The Rest Is History - 209. Londinium

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Welcome to the first episode in our new mini-series: LONDON WEEK. From Monday to Friday we'll release an episode daily. Today's 'Londinium' and Thursday's 'Haunted London' are live episodes we recorded on location earlier this year. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday we'll be releasing episodes on 'Places', 'People', and 'Moments' from London's past. To get ALL FIVE episodes right now, become a member of The Rest Is History Club - you'll also get ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club first came here, 1900 years ago, the other day. Imagine the feelings of the commander of a fine, what do you call them, trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga, perhaps too much dice, you know, coming out here in the train of some prefect. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post, feel the savagery, the utter savagery had closed around him. All that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles,

in the hearts of wild men. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, So Tom Hollands, that's how I feel when I come to London. That quotation from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, in which Marlow, the narrator, imagines the feelings of a Roman, a young Roman, posted to Britannia. What a god-awful posting that is. And he ends up in London of all places. Well, I think, I think Dominic, it's, it's actually imagining, um, a Roman coming up the Thames estuary before London has even been founded. Um, and we, uh, today we're going on a tour of roman london of londinium but i think

that the part of the fascination of roman london for anyone who has you know who's apocalyptically minded is the sense that um there was a time when this huge city didn't exist and it's entirely a creation of the romans and then of course after after the Romans leave, it collapses and crumbles again. And Conrad is writing that at a time when, you know, London is the great imperial capital of the world's largest empire, larger than Rome. It is the new Rome. And it's prefiguring the story of Marlow going up the Congo. Yeah. You know, the heart of darkness and i think that we're standing now on london bridge the south side of london bridge set the scene for us tell us what we can see got some pools over on the horizon the great dome the symbol of the blitz and all that stuff yeah so

we so so we're on london bridge we've got the thames flowing the vastness of the thames we've got um we've got uh the embankment has been built up, we've got the great kind of monuments to Mammon, the great, the great towers of the city, and then we've got the Tower of London on the right side and Tower Bridge. But thinking about Roman London takes us back to a time when none of this existed, when there were no wharfs, there were no build-up, the Thames was was kind of great bog and the reason that we're standing here now and the reason that london exists is because it's crucially this is the lowest bridging point on the thames where we are now yeah so when the

romans land here ad 43 they need to cross the thames and probably this was a fording point where we're standing now it's a hell of a long ford tom i mean it is a long way it is a long ford but they had they had batavians who came from uh batavia from the from the netherlands uh from the low countries who were very adept the producers very amused by that giggling away but they shouldn't be because the batavians were serious guys who um they they could cross rivers in full armor with their horses that is impressive so they were able to do that and get across but it very very quickly the romans built a bridge here and on the far side roads were then built going to northwards westwards um so you were telling me nobody it hasn't occurred to the celts to i mean if it if it's a fording point, there must be some, is there a settlement?

As far as we know, there was an operdum, so a kind of a hill fort, a kind of proto-town at Woolwich. Right. But no other settlement, really. I mean, maybe the odd farm, but essentially that description that Conrad gives you of the trireme coming up the Thames estuary and looking out and seeing nothing but savagery and barbarism. I mean, it wasn't, but we're talking mudflats, we're talking forests. There's nothing here.

And this is what makes London unusual in the Roman context, is that by and large, when the Romans move into a place, they set their provincial capital up in a place that is already a major center. Right. So trading. Absolutely. So the major settlement in Britain when the Romans invade is Camulodonum Colchester. So that Colchester duly becomes the first capital. But London is kind of great. So, you know, the famous description of London is that it's the great when a kind of great pustule or boil or spot that grows on the country and that works perfectly as well in the roman period because there's there's no plan to build a founder city here it just grows organically why because this is the lowest bridging point as we said and the bridge

is built here but it's also a port so you can sail up here. So that is what makes London, and has always made London, the obvious capital once you have a unitary state in southern Britain. Because this is kind of made by geography to be the capital. And that essentially, so it kind of grows organically in a way that by and large in Roman Britain most cities don't. Most cities here are artificial. We're about halfway over the bridge now, heading towards the city. Tell us a bit more about the people who lived here when the Romans arrived.

