London Before the Conquest

ndon, small and

s bordered by i

thly Pa

he river, which still retains its British or pre-British name of Thames,[28] spread, as may be seen from a geological map, over wide tracts of morass,

"Le Breche." Edward I. at once issued a mandate that the banks from Lambeth to Greenwich should be viewed and repaired. Stow, under Westminster, says that in 1236 the river "overflowing the banks made the Woolwich marshes all on a sea" and flowed into Westminster Hall; and again in

rliest Prin

om the Ch

e, Pyns

names of several places bordering on the river, as Millwall and Blackwall, and St. Peter's on the Wall, at Bradwell, Essex, where the north bank ends. At L

of the Mole.[31] London held the jurisdiction over the river from Yanlet to Staines fr

hand beneath the Bridge." Harrison (1586) writes: "What should I speak of the fat and sweet salmons daily taken in this stream, and that in such plenty after the time of smelt be past, as no river in Europe is able to exceed it." Even in the last century st

ers thy Ryver

stremys, pleas

usty wallys

nne doth swymme

ing the city" is the most unfortunate in th

and street passing over it from Ludgate. Rishanger calls the latter Fleet-Bridge Street. Henry II. gave to the Templars a site for a mill super Fletam Juxta Castelum Bainard, and all the course of the water of Fleet and a messuage juxta pontem de Flete. A messuage on the Fleet was also given to them by G

the Hole-burn; its valley ran north and south by Clerkenwell, and the river and gardens of the Hospitallers of Jerusalem are said to have been upon it.[36] It gave its name to Holborn Bridge and to some extra-mural cottages near by, on the road which passed over it. The modern name should mean Hole-burn-Bridge Street, just as Fleet Street meant Fleet-Br

water which entereth the city.'"[38] He goes on to say that the stream (Hole-burn) was still called Wells in the time of Edward I., citing the Parliament and Patent Rolls of 1307; but on referring to the calendars of these documents I find that this name of Wells appears in neither. The first speaks of "the water-course of Fleet running under the bridge of Holburn," and the second of them calls it "the Fleet River from Holburn Bridge to the Thames." Moreover, the Hole-burn was far away from the nor

ium was a translation of the O.E. Wylrithe, meaning a small stream (rithe) issuing from a spring (wyl). This "Well-brook"[40] must surely have been intended, not for the western stream at all, but for the upper part of the "broke"

lebroc in a charter of Wulfnoth (1114-33)-"probably the Wulfnoth whose name is recorded in St. Mary Woolnoth." This is a Ramsey charter (in Rolls series), and the terms are most prec

ome antiquity seems to be conclusively proved by Geoffrey of Monmouth's legend that it was called after Gallus by the Britons, "and i

(formerly on a different site to the west, Stow), and St. Mildred's, all "super Walbrook." St. Margaret Lothbury also stood above it on vaults. Its relation to the present street is made clear in a document of 1291 regarding a tenement "between the course of the Walbrook towards the west, and Walbrook Street towards the east."[43] The arch under

ed by many bridges; in 1291 there was an inquiry held as to the repair of one of them near the "tenement of Bokerelesbery."[46] This stream was prob

on of a name (see p. 132). Here I need only say that its supposed bed occupies high ground, and no evidence of it has been found in excavations. Mr. Price points out that Stow himself allowed that the name was the

are-burne, on the site of Sherborne Lane, but I find this called Sh

in "nigh the Temese by the ford called Welinga-ford." Wallingford, where the Icknield Way crossed the river, was certainly the chief ford below Oxford. Dr. Guest showed that a place near Coway Stakes is called Halliford, and argued that although a Roman army, that of Claudius, may have crossed at Wallingford, C?sar's passage of the river was at the stakes, and the two passages of the river came to be confused in the tradition. The general argument is too subtle to go into here, but it i

mes in 1016, as recorded in the Chronicle, but argues that there was only a "shallow" in the Thames at this point, and that the ford was over the Brent. William of Malmesbury, however, seems to have anticipated all this by

le Age a ferry here, and the name still survives in Horseferry Road. The Roman bridge at Staines (Pontes) may be the one, the existence of which is implied in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1013, and in 1009