Holy
Trinity Aldgate went to Lord Audley, and the Marquess of Winchester
built himself a house in part of its precincts.
The Charterhouse went to Lord North, Blackfriars to
Lord Cobham, the leper hospital of St Giles to Lord Dudley, while
the king took for himself the leper hospital of St James, which was
rebuilt as St James's
Palace
.
The period saw London was rapidly rising in importance amongst
Europe's commercial centres, its many small industries were
booming, especially weaving. Trade expanded beyond Western Europe
to Russia, the Levant, and the Americas. This was the period of
mercantilism and monopoly trading
companies such as the
Russia Company
(1555) and the
British East
India Company (1600) were established in London by Royal
Charter. The latter, which ultimately came to rule much of India,
was one of the key institutions in London, and in Britain as a
whole, for two and a half centuries.
In 1572 the Spanish
destroyed the great commercial city of Antwerp
, giving London first place among the North Sea
ports. Immigrants arrived in London not just from all over
England and Wales, but from abroad as well, for example Huguenots
from France; the population rose from an estimated 50,000 in 1530
to about 225,000 in 1605. The growth of the population and wealth
of London was fuelled by a vast expansion in the use of coastal
shipping to import
coal
from Newcastle.
The late 16th century, when
William
Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived and worked in London,
was one of the most lustrous periods in the city's cultural
history. There was considerable hostility to the development of the
theatre however. Public
entertainments produced crowds, and crowds were feared by the
authorities because they might become mobs, and by many ordinary
citizens who dreaded that large gatherings might contribute to the
spread of plague. Theatre itself was discountenanced by the
increasingly influential
Puritan strand in
the nation. However, Queen Elizabeth loved plays, which were
performed for her privately at Court, and approved of public
performances.
During
the mostly calm later years of Elizabeth's reign, some of her
courtiers and some of the wealthier citizens of London built
themselves country residences in Middlesex, Essex and Surrey. This
was an early stirring of the villa movement, the taste for
residences which were neither of the city nor on an agricultural
estate, but when the last of the Tudors died in 1603, London was
still very compact.
centre
Stuart London (1603–1714)
London's expansion beyond the boundaries of the City was decisively
established in the 17th century. In the opening years of that
century the immediate environs of the City, with the principal
exception of the aristocratic residences in the direction of
Westminster, were still considered not conducive to health.
Immediately to the north was
Moorfields,
which had recently been drained and laid out in walks, but it was
frequented by beggars and travellers, who crossed it in order to
get into London, tried not to linger.
Adjoining Moorfields
were Finsbury
Fields, a favourite practising ground for the
archers. Mile
End
, then a common on the Great Eastern Road, was
famous as a rendezvous for the troops.
The preparations for the coronation of
King James I were interrupted by a severe
plague epidemic, which may have killed over thirty thousand people.
The
Lord Mayor's Show, which had
been discontinued for some years, was revived by order of the king
in 1609.
The dissolved monastery of the Charterhouse
, which had been bought and sold by the courtiers
several times, was purchased by Thomas Button for £13,000.
The new hospital, chapel, and schoolhouse were begun in 1611.
Charterhouse
School
was to be one of the principal public schools in London until it
moved to Surrey in Victorian times, and the site is still used as a
medical school
.
The
general meeting-place of Londoners in the day-time was the nave of
Old St.
Paul's Cathedral. Merchants conducted business in the aisles,
and used the font as a counter upon which to make their payments;
lawyers received clients at their particular pillars; and the
unemployed looked for work.
St Paul's Churchyard was the centre of the
book trade and Fleet
Street
was a centre of public entertainment. Under
James I the theatre, which established itself so firmly in the
latter years of Elizabeth, grew further in popularity. The
performances at the public theatres were complemented by elaborate
masques at the royal court and at the inns
of court.
Charles I acceded to the throne
in 1625.