So they're Celtic. Yeah. And the sort of stereotype is basically they're painted blue, you know, daubing each other in mud. Drinking milk. Yeah. Absolutely vile customs. Just behaving disgracefully.

Yes, shocking. No, they're mud. Drinking milk. Yeah. Absolutely vile customs. Just behaving disgracefully. Yes, shocking. No, they're a bit more civilised than that. They are, you know, they're on the periphery of a great empire. And so, like most people's on the periphery of a great empire, they're influenced by it. So they're starting to invest in wine. They're starting to copy things like coinage. There may well actually be tribal entities here who have already essentially submitted to the Romans

even before the formal invasion. Why do the Romans bother? I know that's a huge question, and we don't want to have it dominate the whole episode, but in a couple of lines, this is not a very, you know, as the Conrad description suggests, it's not a terribly attractive part of Europe. They're so rich already and powerful.

Why do they even bother? Well, Britain is actually very, I mean, it's agriculturally rich. It's full of minerals. Tin. It is also, it's there. And empires expand. Okay. And Claudius, the emperor who launches the invasion you know he

famously uh people who've watched like claudius will know he he stutters he limps his head rolls um he wants to to cut a dash yeah he needs it for political reasons he needs it for political reasons um and and so actually the very first representation of Britannia, so the figure who appears on our coins. Yeah. It appears on a frieze in a temple in what's now Turkey. And it shows Claudius as a kind of iron bodied rapist. He's raping her. So Britannia is a woman.

She's had her clothes torn off. Claudius is holding her. And that's essentially why Claudius launches it. He needs a coup. He wants people to do mosaics and freezes like that about him, basically. He does. He wants to cut a dash. He wants to pose as an imperator, a general, an emperor. An emperor has that kind of root in the military sense of it. So, Tom, we're now on the just reaching the other side of the Thames, the north side. So at what point would you say do the Romans identify this as a future settlement? So within,

you know, a few years of landing or is it? Yeah, as I said, I think it grows up organically. So it becomes a military base. They build a fort here. It controls, you know, the access to the continent. Yeah. So there's a document that's been found that dates from incredibly early on. So probably the bridge is built, a wooden bridge is here by 47. Okay. So that's... What, within like three or four years? Yeah. So three or four years after the invasion. three or four years after after the invasion and then 10 years after that and we can date it very precisely to the 8th of january ad 57 you have an iou so somebody promising to pay money back and what you realize is so we're

we're now crossing into the city and we're surrounded by you know these great gleaming towers monuments to money-making. London, right from the beginning, has been about making money. So traders are coming in here. The ethos of the city has never changed. The ethos of the city has never changed. The Romans can appreciate a strategically crucial transport and military node when they see it.

And that's why by the end of, certainly by the end of, certainly by the end of the first century, it's pretty clear that it's replaced Colchester as the capital of the province because it's, you know, it is the obvious capital. But of course, before that, Dominic, there is the first of one of the many catastrophes that have overwhelmed the city of London, which hits it in either 80, 60 or 61, which is, of course, Boudicca's revolt. We will head now up towards Bank, Bank Tube Station, serving the Bank of England. And there is a stretch of road there called Poultry. So in the Middle Ages, that's where chickens were sold. And number one poultry was redeveloped in the 80s and 90s.

And during the process of redevelopment, something extraordinary was found. So let's wait till we get there and then we can discuss it. That is very exciting. So, Tom, to unwitting eyes, it would seem that we've just stopped outside a branch of NatWest. Explain to me the thrilling story behind this spot. OK, so we're now looking at number one poultry, which was designed by James Sterling. The whole process by which it came to be built here was very controversial because it was on the site of Maffin and Webb, which is a very handsome Victorian building. But from the point of view of Roman archaeology, it was great because they dug down

and in the foundations, they found 48 skulls, all of young men, so clearly being decapitated and dumped there, and charred buildings. And these buildings have dated to around AD 60. So this is the evidence for what you get in Tacitus, the report of Boudicca's revolt, that she incinerates London.

