The Beginnings of London
The conformation of Britain and the position of the Thames estuary in relation to the Continent were the governing influences which brought about the beginnings of London.
From: 43 C.E. To: Unknown
Location: London, England, United Kingdom
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“The Beginnings of London” from Roman London by Gordon Home, 1926.
The conformation of Britain and the position of the Thames estuary in relation to the Continent were the governing influences which brought about the beginnings of London. There are, and have been, cities which have sprung into existence at the dictate of a single will, or of a powerful government, to achieve some special purpose. Such cities may flourish for a period, but, with the passing away of the temporary conditions which led to their establishment, they shrink, and have often disappeared from the map save as sites of antiquarian interest.
Places of this type were represented in ancient Persia by Persepolis (“Persia City”), which was simply an artificial royal centre created by Darius the Great. Alexander established numerous towns named after himself, but only one of them grew to the stature of a city of the first rank. Notable examples in Roman times are afforded by Aquilcia in Italy, Italica in Spain, which dwindled to insignificance in the first century; Caesarea in Palestine, and Thamugadi (Timgad), and Volubilis in Africa. A good example in mediaeval times is Aigues-Mortes, the artificial creation of St Louis of France, and, coming to the eighteenth century, yet another is found in Peter the Great’s famous, but ill-advised venture of St Petersburg (Peterburg or Petrograd).
Another and very common type of city is that which has such great national importance that under civilised conditions it endures, but hardly reaches a position of world-wide consequence. Examples of this class are Bourges, Exeter, York, Burgos, Pavia, and Magdeburg.
The last and most important class of cities consists of those which are so favoured by position and circumstances that so long as commerce and industry endure they must continue to be great centres of activity and trade. Of this type is London.
The consideration of the position it occupies is therefore of paramount importance. In the first place, it was at the point where a great estuary, facing the Continent, narrowed to become a highway to the interior, and it was thus inevitable that it should form the gateway to that portion of Britain, which, mainly through the absence of mountains, was the most fertile, and was consequently the first to attain a fairly high level of civilisation.
The site thus favourably situated for commerce was likewise very happily placed centrally among three or probably four areas of considerable fertility, i.e. Essex, Hampshire, Kent, and perhaps Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. The climate has always been healthy in spite of a certain humidity, and extremes of temperature are rare. As to the original site north of the Thames, it consists of twin hills well above high water mark, and formed of deposits of terrace gravel and sand resting upon a foundation of stiff blue clay. The gravel was covered with a layer of brick earth, furnishing with the utmost facility the materials required for building. The situation ensured a good water supply from shallow wells.
Very obvious are the commercial and defensive advantages of the site, for the twin elevations lay commandingly above the river, and, towards the land, were encircled with lower ground, which may or may not have been water-logged in places, according to the season of the year, and was perhaps slowly changing from tolerably dry ground to actual marsh as the result of slow earth movements which are referred to a little later.
The two hills afforded an excellent habitable area, some 350 acres in extent. A natural wet ditch to the west was provided by the stream, later to be known as The Fleet—an English name properly applied only to the natural harbour formed by its estuary. Between the eastern and western hills ran another stream, afterwards called the Wallbrook, whose wide estuary formed a second and much more valuable harbour in the midst of the raised area. Yet another advantage enjoyed by the site was its command of the river over which its inhabitants could keep watch.
On the gentle slopes close to the twin hills there was ample opportunity for cultivation; beyond this arable belt the forests provided game of all descriptions, and the clearings gave pasturage for cattle and swine. Further than this, the river contained an abundant supply of fish, as was the case down to the beginning of the eighteenth century.
These are natural conditions, but it should be pointed out that ultimately London occupied a remarkable position almost at the point where the boundaries met of the four most important peoples of southern Britain. This also tended to foster the commercial growth of the town, and thus it was a gateway to all four regions. It would seem to furnish a parallel to the case of Rome itself, which grew up as a strategic and commercial centre at the point where Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans met.
All conceptions of pre-Roman London have been dominated by the idea of an elevated site girt about with marshes. From this impression has come the unquestionably erroneous suggestion that the original name was Llyn-din, meaning the lake fort. No less than forty years ago Mr F. J. C. Spurrell came to the conclusion, on both geological and archaeological evidence, that the land surface between London and the mouth of the Thames was several feet higher 2000 years ago. His opinions were generally endorsed by Mr William Whittaker, F.R.S., and much more strongly by Mr A. S. Kennard and Mr S. H. Warren. The last two geologists considered that the London district was decidedly more elevated in pre-Roman times than it is at present. Mr Walter Johnson has, from personal observations, and a close study of his predecessors’ work, decided that the general difference m level was as much as from 10 to 12 feet. This most important conclusion seems to be borne out by the fact that undoubted relics of the Roman period, notably in Southwark and at the Royal Albert Docks, have been discovered at places which would be 8 or 9 feet below normal high water level and sometimes even more. In Southwark, for example, Roman pottery was found just about the Ordnance Datum line, that is, 12 feet 6 inches below high water mark; in some of these places the discoveries were more than 4 feet beneath this low level. As Mr Johnson very pertinently asks, can one imagine the intensely practical Romans preparing an area of forbidding bog for settlement by laboriously rearing high and massive embankments when there was plenty of good dry land available in the vicinity?
