History of London: Saxon, Norman, Pre-Tudor

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Arthur H. Beavan continued his survey of the history of Imperial London, first published in 1901 with this look at London from Roman times up to the Tudors:

Saxon London was but Roman London despoiled. True, it was Christianized, and King Ethelbert had built the cathedral of St. Paul's.

The citizens had contrived to bridge over the broad Thames with a stout wooden structure wide enough to allow two vehicles to pass each other. But, apart from these evidences of religion and civilization, Saxon London was hardly an improvement upon the old Londinium, and in some respects was inferior.

Its larger buildings had fallen into ruins. The floorless Saxon dwellings much resembled the mud-and-plaster cottages still seen in some parts of Scotland and Ireland, for architecture was not a strong point with the Anglo-Saxons.

Like the Picts and Scots, they were, on the whole, a barbarous people, fonder of the forest and the chase than of cities and commerce; content so long as they had abundance of swine's flesh to eat, and mead or ale to drink. Even the genius of Sir Walter Scott has failed to make them interesting.

Front-de-Boeuf and Rebecca alternately rouse our hatred and enthusiasm, but the commonplace Saxon Thane does neither.

Material evidences of Saxon rule in London are infinitesimal; and the Danes who defeated them have left no permanent mark, save in the names of three churches: St. Clement Dane; St. Olave's, Tooley Street; and St. Magnus, London Bridge.

In 1900 an old Danish battle-ship was, after a lapse of more than a thousand years, discovered during some excavations in Tottenham Marshes; but it was carried away piecemeal by a crowd of some hundreds of people, and it disappeared to the last atom.

The first object of the Normans in a subjugated country was to make everything secure; so they put the city walls in thorough repair, and built the Tower.

(For convenience I have grouped together Plantagenet, Lancastrian, and Yorkist London as Pre-Tudor, linking it to Norman; and under this heading can be classed the Abbey, Westminster Hill, Guildhall, Crosby Hall, and some churches, which, together with the Tower, are dealt with elsewhere.)

In time arose Bridewell, where the kings held their court, Montfichet on the Thames bank, and Baynard's Castle - palaces in name, but of impregnable solidity. Their churches were so substantially built, that in case of insurrection they could be used as fortresses.

St. John's Chapel is pre-eminent as a type of their architecture, a gem of its kind, with its apse and twelve massive pillars united by semi-circular arches.

St. Bartholemew the Great in West Smithfield is second only to St. John's.

Then there is the famous Temple Church with its curious "Round," built in 1185.

Ethelburga, Bishopsgate Street, identified with the anti-ritual crusade of that staunch Protestant, Mr. Kensit, retains some early pre-Tudor masonry, of which St. Helen's, not far away, also boasts some fragments.

St. Olave's, at the corner of Hart Street and Seething Lane, is a medley of Norman and later work.

St. John's Gate, Clerkenwell (all that is left of the Monastery of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem), is a relic of Norman London.

Old St. Pancras Church, over whose burial-ground the Midland trains unceasingly thunder, shows distinct Norman origin.

St. Margaret's, Westminster, retains bits of the older Norman edifice.

In the Abbey we have early Norman in the chapel of the Pyx, and late Norman in St. Catherine's Chapel, and in the Collegiate School remains of Pre-Tudor work.

There are several Norman crypts in London; one at Westminster beneath the Chapter House, restored and known as the Confessor's Chapel, with walls seventeen feet thick, dating back to the time of the Conqueror; another at Guildhall, in perfect preservation, and accessible to all; and there is an under-chapel of great antiquity and interest at Lambeth Palace.

Of the domestic architecture that characterized the long period from William the Conqueror to Henry VII there are no vestiges.

The mansions of the rich and influential were, with few exceptions, fortifications in disguise, built solidly with no attempt at external adornment; but the ordinary citizens' houses were of timber and plaster, and, with their small casements and quaint gables, looked picturesque enough.

In those troublous times when no one felt secure of either life or property, London must have been rather a dismal place to live in.

There was a repelling grimness about it to which joyous spirits like Chaucer could never get quite reconciled; there were too many evidences of despotism and military force; and gloomy-looking castles with battlemented towers frowned on every side.

Yet Londoners had the consolation of lovely country surroundings.

Kings might come and kings might go, one dynasty fall and another rise; but the citizens, forgetting for the time whether the white rose of York or the red bloom of Lancaster was the emblem of rule, could always go a-hawking or a-hunting in verdant fields or bosky woods, or stroll to some clear stream hard by, and fill their baskets with speckled trout.

Next: History of London: The Tudors