This London history site is a wiki of early London streets. I have nothing for
the last 75 years, it is mainly about the 1600 to 1945 period. Sorry, but this
is what I do. I also have a pub history site which covers London pubs from about
1800 to the end of the second world war (1945).
The pub history site is organised by church parish, which may sound really
weird, but it works when you are interested in early Victorian streets, and
before.
It starts with some detail on Julius Caesar,
then early Roman London, and onto an early
introduction to the remains of the City wall of
London and also some later research from
1926 about the walls, and then a Commission in 1928 to map the
London Wall then.
Some Kings & Queens - to 1065 and then the
Kings and Queens to date.
The original Stow Survey of London was in 1598, and amazing E.g.
An addition I am trying to add is the the London survey of 1756 by William Maitland. This is drastically out of date, and much refers to about 1732 - E.g. London wards in 1756; and also here is a copy of the index page of this tome
I have an interest in Londons lost rivers, particularly the
River Fleet & the
Fleet market as once existed. I
will add more to this area.
The new London Post Office at St Martins le
Grand,
My best addition is that of the 1832 street
directory with images added for much of 1842. I use this all of the time in
my own research. There is also a partial 1818
street directory, and a complete
1843 directory, but much of this is online already.
Here is an entire book about the Fleet river,
Fleet Market, Fleet Prison etc.
I am currently adding a brief description to
Hungerford market, as it had a number of Taverns. Plus an
introduction to the Charing Cross railway terminus replacing the same
by 1864.
Of more use is the
1921 London street directory which covers
many areas, particularly East and EC areas; plus a bit of the
1940 street directory. All of these are
in the search engine.
I also visited the Golden Cross Bridge,
next to Charing Cross station in March 2020. Then a wander along the
Strand, via St Martin in the Fields - Cafe in the
Crypt, nice soup etc.
In 1920, the London County Council created a book commemorating all of its
employees who served in the Great War, i.e. the First World War ) 1914 - 1918.
This is a summary listing of many thousands of
employees and some brief detail about their service.
I also list from a number of sources, a simplistic breakdown of the
campaigns which happened during this period.
Also listed on a separate site are a number of individual regiment histories,
e.g. the Artists Rifles and the
First Sportsmans and a number of
Gallantry awards.
Lastly for the moment, the site I have been building on the London TFL and
National Rail stations in London, with some detail and photographs relating to
accessibility is now on this site. Its not bad, where I have
visited a station (there are 600 in total). Any
help in this massive task is very welcome.
Much of my detail
relates to pub history on other sites, e.g. the
pubwiki, and this is
all in the search engine.
Layers of London & mapping the pubs in London.
There is a brilliant and exciting new project just beginning at the University
of London and the Institute of Historical Research, the
Layers of London team which
records the history of London through layers of maps; some new, most are old. It
is brilliant.
The latest idea is to add all pubs onto these maps, all of them - old and new.
And it has started.
The project is sourced by volunteers, myself included, and is a crowd-sourcing
project. I believe this means anyone can get involved with a little training.
The maps are magnificent, and include Mediaeval map (1270-1300), a Tudor map
(1520), Agas map (1561-1633), Faithorne & Newcourt (1658), Ogilby & Morgan
(1676), Morgans map of City of London, Southwark & Westminster (1682), John
Rocques map (1746), County of Essex (1777), Horwood (1799), Greenwood (1828),
Charles Booth poverty map (1886-1903), OS Maps (1893-1896), OS Maps
(1940s-1960s), Bomb damage (1945), RAF collection (1945-1949) and lastly a
modern satellite map.
I am yet to savour all of these incredible resources properly, it is amazing.
Here is the London
Pubs collection, as it continues to grow.
A new addition is the haunted London book from gutenberg.org which has a plethora of interesting facts about early London, including Pepys.
And some amazing books by Walter besant on the history of London, through time, and in specific areas, too