History of London
London has a history that goes back 2,000 years. During this time, it has experienced plague, devastating fire, civil war, overwhelming aerial bombardment, and terrorist attacks, yet, it has still grown from nothing to become one of the mercantile capitals of the western world.
See City of London for details on the historic core of London.
Legendary Foundations and Prehistoric London
In the medieval mythology of Geoffrey of Monmouth London was founded by Brutus the Trojan in the Bronze Age and was known as Troia Nova which was corrupted to Trinovantum. King Lud renamed the town CaerLudein from which London derived. Geoffrey provides prehistoric London with a rich array of legendary kings and interesting stories. However, archaeologists have found no evidence of a prehistoric or British town. There have been scattered prehistoric finds, evidence of farming, burial and traces of habitation but nothing more substantial. The archaeological coverage has been so intense particularly since the mid 1970s that it is unlikely that a pre-Roman town exists waiting to be found.
So, during the prehistoric times London was a rural area with scattered settlement. Rich finds such as the Battersea Shield found in the Thames near Chelsea suggest the area was important, there may have been important settlements at Egham and Brentford and there was a hillfort at Uppall but no City.
The Meaning of Londinium
However, the name Londinium is thought to be pre-Roman in origin although no consensus on what it means. Recent research by Richard Coates has suggested that the name derives from pre-Celtic Old European - Plowonida - from 2 roots, 'plew' and 'nejd'. meaning something like the flowing river or the wide flowing river. Londinium therefore means the settlement on the wide river. He suggests that the river was called the Thames upriver where it was narrower, and Plowonida down river where it was too wide to ford. For a discussion on the legends of London and Plowonida see [1]. The story of the settlement being named after Lud is considered unlikely.
Roman London
Londinium was established as a town by the Romans after the invasion of AD 43 led by the Emperor Claudius. Archaeological excavation (undertaken by MOLAS) since the 1970s has also failed to unearth any convincing traces of major settlement before c 50AD - so ideas about Londinium being a military foundation around the Fort that protected London Bridge are now largely discounted.
Archaeologists now believe that London was founded as a civilian settlement by 50 AD. A wooden drain by the side of the main roman road excavated at No 1 Poultry has been dated to 47 AD which is likely to be the foundation date.
Ten years later, the British queen Boudicca, leading the
Iceni, sacked (plundered) Londinium (c. 60 AD).
Excavation has revealed extensive evidence of destruction by fire at this date, and recently a military compound has been discovered in the City of London which may have been the headquarters of the Roman fight back against the British uprising.
The city recovered after perhaps 10 years and reached its population height by about 140 AD, thereafter it began a slow decline which left very little infrastructure remaining in 410 AD when the Roman occupation officially came to an end.
Saxon London
London recovered in Saxon times, however Saxon settlements in the area were not in the ancient walled City of London, but to the west, naming this area Lundenwic which meant London Port, the area is known as Aldwych (Ald=Old and wych=port) which reflects the fact that some time, in the late 9th or early 10th Century the focus of settlement shifted from the 'Old Port' back to the old City of London. This may have been due to administrative changes introduced by Alfred the Great after his defeat of Guthrum and the Danes. Alfred appointed his son-in-law Earl Aethelred of Mercia who was the heir to the destroyed Kingdom of Mercia as Governor of London and established two defended Boroughs to defend the bridge which was probably rebuilt at this time. London became known as Lundenburgh, and the southern end of the Bridge was established as the Borough of Southwark or Suthringa Geworc (defensive work of the men of Surrey) as it was originally known.
Norman London
London remained an important town, though, and the walled area was resettled in fear of Vikings. The Normans constructed several forts, including the Tower of London to prevent rebellions and William the Conqueror granted a charter in 1067 upholding previous Saxon rights, privileges and laws. Its growing self-government became firm with election rights granted by King John in 1199 and 1215. The nearby up-river town of Westminster became the Royal capital, and the area between them entirely urbanised by 1600.
See City of London for details on the origins of the City government.
Stuart London
The Great Plague in 1665 significantly reduced London's population, and in 1666 the Great Fire of London destroyed much of the city. Sir Christopher Wren was responsible for the rebuilding of London's churches including St. Paul's Cathedral. The destruction of housing in the city encouraged many former residents to build new homes outside the walls.
19th century London
During the 19th century London was transformed into the worlds largest city and capital of the British Empire. Its population expanded from 1 million in 1800 to 6 million a century later. It was a period when London became a global political, financial, and trading capital, and hosted the Great Exhibition of 1851.
However Victorian London (the Victorian period covered most of the century) was also a city of extreme poverty, where millions lived in overcrowded and unsanitary slums. Life in Victorian London, was immortalised by Charles Dickens in such novels as Oliver Twist.
19th century London was transformed by the coming of the railways. A new network of metropolitan railways, allowed commuting and the invention of suburbs from where wealthier people could commute to the centre. This spurred the massive outward growth of the city.
The first railway to be built in London was a line from London Bridge to Greenwich which opened in 1836. This was soon followed by the opening of great rail termini which linked London to every corner of Britain. These included Euston Station (1837), Paddington Station (1838), Fenchurch Street station (1841), Waterloo Station (1848), and Kings Cross station (1850) St Pancras station (1863). And from the 1850s, the first lines of the London Underground were constructed.
