London Before the Conquest

h the bridge; his merchandise he there shows, his cl

ldgate to the N.E. angle; then on the north by Bishopsgate and Cripplegate to the N.W. angle, and, after making an inset by Aldersgate, it formed another N.W. angle; thence it passed straight south by Ludgate to the river. It was only at the end of the thirteenth century that the south-west angle of the city was extended to take in Blackfriars. Ample evidence of Roman workmanship has been found for the whole extent of the north and east sides, but until recently some have doubted whether any remains of Roman date had been found on the west; a portion, however, was discovered between Warwick Square and Old Bailey some twenty years ago, and in 1900 other portions were found at Newgate Prison. Still earlier in 1843, as Roach Smith point

oman Wall

il of Roman W

ly 20 to 25 feet high. FitzStephen (c. 1180) describes it as "the high and great wall of the city having seven double gates and towered to the north at intervals; it was walled and towered in like manner on the south, but the Thames has thrown down those walls." There is evidence for a square Roman wall-tower having exis

Common Seal. Rever

r Trinitatis in a way that infers its existence before 1125. A few years ago an excavation at Aldersgate exposed a complete section of the ditch outside the wall. It was 14 feet deep, 35 feet wide at bottom, and 75 feet wide at the top of the sloping sides. The top of the inner slope was 10 feet from th

reet running north and south outside the west end of St. Giles's churchyard, by the angle bastion of the wall which still stands there, were built

ion of Roman

ming its centre. The great wall, according to him, was "probably a work of the later days of the Romano-British period." With this view J. R. Green agrees, and argues that the wall was built in haste under Theodosius, when the attacks of Picts and Saxons

th a Briton who had been slain by it. This legend is at least enough to show that the gate was ancient at the beginning of the twelfth century. Bishopsgate is mentioned in Domes

f the dispute between the Confessor and Godwine in 1052, says that some of the Earl's party gewendon ut ?t ?st geate and got them to Eldulfsness (Walton-on-the-Naze). Mr. W. H. Stevenson, in an interesting note on personal names associated with town gates, cites an eleventh-century life of St. Edmund, in which it is called Ealsegate, and suggests that it may be named

y, where it is noted that two cottagers at Holeburn were dependent on the sheriff of Middlesex in the time of the Confessor, and that William the Chamberlain rendered six shillings for his vineyard [there] to the King's sheriff. That is, the Chamberlain held property outside Newgate in 1086, and the name Chamberlain's Gate probably goes back as far. An

om Matthew

is spoken of not long after. A reference cited by Fabyan, however, probably takes us back to the days of the Conquest (see below, p. 112). The Strand, leading from Westminster past St. Clement Danes to Ludgate, must be an ancient street: it may indeed represent the earliest of all paths to London from the passage of the river by the great Watling Street. St. Clement's Church, as we shall see, is pre-Conquest; Sir H. Ellis, in his introduction to Domesday, says a charter by the Conqueror refers to St. Clement Danes "in the Strand," but the actual words are not cited (vol. ii. p. 143). A street outside the western walls-"Aldwych"-is frequ

Common Seal o

(Stow).[83] These six, with the South or Bridge Gate, make up the seven historic gates of London, and the conclusion cannot be resisted that they all date back at least to the time when Alfred repaired the walls of the city, and most, if not all of them, to Roman days. Roach Smith held that the principal gates were then Ludgate, Aldgate, and Bishopsgate. Referring to the finding of inscribed stones near to Ludgate, he says that they doubtless belonged to a cemetery which stood outside the gate. Hatton says that some Roman coins were found at Aldgate on its destruction in 1606. Price says that no evidence of the ancient wall having crossed Bishopsgate Street was found when a deep

ed like when the Norman Conqueror came and viewed the city walls

6] "Aldgate-properly Algate-was opened about the beginning of Henry's [I.] reign"; "Aldgate has nothing to do with 'Old' or Eald, for the simple reason that the eastern road ran not from Aldgate but from Bishopsgate, and not to Stratford but to Old Ford"; "Whitechapel Road-the Vicenal Way ... answered to the street of tombs without the gate at Pompeii" (in the plan a road going east from Bishopsgate is n

ving access to the quays, as does the way along the Golden Horn at Constantinople. When in 1863 Thames Street was excavated, the Roman level appeared at 20 to 25 feet below the modern surface; the whole was found to have been piled and cross-timbered right across the street; this "doubtless formed the old water line and embankment fronting the south portion of Roman London." The piling turned up the course of the Walbrook towards Cannon Street.[87] Similar embankments were found when the approach to new London Bridge was made, and still further east; it is said as many as five lines were found when the present Custom House was built. Roach Smith describes the f

.-Fragm

South

lun, so that it might have a free course of water. Dugdale cites a grant (temp. Henry II.) of a rent-charge on Ripa Regin? called "Aldershithe" [?] to St. Giles. In 1247 the wharf was granted to the city at a farm of ￡50 a year.[91] From a charter of King Alfred himself, dated 899, we find that the Edred who gave his name to this wharf was none other than Ethered, Alfred's son-in-law and his lieutenant in London (died 912).[92] In a second version of the charter given in Birch's collection it is called Rethereshythe, but the Peterborough Chronicle again names it correctly and gives the further interesting fact that Harold held land near this quay: "Comes Harold dedit terram in London juxta monaster. S. Pauli juxta Portum qui vocatur Etheredishithe

gment found

y "the gift which Almundus of the port of St. Botolph gave ... with the house a

of King Edward." After warning other ships off the wharf, they were free to cut them adrift.[94] "Here then we have evidence that even before the Conquest the citizens of Rouen had a haven at the mouth of the Walbrook."[95] A chapter in the Laws of ?thelred names the traders who were free to come to the Port of London, and am

eutonicorum, the great medi?val Hanse by Baynard's Castle called at a late time the Steelyard. In the time of Henry II. the House of the Cologne Merchants in Lo

ection. This charter is witnessed amongst others by Deorman, Leofstan, and Alward grossus of London.[99] In a later confirmation of 1103-09 the ground is called Wermanacre, and this name must be preserved in St. Martin's "de Beremanescherche" (date 1257);[100] for Stow says St. Martin in the Vintry was sometimes called "St. Martin de Beremund Church." Kemble gives a copy of the original charter of the Confessor, granting to St. Peter of Ghent the above-named places, also within London t

uction to the Liber Custumarum, which contains a valuable medi?val survey of the wharves, puts Fish hythe near the bottom

se, for there were quay dues, and a charter of 857 speaks of the plac

ays FitzStephen, "To this city from every nation under heaven merchants delight to bring their trade by sea. The Arabian sends gold, ... Gaul her win

of craft must have filled these basins and lined the river bank-dromonds from the Mediterranean, "long ships and round ships" from the north, and slavers from Rouen and Dublin, with many a splendid war "dragon" like Olaf Tryggvison's-"Foreward on it was a dragon's head, but afterwards a crook fashioned in the end as the tail of a dragon; but either side of the neck and all the stem were overlaid with gold. That ship the King called the Worm, because when the sail was aloft then should that be as the

e." Only last year (1900) a clinker-built boat, thought to be Danish, was found on the Lea, 50 feet long and 9 feet beam. It must have

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d-cloth, and

uges, and hogsh