The geological evidence points to a gentle, but long-continued subsidence with well-marked pauses, of which the closing stages were not attained until the Roman period was fairly well advanced. “Saxon relics,” writes Mr Johnson, “seem to be notably lacking where they might be expected to occur, and this absence must imply a change in the physical conditions unfavorable to human occupation.”
If the level of the ground were different in the first century a.d., the tides cannot have reached so far up stream as at present. Mr Johnson’s opinion is important. His own words are, “ since the fall from Teddington to London Bridge is fairly uniform, and averages about one foot per mile, the pre-Roman tides would be scarcely, if at all, felt in Chelsea Reach, and there would be virtually a non-tidal ford.”
This evidence seems to demolish the theory that the original site of London was in the midst of wide-spreading marshes, which at times assumed the character of a lagoon. It will doubtless take some time before the popular impression, so repeatedly and often eloquently set forth by Dr Guest, J. R. Green, W. J. Loftie, and Sir Walter Besant is entirely removed.
Given that the “lagoon” theory be untenable, then the suggested origin of the name just quoted must also be abandoned quite apart from the fact that llyn, as Dr Henry Bradley observes, is modern Welsh, and it is absurd to suppose that that language was spoken at London in a.d. 1 Further than this, he lays stress on the fact that a compound origin of the name Londinium (Old Celtic, Londinion) is impossible, for it has only one root and not two. This fact is quite familiar to all Celtic philologists, although it was apparently unknown to the group of writers on London just mentioned. According to the distinguished authority just quoted, the derivation is not quite certain, but three facts are beyond dispute:
The Lon is not lindon or lindu (Old Celtic = lake).
The Lon is not longa (O.C. = ship).
The don is not dunon (O.C. = fort).
Dr Bradley considers that Roman transcriptions of British, names, whenever they can be tested, are very accurate, and if the Celtic name of London signified “lake-fort,” the Romans would have rendered it Lindo-dunum. If, as has been suggested, it signified “ship-fort,” its Roman name would have been Longodunum.
Having disposed of impossibilities. Dr Bradley comes to what he considers the only reasonable etymology. The name of London is a possessive formed from some such appellation as Londinos, derived from the Old Celtic adjective londos probably meaning fierce. He carefully states that even this derivation is not absolutely certain owing to the imperfect knowledge so far acquired of Old Celtic, but that it is reasonable and the only one which is philologically possible. In the face of the foregoing exposition, the only conclusion at which it is possible to arrive is that the twin hills beside the Thames formed, at some remote period, the possession, and, doubtless, the stronghold of a person or family bearing the name Londinos.
Guest held that there was no pre-Roman town on the site. He was followed by J. R. Green and by Loftie, who cites Higden as saying that the old British road from Kent did not cross the Thames at London Bridge, but west of Westminster. The rise of Roman London was, therefore, according to these writers, due to a diversion of the road to the new bridge.
The danger of citing as an authority upon Roman conditions a fourteenth-century monkish chronicler is self-apparent. Nor does Higden say that the road which touched the Thames west of Westminster was an old British track. He really cannot have been qualified to judge on such a point. In his day, it was called Watling Street, and he is no doubt correct in saying that a branch of it crossed the Thames near Westminster. The late Professor Haverfield told Dr T. Rice Holmes that, in his opinion, there was no evidence that it existed before a.d. 43.
Dr Holmes sums up the evidence well by declaring that “the notion that a British town stood on the site has the solid foundation of etymology,” The name London is so ancient and so deeply rooted that it could not be displaced by the official Roman title of Augusta given to it long after the conquest. It is a purely Celtic word, and, if the town had been a new Roman settlement, it would certainly have been given a Roman name? In addition there are indications of pre-historic occupation on the site and in the environs: finally, Dr Holmes pertinently observes that the advantages which attracted the traders of Rome would also have commended themselves to those of Britain.