The urbanised area continued to grow rapidly, spreading into Islington, Paddington, Belgravia, Holborn, Finsbury, Shoreditch, Southwark and Lambeth. In 1855 the Metropolitan Board of Works was set up with responsibility for transport and other projects.
Towards the middle of the century, the massive population growth of Victorian London created a crisis of public health, Raw sewage was pumped straight into the River Thames. By the 1850s the stench was so bad that the curtains on the windows of the Houses of Parliament were soaked in lime in an attempt to disguise the smell. The polluted drinking water (sourced from the Thames) also brought disease and epidemics to London’s populace.
Parliament finally gave consent to the construction of a massive system of sewers. The engineer put in charge of this task was Joseph Bazalgette. In what was one of the largest civil engineering projects of the 19th century, he oversaw construction of over 2100 km of tunnels and pipes under London to take away sewage and provide clean drinking water. When completed, the death toll in London dropped dramatically, and epidemics of cholera and other diseases were curtailed. Bazalgette's system is still in use today.
Of the most famous events of Victorian London, the Great Exhibition of 1851 which attracted visitors from across the world and displayed Britain at the height of its Imperial dominance.
London also became home to a large Irish population during the Victorian period, largely due to refugees from the Irish potato famine, at one point Irish immigrants made up over 20% of London's population. London also became home to a sizeable Jewish community.
In 1888 the London County Council was set up with authority for the inner area of the urbanised region of London.
Many famous buildings and landmarks of London were constructed during the 19th century. Including:
20th Century London
London suffered its first bombing raids during World War I carried out by zeppelin airships, these killed around 700 people and caused great terror, however they were a mere foretaste of what was to come.
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. London was a popular target with the Luftwaffe as the city was heavily industrialised and was also seen as a way of reducing civilian morale. Many children in London were taken to the countryside so they would not get killed. By the war's end, around 35,000 Londoners had been killed by German bombing, tens of thousands injured, and tens of thousands of buildings destroyed.
The population of London actually peaked during the 1930s at around 8.6 million. However after the war in a bid to reduce the number of people living in overcrowded slum housing, a policy was introduced of encouraging people to move into newly built new towns surrounding London. As a result the total population of the city declined somewhat during the post-war years.
The bombing during the war, gave the authorities a good opportunity to redevelop London, and to replace older slum housing, it was replaced largely by high-rise blocks of flats, which altered the appearance of London quite radically. Although these later proved unpopular.
The outward expansion of London was slowed by the war, and the Green Belt established soon afterwards. Greater London Council was set up in 1965 with authority for much more of the urban area than the London County Council, but was abolished in 1986, leaving the 33 cities and boroughs as the only sub-national authorities in London. In 2000, the Greater London Authority was established, covering the same area of Greater London as before and representing one of the nine regions of England, separated from the South East. The London Commuter Belt covers an area much wider, but is not considered part of London.
Starting in the mid 1960s, partly as a result of the success of such UK musicians as the Beatles, London became an epicentre for the world-wide youth culture, exemplified by the Swinging London subculture which made Carnaby Street a household name of youth fashion around the world. London's role as a trendsetter for youth fashion was revived strongly in the 1980s during the New Wave and Punk eras.
Population
- 1 - a few farmsteaders
- 50 - 5 - 10,000
- 140 - 20 - 40,000
- 300 - 10 - 20,000
- 400 - less than 5000?
- 500 a few hundred?
- 700 a few thousand in the new city of Lundenwic
- 900 a few thousand in the re-established city of Lundenburgh
- 1000 - 10,000
- 1100 - 10,000 - 20,000
- 1300 - 100,000 (according to research by Derek Keene
- 1350 - 50,000 following the Black Death
- 1500 - 100,000 - 150,000
- 1600 - 200,000 - 250,000
- 1700 - 600,000 (nearly 10% of the population of England and Wales)
- 1750 - 700,000
- 1801 - 959,300 (at the time, the World's largest City)
- 1831 - 1,655,000
- 1851 - 2,363,000
- 1881 - 3,830,000
- 1901 - 6,000,000
- 1921 - 7,500,000
- 1939 - 8,600.000 (population peak)
- 2001 - 7,172,036
- 2016 - 8.2m according to forecast in 'London's Place in the UK Economy' Corporation of London Sept. 2002
The first Census was in 1801 so early dates are guesstimates based on archaeological density of sites compared with known population of the City of London between 1600 - 1800 (i.e.50,000). Dates 1300 onwards are probably based on better evidence from historic records.
Historical Places of Note in London
External Links
Referenced By
Capital of the UK | Capital of the United Kingdom | City of London | English history | Gogmagog | History of England | List of United Kingdom-related topics | List of United Kingdom topics | Londinium | London, England | London, Great Britain | London, UK | London, United Kingdom | Monument to the Great Fire of London | Roman London | Savoy Palace | Square Mile | The Monument | UK topics | United Kingdom/Basic Topics | United Kingdom/London | Yugor
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