And London has kind of been burnt three times. This was the first. Then, of course, you have the Great Fire, 1666, and then you have the Blitz. And the reason that um this was preserved is because of you'll see we're standing on a street called walbrook and the walbrook is a river that is running directly beneath us so it's a lost river right it's a lost river so the place we're by bank the bank of eng, and the Bank of England stands over the Walbrook. It's actually in a river valley.

So we're between Ludgate Hill and Corn Hill. You'd never know it, would you? You'd never know it. So this river rises about two and a half miles north of the Thames, flows due south. And the Roman city basically gathered around it because they could use the river as an open sewer and because of that loads of organic material was preserved when you say organic material um sandals letters okay that's better than i was expecting well yes probably a bit more as well and loads of this material has actually been preserved about two minutes walk from here.

So if we head down southwards. Okay. We'll head to what is probably one of the most, I mean, I think it is, the most romantic and exciting finds ever made in Roman London, which was a temple to Mithras, friend of the show, who featured in the World Cup of Gods. But before that, Tom, do not throw away this story about Boudicca and the skulls. So the story goes that she and her... Now, remind me, I'm trying to remember my nine-year-old history lessons.

She and her daughters have been molested by Romans and in revenge. She's the queen of a tribe called the Icani, who inhabit East Anglia, Norfolk, that kind of area. And her husband, Prosutagas, is an ally of the Roman people. When he dies, the Romans move in and they rape Boudicca, they rape her daughters. And this is an unwise thing to do because Boudicca raises the Icanians and they sweep down and they burn

colchester they burn london they burn uh verlanium st albans um and it looks as though the entire future of the of the province is hanging in the balance and they meet with um sutaneous polinus who is um he's been uh attacking the druids up inlesey and he comes harrying back when the news reaches him and meets with Boudicca's army and wipes them out. And the skulls, the young men, these are what, Roman soldiers who've been caught basically in London? No, presumably they are civilians. The Britons are headhunters. They're kind of trophies. Right're presumably i mean we don't know i mean it's very hard to dance very hard to dance yeah well it's i mean the the thing about roman london our understanding of it is based on a kind of

meshing together of documentary sources yeah which are often very fragmentary so we do have tacitus say on on buddhica but then there are whole periods where the city is simply not mentioned at all by roman historians so you have to fill in the gaps with archaeology because it's inconsequential to them basically because it's in britain and it's a long way away and who cares yeah basically basically and the people who lived here i mean okay there's very little evidence one way or the other but your best guess tom the people who lived here they're kind of romano-british are they celtic extraction are they celtic origin well i think it's it's likelier to be um i mean certainly there would be people who are who are british living here but it would also be

lots of people from abroad it would be settlers and traders and so on yeah so lots of uh so they would be the proto-french coming over well it's interesting it's interesting there's so probably the best preserved stretch of wall will come to the walls later on is by tower hill there as part embedded in part of the the fabric of the medieval war when it got built was a tombstone of a Gaul who'd come over here in the wake of Boudicca's rebellion to kind of basically set up a tax apparatus that would not provoke rebellion. So to try and kind of calm things down. So he's the colonial administrator who comes in, but he's a Gaul. Right. So you can see how, of course, I mean, Rome and London is connected to Gaul closer than it is to Rome.

