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London

  • 8/30/2020

    The Proud City: Patrick Abercrombie's Unfulfilled Plan for Rebuilding London

    by Simon Jenkins

    In 1942, the British government endorsed a plan that turned the Blitz into an opportunity for massive centrally-planned rebuilding of London. This was a break from the previous anarchic pattern of development, and, for better or worse, today's eclectic metropolis owes its form to the failure of the plan. 

  • 4/12/2020

    Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year and the Year of COVID-19

    by Frank Palmeri

    Defoe's accomplishment as a work of history lies not so much in the accuracy of its numbers or facts as in its power as a work of fiction, in the observing eye and skeptical intelligence of H.F., and in the stories he tells, which convey through common language and the details of common life what it was like to live through the plague. 

  • SOURCE: NYT
    8-12-13

    Sign by sign, history is told on London's walls

    LONDON — Not that it is unusual to see shabby old buildings being gutted by construction workers in a rapidly gentrifying area of east London like Hackney Road, but I felt a pang of regret when I spotted them starting work on one last week. I wasn’t concerned about its architecture, which is much the same as that of any of the other 19th-century terraced houses in the neighborhood, but about the signage.“To all responsible person” is painted in big black letters on the front of the building, and a description of a locksmith and safe maker is engraved on the side wall. “John Tann’s Reliance Locks, Fire & Burglarproof, Safes, Iron Doors,” it begins. Both signs have long outlived their usefulness: like the missing “s” at the end of “person,” Tann’s workshop disappeared decades ago.Will those signs survive the house’s renovation? I doubt it. The only reason they are still there is because the building has been neglected for so long, and was not deemed to be worth repairing or rebuilding until recently. Yet if the signs are removed, the neighborhood will be the poorer, having lost part of its character and some poignant symbols of its history....

  • SOURCE: BBC News
    8-8-13

    Crossrail unearths evidence humans lived on Thames in 7,000 BC

    Rare evidence that humans lived on the River Thames 9,000 years ago has been discovered by archaeologists working on the Crossrail project.A Mesolithic tool-making factory featuring 150 pieces of flint was found at the tunnelling worksite in Woolwich.Archaeologists said prehistoric Londoners were using the site to prepare river cobbles which were then made into flint tools.Gold has also been discovered at its site in Liverpool Street....

  • SOURCE: Telegraph (UK)
    8-7-13

    Remains of 16th century Londoners found in Bedlam burial ground

    Crossrail archaeologists have unearthed the remains of patients from the infamous Bedlam Hospital, the world's first psychiatric asylum.The skeletons, unearthed in the UK's largest archaeological site, belonged to a few of the 20,000 people interred in a burial ground established adjacent to the psychiatric asylum.Crossrail's lead archaeologist Jay Carver said: "we've got a sixteenth century burial ground existing right below our feet in the road here, about two metres from where we're standing are the skeletons of perhaps up to four thousand people who live and died in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."...

  • SOURCE: AP
    8-7-13

    Work on new railway line unearths layers of London history

    LONDON — Jewelry, pieces of ships, medieval ice skates, centuries-old skulls — some fascinating pieces of London’s history aren’t in museums, but underground.More often than not, they stay there, but work on a new railway line under the British capital is bringing centuries of that buried history to light.The 118-kilometer (73-mile) Crossrail line is Britain’s biggest construction project and the largest archaeological dig in London for decades. In the city’s busy business core, archaeologists have struck pay dirt, uncovering everything from a chunk of Roman road to dozens of 2,000-year-old horseshoes, some golden 16th-century bling — and the bones of long-dead Londoners....