Learning about London's History

Yesterday was a memorable day. First of all, and delight of delights, the SUN came out. The sun only comes out and stays out about once a week, so the rare sunny day is special indeed. This was perfect timing, because my first archaeology field trip was also yesterday. This was for my Roman and Medieval archaeology class, and we went into the Barbican neighborhood to examine ancient Roman walls.

In case you don't know (and I didn't really up until about a week ago), the Roman establishment of Londonium was founded on the banks of the Thames about 2000 years ago. It was destroyed by the local Britons in about AD 60, but those tough Romans built the city back, complete with an imposing city wall that stretched around the settlement. By around 450-600 AD the city of Londonium was abandoned, and other people lived, fought over, and built structures on the site, including Saxons, Vikings, and the Normans. Basically London has a long and violent history; it was destroyed and rebuilt many times.

As we walked around the thoroughly modern downtown, our professor showed us the remains of some of the Roman walls of the northwest section of the old city, including the remnants of a guard tower. You kind of had to use your imagination on this field trip- for instance, all that remained of the guard tower were a few low walls about a foot high, and it was hard to believe it had once been a massive tower. The Roman wall remains were also in strange places; they were in the courtyards between apartment buildings, and one section even had been built over by a car garage. Most of these Roman walls had been revealed in the aftermath of the blitz- after a modern building would be gutted by bombs, the ancient walls could be seen underneath the rubble. Some of those gutted out buildings were still left standing as a testament to the blitz.

This is going to sound ignorant of me, but I had almost forgotten about the German blitz during World War Two. It wasn't until our professor pointed out the amount of buildings that had been rebuilt that the idea of the blitz became tangible to me. It is hard for me to imagine living in a city that would be under attack from another country- America's geographic position makes that scenario pretty difficult. But London 70 years ago was seriously affected; the remains of those attacks are seared into the framework of the city. You don't hear much about the blitz, but it left visible scars, some of which we saw first hand. Honestly, it was quite disturbing to look at some of the destroyed shells of building and imagine what it must have been like to have your city under attack.
Unfortunately we know what that is like now, after 9/11, but I digress...

So the field trip was very informative and memorable. This class has one every other week, so I am sure to gain an intimate knowledge of the history of this amazing city. I am sure to keep you all updated on whatever I find out. Until next time...