During his reign, aristocrats began to
inhabit the West
End
in large numbers. In addition to those who
had specific business at court, increasing numbers of country
landowners and their families lived in London for part of the year
simply for the social life. This was the beginning of the "London
season".
Lincoln's Inn Fields
was built about 1629. The piazza of
Covent
Garden
, designed by England's first classically trained
architect Inigo Jones followed in about
1632. The neighbouring streets were built shortly
afterwards, and the names of Henrietta, Charles, James, King and
York Streets were given after members of the royal family.
In January 1642 five members of parliament whom the King wished to
arrest were granted refuge in the City.
In August of the same
year the King raised his banner at Nottingham
, and during the English Civil War London took the side of
the parliament. Initially the king had the upper hand in
military terms and in November he won the Battle of
Brentford
a few miles to the west of London. The City
organised a new makeshift army and Charles hesitated and retreated.
Subsequently an extensive system of fortifications was built to
protect London from a renewed attack by the Royalists. This
comprised a strong earthen rampart, enhanced with bastions and
redoubts. It was well beyond the City walls and encompassed the
whole urban area, including Westminster and Southwark. London was
not seriously threatened by the royalists again, and the financial
resources of the City made an important contribution to the
parliamentarians victory in the war.
The unsanitary and overcrowded City of London has suffered from the
numerous outbreaks of the plague many times over the centuries, but
in Britain it is the last major outbreak which is remembered as the
"
Great Plague" It occurred in
1665 and 1666 and killed around 60,000 people, which was one fifth
of the population.
Samuel Pepys
chronicled the epidemic in his diary. On 4 September 1665 he wrote
"I have stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week,
and of them about 6000 of the plague, and little noise heard day or
night but tolling of bells."
The Great Plague was immediately followed by another catastrophe,
albeit one which helped to put an end to the plague.
On the Sunday, 2
September 1666 the Great Fire of London broke out at one o'clock in the morning at a house
in Pudding Lane in the southern part of the City. Fanned by
an eastern wind the fire spread, and efforts to arrest it by
pulling down houses to make firebreaks were disorganised to begin
with. On Tuesday night the wind fell somewhat, and on Wednesday the
fire slackened. On Thursday it was extinguished, but on the evening
of that day the flames again burst forth at the Temple. Some houses
were at once blown up by gunpowder, and thus the fire was finally
mastered.
The Monument
was built to commemorate the fire: for over a
century and a half it bore an inscription attributing the
conflagration to a "popish frenzy".
John Evelyn's plan for the rebuilding
of London after the Great Fire.
The fire
destroyed about 60% of the City, including Old St
Paul's Cathedral
, 87 parish churches, 44 livery company halls and the Royal Exchange. However the number of
lives lost was surprisingly small; it is believed to have been 16
at most. Within a few days of the fire, three plans were presented
to the king for the rebuilding of the city, by Christopher Wren,
John Evelyn and
Robert Hooke.
Wren proposed to build main thoroughfares
north and south, and east and west, to insulate all the churches in
conspicuous positions, to form the most public places into large
piazzas, to unite the halls of the 12 chief livery companies into
one regular square annexed to the Guildhall
, and to make a fine quay on the bank of the river
from Blackfriars
to the Tower of London. Wren wished to build the new streets
straight and in three standard widths of thirty, sixty and ninety
feet. Evelyn's plan differed from Wren's chiefly in proposing a
street from the church of
St
Dunstan's in the East to the St Paul's, and in having no quay
or terrace along the river. These plans were not implemented, and
the rebuilt city generally followed the streetplan of the old one,
and most of it has survived into the 21st century.
Richard Blome's map of London
(1673).
The development of the West End had recently begun to
accelerate.
Nonetheless, the new City was different from the old one.
Many
aristocratic residents never returned, preferring to take new
houses in the West End, where fashionable new districts such as
St.