So there are probably people from Italy here, but they're more likely to be traders from Gaul. Anyway, we have now arrived outside the London Mithraeum. And this was found in the 50s. So, you know, the Blitz was tremendously good for roman archaeology um and it was found it was again kind of by the site of the war by the banks of the walbrook and it was very very inconvenient for the developers you know they didn't want a temple to mithras and and the reason that it's preserved is is because you know as listeners to the world cup of gods will remember that basically mithras worshipers are kind of like masons male only um it it's all about kind of signing up and making friends and contacts and that kind of

thing brooks is for you tom well perhaps a little bit a little bit but the temples are situated underground this this temple had survived for that reason it was kind of very deep in the archaeological layer but inconvenient for the developers So they removed it and they situated it next to a very busy road and surrounded it by 1950s style crazy paving. So it could not have looked less romantic. But then when Bloomberg came here and developed this space, and part of the planning condition was that they had to provide a new space for the Mithras temple, which they've done, I have to say, absolutely superbly. So you can go in here. Anyone in London can visit it.

It's a really, really excellent experience. You go deep, deep down. They've kind of set up sound and light shows so that you have a sense of what the temple actually looked like. Sounds great, Tom. It is very good. Let's go in. Stop talking. But we're not going to do that.

What we are going to go in is go and have a look at some of the organic material from the Walbrook, which is preserved inside. So, Tom, we've come inside. And just for people who don't know the area, it's right next to Bank Tube Station. We're in the heart of the city, surrounded by massive towering office blocks. And here is this fantastic looking little museum. And, Tom, for people who don't know, a Mithraeum and Mithras.

So this is this very obscure god, isn't it? The heyday of the empire. Basically a sort of club for the officer class. Is that fair? That men, sort of upwardly mobile, aspirational Roman men, sort of captains and so on, they gather what, underground?

And we don't know what they do do they something to do with bulls yeah well mithras is meant to have killed the bull at the beginning of time and um uh the cult of mithras kind of replicates this um so this this temple built around um ad 240 um and it's it's uh as you say, a cult. I mean, we said very like the Masons. It's the kind of place where you go and you meet useful people. And it has kind of different grades. So you go in at the bottom and the ambition is to go higher and higher and higher.

At the start of the show, I mentioned the very earliest document ever found uh written in britain yes is this um iou from the very early years of london and this is it so you can see it there very exciting but um next to it there is another one um and this is in a way equally exciting so probably from 65 to to 70 so you know less than a decade after the incineration of the city by Udica. Almost 2,000 years old. And the reason this is exciting is this is the first ever mention on a document from London

of the name of London. So, Londinium. So what am I looking at, Tom? Because, I mean, it's very, very faded. It's a wooden tablet and they've scratched on it with a stylus. Yeah, and so there'd be wax on it and the imprint of the stylus would leave marks on the wood. Yeah. And then it gets chucked out, gets thrown into the mud, sinks into the mud of the wall

brook and it's then preserved. And so whenever there's excavations here, you know, we're in the heart of the city, so they're always building, digging deep foundations. This stuff gets turned up and you can see there's all kinds of, you know, so there's coins, there's amphorae, there are can see there's all kinds of you know so there's coins there's um there's amphorae there are keys there's knit combs there's all kind you know mosaic so all kinds of stuff it's a fantastic hoard isn't it yeah it's wonderful and but i think i think the stuff that is really moving and powerful is is the organic material which otherwise doesn't survive

so as well as this writing stuff you've got an oar um you've got a piece of a door and you've got a sandal yeah the sandals kind of wonderful sandals are beautifully preserved really really wonderful um so anyone in london who hasn't been here it's an amazing thing it's free um we're not going to go down into the bowels of the building to look at the mithras temple we haven't been initiated no we haven't although we are men so we are allowed to do it right um but part of the problem is that we don't have huge amounts of written material explaining what's happening in the history of London. So we have to kind of work out from the archaeology. And most of the buildings of Roman London in its heyday have vanished. So all you really have are fragments.

