This London walk takes us to the City of London looking for the lost rivers and streams of Roman London on the western edge of the old Roman City. A number of channels were excavated at 7-10 Old Bailey that indicated this area was a major tributary valley of the River Fleet. Our Roman London walk starts at the top of Ludgate Hill near St Paul’s Cathedral then turns into Old Bailey, from here we go across Limeburner Lane into Old Seacoal Lane and along Farringdon Street. We turn into Bear Alley and then return to follow the course of the tributary back to its source just to the north of Newgate Street. From Greyfriars Churchyard we then follow the ‘western stream’ down across Paternoster Square to its confluence with the Thames near Puddle Dock. Source: London Archaeologist Summer 2014
Map of the western stream in the City of LondonFarringdon Road / River Fleet
I was walking through Smithfield the other day and took shelter from the sun in the churchyard of St Bartholomew the Great. I noticed that the church was open so decided to pop inside for a look around this majestic historic building.
St Bartholomew the Great was founded in 1123 by a courtier of Henry I called Rahere. Depending on how you judge such things it’s the oldest church in London that has held continuous services. All Hallows by the Tower is built on the site of a 7th Century Saxon church and there was a church of similar age where St Paul’s Cathedral stands today.
Rahere was an intriguing character being listed as variously a jester, minstrel, and a cleric. He was listed as a canon of St Paul’s cathedral in 1115. He embarked on a pilgrimage to Rome following the White Ship disaster in 1120 when the heir to the throne of England sank on a ship along with 300 nobles, barons, and sailors. The only survivor was said to be a butcher from Rouen. There’s a great novel about this incident called, The White Ship.
Rahere developed a fever during his pilgrimage and in the grip of his illness vowed to build a church for a poor in London if he recovered. On his journey back to London he had a vision of the Apostle Bartholomew who commanded him to build a church upon the ’Smooth field’, Smithfield.
You can see a gold statue of St Bartholomew called Exquisite Pain, created by the artist Damien Hirst, that is currently on loan to the church.
King Henry I supported the building of the St Bartholomew the Great church, priory and hospital (which includes the chapel, St Bartholomew-the-Less) which started in 1123. The church was only partially complete at the time of Rahere’s death in 1145. He still resides in the church in a tomb that was rebuilt in 1405.
The Priory was dissolved in 1539, and the nave of the church was demolished. The rest of the church and priory were mostly preserved. The Elizabethan style timbered porch was the main entrance to the priory. The 17th century tower contains 5 medieval bells.
St Bartholomew the Great is famous for its appearances in a number of films – most notably Four Weddings and a Funeral and Shakespeare in Love.
In a recent video I repeated a statement I’d been told by a Freeman of the City of London, and somebody who’d worked in the Lord Mayor’s office. He’d declared that there are ‘no roads in the City of London’. In the comments of that video several people countered that in fact the lower section of Goswell Road was inside the City and therefore rendered that statement factually incorrect.
So I set off on a stroll down the length of Goswell Road, starting at the Angel Islington, to explore the story of the road itself and find the point at which it crossed the border into the Square Mile. It was a fascinating journey into the past of this storied thoroughfare. As to whether in fact it is the City’s only ‘Road’ is ever so slightly inconclusive as can be seen in the comments, with recent boundary changes bringing the Golden Lane Estate into the City of London, and the question of whether the City of London Police or the Metropolitan Police have jurisdiction over the road itself.
The City of London continues to be a source of endless curiosity.
The latest episode of my series walking the churches of the City of London, sees me go in search of the remains and sites of some of the lost churches of the City of London. Featuring: St Mildred’s, St Mary Cole, St Olave Jewry, The Great Synagogue, St Benet Sherehog, St Stephen Walbrook, and St Martin Orgar. The route goes from Poultry near Bank Station then in a loop round Old Jewry, St Olave’s Court, and Ironmonger Lane. Then Pancras Lane, St Stephen’s Row, St Swithin’s Lane, Cannon Street, Laurence Pountney Hill, Upper Thames Street, Allhallows Lane, Hanseatic Walk, Arthur Street and Martin Lane.
Allhallows LaneSt Martin Orgar, Martin Lane
Many of the sites of the lost churches only survive as a blue plaque on a wall. Some as tranquil gardens and churchyards popular as lunchtime haunts. Others live on as towers embedded in the streetscape. I’m endlessly fascinated by the City of London. Each step in the City feels like a step through time, and if we listen closely, we can hear the whispers of those who walked before us, the echoes of the choirsong, the vibrations of the organs.
The City of London once had 108 churches – today only 39 of them remain. In 2021, I embarked on a YouTube series to walk between these remaining churches and pick up traces of the numerous lost churches of the City of London, and the few that exist as partial ruins or churchyards. It’s been a magical experience.