It should be emphasised here that the inhabitants of Britain at the time of Caesar’s invasion were in many ways a civilised race—indeed, from the material point of view, in some respects highly civilised. This was seen by the famous Massiliot explorer, Pytheas, nearly three centuries before Caesar ran his transports ashore on the coast of Kent. He found the people in the remote promontory of Belerium (Cornwall) comparatively civilised, friendly, and ready to trade. In Kent and the neighbouring regions the inhabitants were busy agriculturists; corn was raised in abundance, and there were covered granaries in which it was thrashed and stored. The picture given by this early scientist and traveller is certainly not that of a barbarian people.
During the centuries which, intervened between the visit of Pytheas and the invasion of Caesar there can be little doubt that some progress was made, for probably as early as two hundred years b.c. the Britons had definitely created their own coinage of gold, which must point to the existence of a relatively extensive commerce, each gold piece, with its weight ranging up to as much as 120 grains, representing a very large purchasing value, according to modern standards. The eminence to which the Britons had attained in decorative art is admirably instanced, not only in their beautiful spiral ornament, but also in the enamel with which they adorned the delicately conceived designs of their metal work. Caesar notes the solidity of their buildings, comparable to those of their kinsfolk across the Channel, and their chariots indicate that the science of the wheelwright’s craft was well developed. Weaving and spinning were advanced to the point of producing tartan designs. The presence of clothing made of linen, wool, and leather properly sewn and fastened with buttons, is known from many discoveries in burials.
The Britons were experts in domestic woodwork in the form of tankards, bowls and cups, beautifully ornamented with bronze. Finally, the tribes on the coast must have developed a high level of skill in the construction of comparatively large ships, otherwise it is impossible to explain the facility of cross-channel transit noted by Caesar. It is hardly possible to conceive that an island people could fall behind the shipwrights of Armorica (Brittany), who were of the same race and spoke the same language. That there was a regular sea-borne commerce carried on in these ships is testified by Caesar.
Having thus taken a brief survey of the capacity of the Britons to establish permanent village settlements and ports, busy with, the results of their industry, it now becomes necessary to consider such archæological evidence as exists to support the belief that there existed a Celtic London of relative importance. Here it may at once be said that there is insufficient data for making any decisive statements in one direction or another, the conditions under which relics of early London have been and are recovered from its area are so entirely dissimilar from those which prevail at the many deserted sites in Britain such as those of Calleva and Viroconium, that there is no possible comparison.
Both the places mentioned have lain desert for some thirteen or fourteen centuries, while London has been continuously occupied during the same period, and its heart has become a veritable succession of palimpsests. Age after age has written its records on the site. Foundations have succeeded foundations, perpetually complicating the strata which are so clearly defined in a long-deserted camp or town enclosure. The amount of destruction of the most valuable archæological evidence can scarcely be calculated, and without fear of contradiction it may be stated that the problem of the city’s early origin may never be elucidated, even if its site were to become as desert as that of Nineveh or Carthage, so that the expert archæologist might have a free hand for his investigations.
In central London a very considerable number of pre-Roman objects have been brought to light, and in many cases their exact provenance is known, but too often there is no evidence forthcoming as to depth and relation to other datable deposits. It is thus nearly always a question of doubt as to whether an object is really pre-Roman or coeval with the early period of Roman occupation, when late Celtic implements, pottery, and ornaments would have still been in common use.
The overlapping of archaeological periods is the salient fact which complicates the problem and renders impossible any very definite statement as to the size and importance of pre-Roman London. At the same time, even making the widest possible allowance for this overlap, the number of late Celtic objects found actually within the walled Roman area is relatively enormous. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that some of this accumulation dates to the late Celtic and not to the Roman epoch. It is also legitimate to make the conjecture that some, if not many, of the objects recognised as of Roman manufacture may have reached London long before the Roman conquest, for the investigator has no legitimate grounds for rejecting Strabo’s statement that the Empire, as early as the reign of Augustus (43/31 b.c. to A.D. 14) was supplying Britain with small manufactured articles. He directly mentions glassware, and pottery may therefore be almost understood.
A fact which seems to have escaped general attention is the paucity of relics of the Anglo-Saxon period discovered in London. If archæological evidence is to be taken as the sole foundation of history, it would be permissible to deduce that London was very slightly occupied by the English. The evidence of this character for the existence at London of a settlement in late Celtic times is enormously greater than that for the unquestionable four centuries of Anglo-Saxon political domination.
In conclusion there must be emphasised once more the exceptional advantages of the site, and the fact that, if London began, as did most cities, from a single hut, its undoubted Celtic name could be ousted neither by Roman conqueror nor by English invader, and has endured almost unchanged from the first.
Home, Gordon. Roman London. Ernest Benn Limited, 1926.
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