LONDON I

LONDON

London is not England.
It is now surpassed in size by other cities but it is still huge. About thirty five miles across. Up until the early sixties it was the largest city in the world. It is still in the top ten. This fact can be good or bad. One has to deal with it in small bites. In fact one has to deal with it street by street. Each street has some history and one has to peal back the layers to find the story.

The modern city is a layer cake of history. Constant building and rebuilding not to mention periodic fiery catastrophes have shaped it’s current somewhat haphazard form. Except in certain places it is not an elegant or beautiful city though it has it’s places and also has had it’s chances (such as after the Great Fire and after the Second World War) at attaining some overall plan but commerce always won out over aesthetics.

I was born there and left it over forty years ago. I know it well but in the interim it has changed dramatically. In the fifties it was slowly picking itself up after a ruinous war the vestiges of which I experienced as a child. It was a battered grey place with much rebuilding to do and with little money left in the coffers. By the sixties this had improved and the rebuilding process was well under way. When I was  last there ten years ago vast swathes had been completely changed. A whole new part of the city has developed to the east of the old City. Where once stood the docklands and warehouses of the old east London now sit gleaming glass icons of the new economy.

A little history first because London has much of it. In the beginning….

Above-
Roman London about two thousand years ago.
Nicely situated at the easiest place to ford the river and still be able to get to the open sea by boat. An inland port.
A south facing prospect and protective hills to the north.
The roads they built that go in all directions are still in use today.

There were tribes living along the banks of the Thames long before the Romans but we have little to show for it other than what is sometimes dredged from the silt of the river and now sits in Museums.
According to unverifiable lore Brutus a Trojan founded a town here called
Troia Nova, or New Troy. The name in time corrupted to
Trinovantum. The Romans named it Londinium
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Below-
This original Roman layout did not change much through the next 1500 years with the City staying mostly within the original Roman walls but by the 1700’s it was growing well beyond those bounds.

Below
The Victorian era saw massive growth making it the largest city in the world by 1900.
What were once separate villages gradually grew together into a single mass.
A vast brooding immensity.

Luckily many of the private hunting parks of the aristocracy survived giving many open air breathing spaces within this tangle of humanity.

Richmond is named after the town in Yorkshire which was the seat of the Tudor family who came out on top in the well known Wars of The Roses. Henry the Seventh celebrated by building a new Palace there. Little of it remains today except for a gatehouse and nearby Kew Gardens which was part of the grounds of this old palace.

The view from Richmond Hill (below) looking west along the Thames is well known and has not changed much at all over time. Still very pastoral and not a large modern building in sight. Of course views like this are desirable. Among others Mick Jagger and Pete Townsend are able to enjoy it from their houses atop this hill. this view is now protected from development spoiling it.

The view from Richmond Hill then and now

Below This is where we are staying at the bottom of the hill just off The Vineyard-
which believe it or not once grew vines.

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