James's
were built close to the main royal residence, which
was Whitehall
Palace
until it was destroyed by fire in the 1690s, and
thereafter St. James's
Palace
. The rural lane of Piccadilly
sprouted courtiers mansions such as Burlington
House
. Thus the separation between the middle class
mercantile City of London, and the aristocratic world of the court
in Westminster became complete. In the City itself there
was a move from wooden buildings to stone and brick construction to
reduce the risk of fire. Parliament's
Rebuilding of London Act 1666
stated
"building with brick [is] not only more comely and
durable, but also more safe against future perils of fire".
From then on only doorcases, window-frames and shop fronts were
allowed to be made of wood.
Christopher Wren's plan for a new model
London came to nothing, but he was appointed to rebuild the ruined
parish churches and to replace St Paul's Cathedral
. His domed
baroque
cathedral was the primary symbol of London for at least a century
and a half. As city surveyor,
Robert
Hooke oversaw the reconstruction of the City's houses.
The
East
End
, that is the area immediately to the east of the
city walls, also became heavily populated in the decades after the
Great Fire. London's docks began to extend downstream,
attracting many working people who worked on the docks themselves
and in the processing and distributive trades.
These people lived in
Whitechapel
, Wapping
, Stepney
and Limehouse
, generally in slum conditions.
In the winter of 1683–4 a
frost
fair was held on the Thames. The frost, which began about seven
weeks before Christmas and continued for six weeks after, was the
greatest on record. The
Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes in 1685 led to a large migration on
Huguenots to London.
They established a
silk industry at Spitalfields
.
At this
time the City of London was becoming the world's leading financial
centre, superseding Amsterdam
in primacy. The Bank of England
was founded in 1694, and the British East India
Company was expanding its influence. Lloyd's of
London
also began to operate in the late 17th
century. In 1700 London handled 80% of England's imports,
69% of its exports and 86% of its re-exports. Many of the goods
were luxuries from the Americas and Asia such as silk, sugar, tea
and tobacco. The last figure emphasises London's role as an
entrepot: while it had many craftsmen in
the 17th century, and would later acquire some large factories, its
economic prominence was never based primarily on industry. Instead
it was a great trading and redistribution centre. Goods were
brought to London by England's increasingly dominant merchant navy,
not only to satisfy domestic demand, but also for re-export
throughout Europe and beyond.
William III cared little for London,
the smoke of which gave him asthma, and after the first fire at
Whitehall Palace (1691) he purchased Nottingham House and
transformed it into Kensington Palace
. Kensington
was then an insignificant village, but the arrival
of the court soon caused it to grow in importance. The
palace was rarely favoured by future monarchs, but its construction
was another step in the expansion of the bounds of London.
During
the same reign Greenwich
Hospital, then well outside the boundary of London, but now
comfortably inside it, was begun; it was the naval complement to
the Chelsea
Hospital
for former soldiers, which has been founded in
1681. During the reign of
Queen Anne an act was passed
authorising the building of 50 new churches to serve the greatly
increased population living outside the boundaries of the City of
London.
centre
18th century London
A view of London from the east in
1751
The 18th century was a period of rapid growth for London,
reflecting an increasing national population, the early stirrings
of the
Industrial Revolution,
and London's role at the centre of the evolving
British Empire.
In 1707 an
Act of Union was
passed merging the Scottish and the English Parliaments, thus
establishing The Kingdom of Great Britain.
A year later, in 1708
Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral was completed on his birthday. However, the
first service had been held on 2 December 1697; more than 10 years
earlier.
This Cathedral replaced the original St.
Paul's which had been completely destroyed in the Great Fire of
London. This building is considered one of the
finest in Britain and a fine example of
Baroque architecture.
Many tradesmen from different countries came to London to trade
goods and merchandise. Also, more immigrants moved to London making
the population greater. More people also moved to London for work
and for business making London an altogether bigger and busier
city.
Britain's
victory in the Seven Years War increased the country's
international standing and opened large new markets to British
trade, further boosting London's prosperity.
