What always feels mad to me is it took about 400 years of the roman London being basically empty after they left before someone else thought "maybe those walls and the river could be useful, let's set up a town there".
What always feels mad to me is it took about 400 years of the roman London being basically empty after they left before someone else thought "maybe those walls and the river could be useful, let's set up a town there".
We see it now as surprising, but the population of England between the 5th and 11th centuries was pretty constant at just 1 million and 90% lived in rural hamlets and villages linked to agriculture. The seats of power in the Anglo-Saxon world were also outside London. After the Norman conquest it started to grow but that's more about where the Normans landed and where they wanted to trade. It grew steadily to about 6 million in the sixteenth century and then exploded from the beginning of the 19th century with the industrial revolution.
I saw a very interesting insightful programe about the history and birth of London. I think it was on channel 4.
I believe the Roman empire built the bridges by the themes in 200 AD. It was called "Londinium" in those days, only roughly 30,000 people lived there and it was in close proximity to London bridge itself.
A lot of archaeological history paints the picture of what occured throughout the past 2,000 years.
I watched Digging for Britain on BBC4 last week (available on iplayer - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gvm75). It was a nice, relatively simple account of Boudica running the Romans out of Colchester, amongst other things. London gets a mention but they said Colchester was the Roman capital prior to London. Another of the digs was down at Fleet Farm just outside Ramsgate or thereabouts trying to find evidence that Julius Caesar had landed there. Now i'm left questioning all that as Dave21's link is much more comprehensive. It made good tv though!
I read recently that they'd uncovered a Roman basilica at 85 Gracechurch St. As an engineer working in the city I used to sometimes visit that building and would always have to access the basement. I'm blowed if I ever saw a Roman Basilica down there
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We see it now as surprising, but the population of England between the 5th and 11th centuries was pretty constant at just 1 million and 90% lived in rural hamlets and villages linked to agriculture. The seats of power in the Anglo-Saxon world were also outside London. After the Norman conquest it started to grow but that's more about where the Normans landed and where they wanted to trade. It grew steadily to about 6 million in the sixteenth century and then exploded from the beginning of the 19th century with the industrial revolution.
https://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/roman-basilica-uncovered-at-85-gracechurch-street-set-to-feature-in-woods-bagot-office-scheme/5134374.article