And I think part of the fascination of Roman London is the way in which you can have a sense of it as it actually was. But it's also a place of myth and fantasy. So rather like, you know, Conrad imagining the Roman centurion coming up the Thames estuary over the entire sweep of its history. So all the way through the Middle Ages, through the Tudor period and so on. These fragments of Roman London that have been found by later periods have generated myths, fantasies. So I think we'll go for a break now. When we come back, we'll go and have a look at a few of the fragments that are preserved and they appear in quite odd contexts and interesting contexts. Excellent. I look forward to it. I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A

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head to therestisentertainment.com That's therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are in the heart of Roman London. We're by some roadworks, there are lorries. It's incredibly glamorous.

And Tom Holland, who's been talking about doing this podcast for basically as long as I've known him. I'm so excited. Has stopped by one of his favorite artifacts, which is basically just a big stone. So, Tom, tell us about this stone. Anyone with any interest in Roman London knows the thrill to be had from looking at lumps of stone. It's what it's all about. So we're opposite Cannon Street Railway Station, and we're looking at what is called the London Stone. Right. It's a it's all about. So we're opposite Cannon Street Railway Station and we're looking at what is called the London Stone.

Right. Which is one of one of the weirdest, most kind of folkloric things to be seen in the whole of the capital. And it's first mentioned, I think, in in the 12th century. And it was this great this huge kind of stone that stood in the 12th century. And it was this great, this huge kind of stone that stood in the middle of Cannon Street. And it was believed that whoever, you could ride up, you could touch it with your sword and then you'd rule London. Well, I have a good fact about this, Tom. Did you know that in 1450, the rebel leader Jack Cage,

leading a rebellion against non-friend of the show henry the sixth he struck it with his sword and claimed to be lord of london i did know that because it says that on the the placard which is right next to it tom don't spoil the illusion exactly so um and did you oh an ambulance is going past. It's the history of police, I think. Dominic, did you also know that in 1742, the London Stone was moved to the north side of the street and eventually set in an alcove in the wall of St. Swithin's Church on this side? You're very blatantly reading the placard now. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so... So this is this kind of... It's a sort of folkloric... How weird that this one stone, which, frankly, I've said a big stone, but it's... I mean, it's not that big. It's the size of a very large parcel basically so originally it was much larger okay and people have been chipping bits off it over the course of the middle ages all that kind of all that kind of

malarkey and basically nobody has any idea what it was or where it came from so john stowe the great elizabethan antiquary yeah um he says the cause why this stone was set there the time when or other memory hereof is none and so over the course of of the centuries people have come up with all kinds of theories as to what the london stone was so very popular theory in the tudor period was it had been set up by brutus um the trojan who came here and killed all the dragons, the founder of Britain. More recently, people have thought that it was a great stone on which the Druids conducted sacrifices. Other people have said that it's the Palladium, so it's the

kind of a stone that symbolizes the city, and that if it gets stolen, then the city will fall. So it's a kind of lapidary equivalent of the ravens um and and even now they're you know people are into ley lines and that kind of stuff are you know peter akroyd and everything all kind of obsessed with the london i'm surprised i can't see will self here or something like that exactly um but the where we're standing now is where the praetorium, so basically the governor's headquarters would have been, of which there is no trace whatsoever. No, it's just a leon.

And the theory is that this marked the gateway into the governor's headquarters. And so some sort of memory of that was preserved. And so it was preserved. So the Romans leave. There is this kind of great archway here, sort of memory of that was preserved and so it's it was preserved so so the romans leave um there is this kind of great archway here and it's it's preserved and it kind of sinks into the you know the accumulated dirt of the saxon town um and it's kept as a kind of totem of the city so if if that's the case then this is the only fragment of the praetorium that we have um but we don't know and that is both the kind of the fascination i think the frustration the mayor of london should come and be sworn in

touching this stone don't you so essentially unlike you know some of the grander roman cities so little remains of of roman london and we're jumping ahead a bit, I know, in time. But the reason for that is basically that the city falls into total ruin when the Romans leave in the Dark Ages, right? I mean... Yes, but it's also that the city plan as it exists now is essentially Anglo-Saxon. So it doesn't correspond to the

roman street plan at all and the the buildings are used um you know they're cannibalized yeah so the stone is used to build new the new structures um and the thing that's distinctive about london is that you do have this kind of break because when the romans leave the interior of london seems to have been regarded as as cursed you know people people don't move here the anglo-saxon settlement is further down the thames at aldwych and then you just have these kind of endless cycles of calamity that overwhelms london so endless fires endless rebuildings and so on and it's just it's just kind of incinerated it. There are trace elements.