During the Georgian period London spread beyond its traditional
limits at an accelerating pace.
New districts such as Mayfair
were built for the rich in the West End, new
bridges over the Thames encouraged an acceleration of development
in South
London
and in the East End, the Port of London expanded
downstream from the City. During this period was also the
uprising of the American colonies.
In 1780, the Tower of London held its only American prisoner, former President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens. In 1779 he was the
Congress's representative of Holland, and got the country's support
for the Revolution. On his return voyage back to America, the Royal
Navy captured him and charged him with treason after finding
evidence of a reason of war between Great Britain and the
Netherlands. He was released from the Tower on 21 December 1781 in
exchange for General
Lord
Cornwallis.
In 1762
George III acquired
Buckingham
Palace
(then known as "house") from the Duke of
Buckingham. It was enlarged over the next 75 years by
architects such as John Nash. It would not be until the 19th
century, however, that the palace would become the principal London
royal residence.
Buckingham Palace as it appeared in
the 17th century
A phenomenon of 18th century London was the
coffee house, which became a popular place to
debate ideas. Growing
literacy and the
development of the
printing press
meant that news became widely available.
Fleet Street became the centre of the embryonic British press
during the century.
18th century London was dogged by
crime, the
Bow Street Runners were
established in 1750 as a professional police force. Penalties for
crime were harsh, with the
death
penalty being applied for fairly minor crimes. Public
hangings were common in London, and were popular
public events.
In 1780 London was rocked by the
Gordon
Riots, an uprising by
Protestants
against
Roman Catholic emancipation
led by Lord
George
Gordon. Severe damage was caused to Catholic churches and
homes, and 285 rioters were killed.
In the
year 1787, freed slaves from London, America, and many of Britain's
colonies founded Freetown
in modern-day Sierra Leone.
Up until
1750, London
Bridge was the only crossing over the Thames, but in that year Westminster
Bridge
was opened and, for the first time in history,
London Bridge, in a sense, had a rival.
The 18th century saw the breakaway of the American colonies and
many other unfortunate events in London, but also great change and
Enlightenment. This all led into the beginning of modern times, the
19th century.
centre
19th century London
During the 19th century, London was transformed into the world's
largest city and capital of the British Empire. Its population
expanded from 1 million in 1800 to 6.7 million a century later.
During this period, London became a global political, financial,
and trading capital. In this position, it was largely unrivaled
until the latter part of the century, when Paris and New York began
to threaten its dominance.
While the city grew wealthy as Britain's holdings expanded, 19th
century London was also a city of poverty, where millions lived in
overcrowded and unsanitary
slums. Life for the
poor was immortalised by
Charles
Dickens in such novels as
Oliver
Twist.
In 1829 the prime minister
Robert Peel
established the
Metropolitan
Police as a police force covering the entire urban area. The
force gained the nickname of "bobbies" or "peelers" named after
Robert Peel.
19th century London was transformed by the coming of the
railways. A new network of metropolitan railways
allowed for the development of
suburbs in
neighboring counties from which middle-class and wealthy people
could commute to the centre. While this spurred the massive outward
growth of the city, the growth of greater London also exacerbated
the class divide, as the wealthier classes emigrated to the
suburbs, leaving the poor to inhabit the inner city areas.
The first
railway to be built in London was a line from London Bridge to Greenwich
, which opened in 1836. This was soon
followed by the opening of great rail termini which linked London
to every corner of Britain.
These included Euston station (1837), Paddington
station
(1838), Fenchurch Street station
(1841), Waterloo station
(1848), King's Cross
station
(1850), and St Pancras station
(1863). From 1863, the first lines of the
London Underground were
constructed.
The
urbanised area continued to grow rapidly, spreading into Islington
, Paddington
, Belgravia
, Holborn
, Finsbury, Shoreditch
, Southwark and Lambeth
. Towards the middle of the century, London's
antiquated
local government system,
consisting of ancient
parishes and
vestries, struggled to cope with the rapid growth in
population. In 1855 the
Metropolitan Board of Works
(MBW) was created to provide London with adequate infrastructure to
cope with its growth.
