Stories of London

Excerpt

SOME VERY OLD STORIES

The first story of London should tell who built it, and when, and why. But London is old, very old; it began before its builders had even thought of making books, and so its earliest history is written in the ground on which it stands, in its hills and valleys, its rivers and river-beds; and this is a kind of history which, if only we know how to read it, always tells the truth. Perhaps you are saying to yourself, "There is only one river in London, and that is the Thames; and there are no hills,—London is flat; and as for the ground, who has seen the real ground on which London stands? Is it not all built over, or paved with wood or stones or cement? How, then, can we learn anything from it?" Sometimes old worn-out buildings have to be pulled down to their very foundations so that new houses may be put in their places, or a tube-railway or a tunnel has to be made, or gas-pipes or electric wires have to be laid under the roads;—have you not seen navvies digging deep into the earth to do all these things? Then the secret things hidden in the ground are brought to light, and they teach us something of the very old history of the land.

Perhaps you know that the Hampstead and Highgate Hills lie four or five miles north of the Thames; and at about the same distance south of it are other hills, on one of which the Crystal Palace stands. Though we call the land between these hills the Thames Valley, it is not flat; and long ago, before London was built in it, it was much more uneven than it is now; for the more level roads are the easier it is for heavy carriages and carts to be pulled along them, so hollows have been filled up and hillocks cut down to make the ground as flat as possible. Even now, as you ride on the top of an omnibus through the long straight road called Oxford Street, if you watch carefully you may notice the rise and fall of the land,—a little hill, then a little valley, and so on. Once through each of these valleys a stream ran down to the Thames. Where are they now? Some of them are underground—arched over, built over, buried in the dark, out of sight. Look at the

on p. 11; there you will find one of these rivers, which ran from the Highgate Woods southward to the Thames. It was called the Fleet, and has given its name to Fleet Street.

NO. 3. IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY: THE TOMB OF EDWARD THE CONFESSOR WITH ITS VELVET COVERING See pages and

There were also some low hills quite close to the north bank of the river. Let us fancy that we have gone back through the ages, many hundreds of years before ever the Romans came to this country, and that we are standing—you and I—facing the river on one of those hills, that on which St. Paul's now stands. What do we see? To our right, under its steep clay bank, so high it is almost a cliff, the Fleet runs on its way to the Thames; to our left is the hill; behind us, all the way up to the hills of Hampstead, are tangled forests, and in the low ground are wide marshes; and in front is the river....