Some of the churches date back to the Middle Ages, others contain much older secrets in their foundations and crypts. They link us back into the deep history of London. They link us from the earliest Christian communities in the City through the Anglo-Saxon period, the Norman Conquest to the Great Fire of London when a number of Churches were destroyed. However from the ashes arose the majestic architecture of Sir Christopher Wren who wrote his name across the City.
My most recent episode in the series picked up the trail at St Margaret Pattens (first documented in 1067) with its magnificent Wren spire. Close by we encounter St Mary at Hill ‘London’s best kept secret’ before walking a cobbled lane to the serene garden in the shell of St Dunstan in the East, destroyed in the 1941 during the Blitz. Our walk then takes us past the Monument to the Great Fire which points the way to our final church, St Magnus the Martyr which once occupied one of the most prominent positions in medieval London, aligned with the old London Bridge, linking Southwark to the City.
I’ve now walked 37 of the 39 churches of the City but my church crawling won’t end here. I’ll continue haunting the sites of those lost churches and the indelible mark they’ve left on the streets of the Square Mile.
A walk linking together Bunhill Fields, Bunhill Row, Old Street, St Luke’s, and City Road. Taking in the burial places of William Blake, Daniel Defoe and Hawksmoor’s obelisk on St Luke’s Church.
Why do I always end up around the edge of the city in December and January? I associate this area with being freezing cold and it being a kind of gloomy cloudy day like the day I shot this video just before Christmas 2021. It was the perfect weather for this particular walk linking together series of really intriguing locations with great stories to tell. This is really the best type of walk in many ways. Obviously I love my river walks, I love all walks really, but there’s something about unlocking the secrets of the city which is just magical. There’s something about the city fringe, the nature of it, the stories it contains which is really potent and really resonant because of the things that were pushed outside the city walls. I headed north of Liverpool Street into once what would have been fenland and marshland where the River Walbrook rises, a place of dissenters and outlaws and outcasts, a place of pleasure and play. These are all things encountered on the walk.
psychogeographic alignments of London from Lud Heat by Iain SinclairBunhill Fields
The Route: This walk starts near Liverpool Street on the edge of the City of London and heads along Worship Street to Finsbury Barracks, home of the Honourable Artillery Company. Next to the Barracks we find Bunhill Fields an old burial ground were numerous religious dissenters were buried including Daniel Defoe and William Blake. We walk along Bunhill Row where John Milton lived and wrote both Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.The secret alignments of the City lead us to Old Street believed to have been a Roman road between Silchester and Colchester built along an even older trackway. Here we find St Luke’s Church designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. Our route takes us past Ironmonger Row Baths to Peerless Street once the site of a notorious pool that became a Ducking Pond and later a bath house with a library. We then emerge on City Road and our walk ends at The Eagle pub in Shepherdess Walk which is mentioned in the nursery rhyme, Pop Goes the Weasel.
London Wall Walk following the route of the Wall around Roman Londinium
The wall around the Roman city of London, Londinium, was built in around the year 200AD using Kentish ragstone quaried near Maidstone and most likely transported by boat along the Medway. It ran for 2 miles at 20 feet high from Tower Hill in the East to Moorgate in the North and then close to the River Fleet in the West where there was a gate leading to the river. It’s not known why the wall was built. One theory posits it could have been as a response to the threat of civil war between Clodius Albinus, governor of Britain who claimed the role of Emperor, and Septimus Severus who was proclaimed Emperor. London stayed within these walls for over a thousand years and didn’t expand until the Tudor period. To this day it still largely defines the City of London.
Our walk starts at Tower Hill near the Tower of London with one of the most impressive and imposing sections of the Roman Wall. The bottom four metres of this wall is still the original Roman structure with the higher levels added in the middle ages. We then go along Coopers Row where we can see the next section of Roman stone work before heading along Vine Street and Jewry Street to Aldgate.
London’s Roman Wall at Tower Hill
From here we progress along Houndsditch and Bevis Marks to Bishopsgate, one of the Gates into the Roman City. At Bishopsgate we follow London Wall and see fragments in the old churchyard of St Alphege before passing through the site of Cripplegate into the Barbican. Here we find another section of the Roman wall near St Giles Cripplegate with a medieval tower. We then pass through the Museum of London and see our last fragment of the wall in Noble Street (you can also pick up a great map of Roman London from the Museum shop).
Our route takes us down Kind Edward Street to Newgate then along Warwick Lane, which was a mistake as we should have gone to the corner of Newgate and Old Bailey and walked South from here. The London Wall Walk then crosses Ludgate Hill and worked its way down the old lanes to Queen Victoria street not far from where the North bank of the Thames would have been in Roman London.