One of its first tasks was addressing London's sanitation problems.
At the time, raw
sewage was pumped straight
into the
River Thames. This culminated
in
The Great Stink of 1858. The
polluted drinking water (sourced from the Thames) also brought
disease and epidemics to London's populace.
Parliament finally gave consent for the MBW to construct a massive
system of
sewer. The engineer put in
charge of building the new system was
Joseph Bazalgette. In what was one of the
largest
civil engineering projects
of the 19th century, he oversaw construction of over 2100 km
of tunnels and pipes under London to take away sewage and provide
clean drinking water. When the
London sewerage system was completed,
the death toll in London dropped dramatically, and epidemics of
cholera and other diseases were curtailed.
Bazalgette's system is still in use today.
One of the most famous events of 19th-century London was the
Great Exhibition of 1851.
Held at
The Crystal
Palace
, the fair attracted visitors from across the world
and displayed Britain at the height of its Imperial
dominance.
The Houses of Parliament from
Westminster Bridge in the early 1890s
As the capital of a massive empire, London became a magnet for
immigrants from the colonies and poorer parts of Europe. A large
Irish population settled in the city during the Victorian period,
with many of the newcomers refugees from the
Great Famine . At one point, Irish
immigrants made up about 20% of London's population. London also
became home to a sizable
Jewish community, and
small communities of Chinese and South Asians settled in the
city.
In 1888, the new
County of London
was established, administered by the
London County Council. This was the
first elected London-wide administrative body, replacing the
earlier Metropolitan Board of Works, which had been made up of
appointees. The County of London covered broadly what was then the
full extent of the London conurbation, although the conurbation
later outgrew the boundaries of the county. In 1900, the county was
sub-divided into 28
metropolitan
borough, which formed a more local tier of administration than
the county council.
Many famous buildings and landmarks of London were constructed
during the 19th century including:
20th century London
London from 1900 to World War II
London entered the 20th century at the height of its influence as
the capital of the largest empire in history, but the new century
was to bring many challenges.
London's population continued to grow rapidly in the early decades
of the century, and
public
transport was greatly expanded. A large
tram network was constructed by the London County
Council, through the
LCC
Tramways. And the first
motorbus service
began in the 1900s. Improvements to London's overground and
underground rail network, including large scale electrification
were progressively carried out.
During World War I, London experienced its first bombing raids
carried out by German
zeppelin airships; these killed around 700 people and caused
great terror, but were merely a foretaste of what was to come. The
city of London would experience many more terrors as a result of
both World Wars.
The largest explosion in London occurred
during World War I: the Silvertown explosion
, when a munitions factory containing 50 tons of
TNT exploded, killing 73 and
injuring 400.
The
period between the two World Wars saw
London's geographical extent growing more quickly than ever before
or since. A preference for lower density
suburban housing, typically
semi-detached, by Londoners seeking a more
"rural" lifestyle, superseded Londoners' old predilection for
terraced houses. This was facilitated
not only by a continuing expansion of the rail network, including
trams and the Underground, but also by slowly
widening car ownership.
London's suburbs expanded outside the
boundaries of the County of London, into the neighbouring counties
of Essex, Hertfordshire
, Kent
, Middlesex and Surrey.
Like the rest of the country, London suffered severe unemployment
during the
Great Depression of the
1930s.
In
the East
End
during the 1930s, politically extreme parties of
both right and left flourished. The
Communist Party of Great
Britain won a seat in the House of Commons, and the far-right
British Union of Fascists
received extensive support.
Clashes between right and left culminated in
the Battle of
Cable Street
in 1936. The population of London
reached an all time peak of 8.6 million in 1939.
Large
numbers of Jewish immigrants fleeing from
Nazi Germany, settled in London during
the 1930s, who settled mostly in the West End.
