A Brief History of London
London has a recorded history that goes back over 2,000 years. During this time, it has experienced plague, devastating fire, civil war, aerial bombardment and terrorist attacks, yet, it has still grown to become one of the financial and cultural capitals of the world.
ROMAN LONDON
The beginnings of London can be traced back to the invasion of the Romans in 43AD. Prior to this there was no permanent settlement of significance on the site of London where the Thames River flowed through marshy ground sprinkled with small islands of gravel and sand.
The Romans landed in Kent and were pushing on to Colchester which was the most important town in Britain at the time when their advance was halted by the River Thames. They then had to build a bridge which proved a convenient central point for the new network of roads and allowed the speedy movement of troops. The Roman settlement on the north side of the bridge, called Londinium, quickly became important as a trading centre for goods brought up the Thames River by boat and unloaded at wooden docks by the bridge.
Around 200 AD a defensive wall was built around the city which determined the shape and size of London for over a thousand years. The area within the wall is now "the City", London's famous financial district and traces of the wall can still be seen in a few places.
London continued its growth under the late Roman Empire, and at its peak the population probably numbered about 45,000.
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.
Early in that century the first St. Paul's Cathedral was founded, on the site now occupied by the present St. Paul's. This would have only been a modest church at first and may well have been destroyed.
By the 9th century, London was a very prosperous trading centre, and its wealth attracted the attention of Danish Vikings. Viking attacks dominated most of the 9th century, and such attacks became increasingly common from around 830 onwards. 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 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.
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.
In 1014 the Danes were again occupying the city when a large force of Anglo-Saxons and Norwegian Vikings sailed up the Thames and attacked London.
The attacks ceased when the Danes and Anglo-Saxons united, and invited Danish merchants to settle in the city. London was now the most prosperous, and largest city in the island of Britain - but it was not the capital of the realm. The official seat of government was at Winchester, although the royal residence was generally at London.
Edward the Confessor an Anglo Saxon eventually inherited the throne, he was an extremely religious man, and he made it his dream to build a vast monastery and church at an island on the Thames just upriver from the city. He refounded the abbey at Westminster, and moved his court there.
When Edward died in 1065, his successor, Harold, was crowned in the new abbey, cementing London's role as the most important city in England.
NORMAN & MEDIEVAL LONDON
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 in the Battle of Hastings.
Under William (now known as William the Conqueror) several royal forts were constructed along the riverfront of London (including the Tower of London) to defend against seaborne attacks by Vikings and prevent rebellions.
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.
By the early 12th century the population of London was about 18,000. In 1176 the first stone London Bridge was built and was to remain the only one across the 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 as it was expected that this would free the English from the tyranny of King John. However, when King John died support was again behind an English king.
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 urbanised 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.
TUDOR LONDON
The 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 War of the Roses the English Reformation and the Elizabethan era.
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.
STUART LONDON
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 insalubrious.
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.
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.
On the Sunday, 2 September 1666 the Great Fire of London broke out destroying about 60% of the City, including Old St Paul's Cathedral, remarkably very few people lost their lives.
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.
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.
18TH CENTURY GEORGIAN LONDON
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.
At the same time Grosvenor Square was laid out in Mayfair, part of the Grosvenor family's development of that aristocratic district. More London squares followed, notably at Berkeley Square (design by William Kent). Kent was also responsible for building the Treasury Building (1733), and the Horse Guards (1745).
One of the biggest social revolutions in Georgian London was a quiet one. It was the popularity of coffee houses as a forum for business, entertainment, and social activity. The London coffee houses were immensely popular, and certain houses became associated with different political viewpoints or kinds of commercial activity. It was in one of these coffee houses, New Jonathan's, that merchant venturers (read entrepreneurs) gathered, and formed what was to become the London Stock Exchange.
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.
19th CENTURY VICTORIAN 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.
Upon this scene entered an unlikely hero, an engineer named Joseph Bazalgette. Bazalgette was responsible for the building of over 2100 km of tunnels and pipes to divert sewage outside the city. This made a drastic impact on the death rate, and outbreaks of cholera dropped dramatically after Bazlgette's work was finished. For an encore, Bazalgette also was responsible for the design of the Embankment, and the Battersea, Hammersmith, and Albert Bridges.
The early part of the 19th century was the golden age of steam. The first railway in London was built from London Bridge to Greenwich in 1836, and a great railway boom followed. Major stations were built at Euston (1837), Paddington (1838), Fenchurch Street (1841), Waterloo (1848), and King's Cross (1850).
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.
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.
20TH CENTURY LONDON
London entered the 20th century at the height of its influence as the capital of 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.
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 neighboring 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.
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.
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 towns surrounding London.
From the 1950s onwards London became home to a large number of immigrants, largely from Commonwealth countries such as Jamaica, India and Pakistan, which dramatically changed the face of London, turning it into one of the most diverse cities in Europe.
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.