They're almost all underground. So we went to the Mithraeum. That's kind of wonderful. There's also the amphitheater, which is at the Guildhall. And again, is a kind of underground museum. Really worth visiting. How much of the amphitheater is there? You can see traces of it.

Traces? Yeah. That word traces traces the producer's raising his eyebrows no i followed your recommendations on holidays and there are i've learned my lesson okay well let's let's say that there is more of the amphitheater than there is of the um the praetorium for those people who haven't listened to our previous podcast i should say last summer my family went on holiday to g Greece, and Tom recommended a temple in Sparta. He said it was absolutely brilliant. And my wife said, oh, we'll just check it on Google Maps first. So we checked it on Google Maps, had a look at the street view. There were about four very, very low stones in a field.

And the first review said, popular haunt for the homeless and drug addicts. So we decided to give it a miss. I think that speaks very poorly of your sense of adventure. It does. It does. Yeah. I think we went to the beach or something. Dominic, what I would say is that seen through the right lenses, if one is in the right mood,

if one has a spirit of adventure, it's possible to accept that the very lack of uh remnant remnants of a great building is in itself kind of romantic terribly romantic so as i walk past this branch of costa well i feel stirred at the thought of the great buildings that were once on this spot so actually what we're going to head to now is one of the um is one of the most, I think, romantic spots in the whole of Roman London. Oh. And it's... Don't oversell it, Tom. It's a trace element of what was the...

That word again. One of, if not the largest buildings north of the Alps, Roman buildings north of the Alps. And it was the Basilica of Londinium, which stood in the heart of the alps and it was the basilica of uh of londonium which stood in the heart of the forum and we're now so we're heading um eastwards from cannon street we've just come to to london bridge again so we're by monument tube station so we're by monument by the great monument built to the great fire of london um and we're going to head up to um a place that we've already visited in the course of this series which is leadenhall market oh yeah we went there for our for our goose in the christmas carol episode and

the basilica stood on leadenhall market and you know which is kind of fitting because the basilica served as a market it served as a kind of great assembly point uh it was so people who've been into you know a basilica in uh in in italy kind of you know church yeah structure of churches was modeled on on roman basilicas um it was three stories high so absolutely kind of sumptuous showcase building illustrating for people that um even in the kind of barbarous wilds of this chilly island uh set in the ocean you could have civilized shopping well and as luck would have it there's a marks and spencers just up the road but it's almost almost completely vanished but there is one chunk of it left um and i think we

should go and have a look at it now so tom of all the uh locations you brought me to none has been more unexpected than this this is a um well it's a barber shop there's no there's no way of uh selling it otherwise nicholson and griffin men's grooming um it looks excellent actually so we're in leadenhall market now this was always my favorite spot when i did tours of roman london for the uh the the children of the primary school that my daughters went to and we'd they'd come here that dad i was that dad the other dads all hated i was like it was always there to let him do fun things with the kids this is this is what this was the one thing i do every time we go on a tour of roman london and they you know 30 of them little crocodile and they come

here and we'd stand outside the nicholson griffin men's grooming and um they would let us go down into the basement so you'd have a little crocodile of children would head down solemnly into the basement see what is down in the basement and then solemnly come back up and we can now replicate that so that explains tom why just by the in the barbers i can see a photo of you on the wall with a sign saying do not open the door to this man listeners he is lying let's go in let's go in and see what's downstairs so fighting our way across the customers everywhere and in the corner what do we what do we see there it is so that's the basilica so so what we're seeing is we've got we've got people having their hair cut. Talking about the holidays. Basins and stuff. And then there's a kind of glass door.