London in World War II
Firefighters putting out flames at a
bomb site during the blitz
During World War II, London, as many other British cities, suffered
severe damage, being bombed extensively by the
Luftwaffe as a part of
The Blitz. Prior to the bombing, hundreds of
thousands of children in London were evacuated to the countryside
to avoid the bombing. Civilians took shelter from the air raids in
underground stations.
The heaviest bombing took place between 7 September 1940 and 10 May
1941. During this period, London was subjected to 71 separate raids
receiving over 18,000 tonnes of high explosive.
A photograph showing
St Paul's
Cathedral shrouded in smoke become a famous image of the
times. Less intensive bombing followed over the following
few years as
Hitler concentrated on the
Eastern front. Towards the end of the war, during 1944/45 London
came under heavy attack again by pilotless
V-1 and
V-2
rockets, which were fired from Nazi occupied Europe.
London
suffered severe damage and heavy casualties, the worst hit part
being the Docklands
area. By the war's end, just under
30,000 Londoners had been killed by the bombing, and over 50,000
seriously injured, tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed,
and hundreds of thousands of people were made homeless.
London 1945–2000
Immediately after the war, the 1948 Summer Olympics were held at the
original Wembley
Stadium
, at a time when the city had barely recovered
from the war. London's rebuilding was slow to begin.
However, in 1951 the
Festival of
Britain was held, which marked an increasing mood of optimism
and forward looking.
In the immediate postwar years housing was a major issue in London,
due to the large amount of housing which had been destroyed in the
war. The authorities decided upon high-rise
blocks of flats as the answer to housing
shortages. During the 1950s and 1960s the skyline of London altered
dramatically as tower blocks were erected, although these later
proved unpopular. In a bid to reduce the number of people living in
overcrowded housing, a policy was introduced of encouraging people
to move into newly built
new
town surrounding London.
Through the 19th and in the early half of the 20th century,
Londoners used
coal for heating their homes,
which produced large amounts of smoke. In combination with climatic
conditions this often caused a characteristic
smog, and London became known for its typical "London
Fog", also known as "Pea Soupers". London was sometimes referred to
as "The Smoke" because of this. In 1952 this culminated in the
disastrous
Great Smog of 1952
which lasted for five days and killed over 4,000 people. In
response to this, the
Clean Air Act
1956 was passed, mandating the creating of "smokeless zones"
where the use of "smokeless" fuels was required (this was at a time
when most households still used open fires); the Act was
effective.
Starting
in the mid-1960s, and partly as a result of the success of such UK
musicians as the Beatles and the
Rolling Stones, London became a
centre for the worldwide youth
culture, exemplified by the Swinging
London subculture which made Carnaby Street
a household name of youth fashion around the
world. London's role as a trendsetter for youth fashion was
revived strongly in the 1980s during the
New Wave and
Punk
eras. In the mid-1990s this was revived to some extent with the
emergence of the
Britpop era.
From the
1950s onwards London became home to a large number of immigrants,
largely from Commonwealth
countries such as Jamaica
, India, Bangladesh
Pakistan
, which dramatically changed the face of London,
turning it into one of the most diverse cities in Europe.
However, the integration of the new immigrants was not always easy.
Racial tensions emerged in events such as the
Brixton Riots in the early 1980s.
From the
beginning of "The Troubles" in Northern
Ireland
in the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, London was
subjected to repeated terrorist attacks by
the Provisional IRA.
The outward expansion of London was slowed by the war, and the
Green Belt established soon
afterwards.
Due to this outward expansion, in 1965 the
old County of London (which by now
only covered part of the London conurbation) and the London County Council were abolished,
and the much larger area of Greater London
was established with a new Greater London Council (GLC) to
administer it, along with 32 new London
boroughs.
