London Under: The Secret History Beneath the Streets / Peter Ackroyd

Peter Ackroyd wrote the ultimate Londonophile’s companion to the city with 2003’s London: The Biography, which was not a chronological history in the traditional sense but a rather fascinating thematic approach to all things London. Now he’s dug a little deeper (pun intended) and produced this volume that addresses the things that exist under London’s streets. Most people are familiar with the tube and maybe even Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms, but there's so much more to be uncovered, so to speak. Graves, wells, hidden rivers, secret tunnels and air raid shelters, layers and layers of archeology—it’s really pretty fascinating. Just to illustrate how fascinating, have a look at the following excerpt, which chronicles the historical investigations that accompanied the extension of the Jubilee tube line when it pushed across the Thames and then towards Canary Wharf:

[The Jubilee Line] travelled back 5,000 years. In the depths of the new system were uncovered pieces of Neolithic pottery and Roman tiles, a twelfth-century quay, a thirteenth-century gatehouse and a fourteenth-century wool market. Mosaic floors, and painted walls have also been identified. When the Jubilee was taken beneath Southwark High Street it found an older street, dating from AD 60, lined with houses of clay or timber; ruts were observed in the street, made by carts and chariot wheels. Now the commuter, or passenger, passes over them at a different speed. When the line went out to Stratford it unearthed an Iron Age settlement and a Cistercian monastery of the twelfth century. “It’s chaotic down there,” the architect of the Jubilee Line extension said, “you can’t believe what’s going on.” p. 147-8.

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