Greater London's population declined steadily in the decades after
World War II, from an estimated peak of 8.6 million in 1939 to
around 6.8 million in the 1980s. However it then began to increase
again in the late 1980s, encouraged by strong economic performance
and an increasingly positive image.
London's
traditional status as a major port declined dramatically in the
post-war decades as the old Docklands
could not accommodate large modern container
ships. The principal ports for London moved to the
downstream to the ports of Felixstowe
and Tilbury
. The docklands area had become largely
derelict by the 1980s, but was redeveloped into flats and offices
from the mid-1980s onwards.
The Thames Barrier
was completed in the 1980s to protect London
against tidal surges from the North Sea
.
In the early 1980s political disputes between the GLC run by
Ken Livingstone and the
Conservative government of
Margaret Thatcher led to the GLC's
abolition in 1986, with most of its powers relegated to the
London boroughs. This left London as
the only large metropolis in the world without a central
administration.
In 2000, London-wide government was restored, with the creation of
the
Greater London
Authority (GLA) by
Tony Blair's
government, covering the same area of Greater London. The new
authority had similar powers to the old GLC, but was made up of a
directly elected
Mayor and a
London Assembly. The first election
took place on 4 May, with
Ken
Livingstone comfortably regaining his previous post. London was
also recognised as one of the nine
regions of England.
21st century London
At the
turn of the 21st century, London hosted the much derided Millennium
Dome
at Greenwich, to mark the new century. Other Millennium
projects were more successful.
One was the largest observation wheel in the
world, the "Millennium Wheel", or the London Eye
, which was erected as a temporary structure, but
soon became a fixture, and draws four million visitors a
year. The National Lottery also
released a flood of funds for major enhancements to existing
attractions, for example the roofing of the Great Court at the
British
Museum
.
The
London Plan, published by the
Mayor of London in 2004, estimated
that the population would reach 8.1 million by 2016, and continue
to rise thereafter. This was reflected in a move towards denser,
more urban styles of building, including a greatly increased number
of
tall buildings, and
proposals for major enhancements to the public transport network.
However, funding for projects such as
Crossrail remained a struggle.
On 6 July
2005 London won the bid to host the 2012
Olympics
. However, celebrations were cut short the
following day when, on 7 July 2005, London was rocked by a
series of terrorist attacks.
More than
50 were killed and 750 injured in three bombings on London Underground and another aboard a
double decker bus near Russell
Square
in King's Cross.
Population
- 1AD — a few farmsteaders
- 50 — 50–100
- 140 — 45–60,000
- 300 — 10–20,000
- 1000 — 5–10,000
- 1100 — 10–20,000
- 1300 — 50–100,000
- 1350 — 25–50,000
- 1500 — 50–75,000
- 1600 — 200,000
- 1650 — 350,000
- 1700 — 550,000
- 1750 — 700,000
- 1801 — 959,300
- 1831 — 1,655,000
- 1851 — 2,363,000
- 1891 — 5,572,012
- 1901 — 6,506,954
- 1911 — 7,160,525
- 1921 — 7,386,848
- 1931 — 8,110,480
- 1939 — 8,615,245
- 1951 — 8,196,978
- 1961 — 7,992,616
- 1971 — 7,452,520
- 1981 — 6,805,000
- 1991 — 6,829,300
- 2001 — 7,322,400
- 2006 — 7,657,300
Historical places of note in London
London in flames after a German bombardment (1941)
See also
References
- Billings, Malcolm (1994), London: a companion to its
history and archaeology, ISBN 1 85626 153 0
- Inwood, Stephen. A History of London (1998) ISBN
0333671538
- A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 written in the
Fifteenth Century
- Channel4.com Bronze-Age Thames
- Channel4 Time Team
- "Lundenwic", extract from London: A Concise
History, Geoffrey Trease
- Nikolaus Pevsner, London I: The Cities
of London and Westminster rev. edition,1962, Introduction p
48.
- Air Raid Precautions homefront website
External links
and the Houses of Parliament
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