And beyond the door, there is a chunk of recognizably Roman masonry. You can tell it's Roman because very kind of thin, narrow bricks. Yeah. And that is all that remains of the largest building built by the Romans north of the Alps. Tom, I take my hat the roman basilica you've not oversold this at all and it is more than a trace yeah it's quite a good bit of wall and it's behind this sort of uh glass door so it's clearly quite nicely preserved you can come and have your haircut and then go and admire it it's it's absolutely the place to come for your haircut

it's wonderful salon and it provides you with a little bit of Roman archaeology as well. What more could a gentleman want? Even a producer who is the soul of cynicism is looking wide-eyed with excitement. I think he's actually just had a haircut,

which is a shame because otherwise he can come down here and have a haircut. Have a haircut and penance. And the thing that's great is that there's a statue of Apollo,

a bust of Apollo on the ledge next to it. And there's a picture on the wall of the Basilica. It looks, was it as big as this, Tom? Yeah. That's huge. Yeah. It was a really, really huge structure. So, I mean, the size, I mean, what's that, the size of a football stadium, roughly? Yeah.

Yes. And so that was the centre of... And perfectly square. So the Roman Forum was perfectly square. Oh, so sorry, that picture is not the Basilica, it's the Forum. Yeah, it's the Forum. Well, it's the Basilica in the middle

and then you've got the Forum all around it. Yeah. And of course, that is a contrast with the modern city because notoriously the street plan of the city of London is an absolute mess. It's not a grid. So this is beautifully laid out. So this is much more a kind of manhattan style yeah um and the the the anglo-saxon street plan which has

replaced it is you know that's why it's so difficult to get around the city you always get lost but back in the roman period much more of a grid pattern and so you've got here um it tells you about it this support or pier is the only surviving part of roman london's basilica served as the base of an arch in one of the Basilica's arcades. Housed Roman London's town hall, law courts, central market. Built in AD 70. It was enlarged from AD 90 to 120. Became the largest

such building north of the Alps. So there you go. Yeah. I'll take my hat off to you. Okay. So I think there's one more of the great sights of Roman London to see. And that is the Wall, which was built towards the end of the great sites of Roman London to see, and that is the Wall, which was built towards the end of the 2nd century, possibly by a guy called Clodius Albinus.

So he's a usurper, is he? Yes, Clodius the White, Clodius the Pale. Yes, so he took on Septimius Severus, who himself subsequently came to britain and actually died here died in york um and uh claudius albinus came to a grisly end but uh it's very possible that he was the guy um because he was governor of britain um that he he built the wall so that london could serve as a a kind of fitting capital capital for a would-be emperor. That would be ridiculous.

I mean, to have London as your capital would have been ridiculous for a would-be Roman emperor, right? Yeah, but he's starting off, so he wants to... I mean, a bit actually, you know, kind of like Constantine as well, who is proclaimed emperor in York. There is this idea, you know, St Jerome calls Britain the nursery of tyrants because it has three

legions. And so therefore it's a very, very useful place for a would-be usurper to have, you know, you can go conquer Gaul and then hopefully move on to Italy as Constantine does. But, and so the walls have to, you know, I don't think that Roman London was under any military threat at the end of the second century, but the walls were built to serve as a symbol. Yeah. A grand prestigious capital. Status, prestige. Status had to have walls.

And these walls provided essentially, I mean, they lasted up until quite recently. So the gates, you know, so you have Ludgate, you have Newgate, you have Bishop's Gate, Allgate, all these gates preserve the trace elements of the wall that existed. They're a very, very sizable chunk, as I think I mentioned, by Tower Hill. Yeah. And there are other traces as well. And I want to take you, Dominic, to see what I think is the most romantic, the most unexpected chunk of the wall. And again,

it will require us to go underground. Excellent. I look forward to it. So, Tom, we've been walking along the line of the Roman wall. Very exciting. But a moment of excitement, an extraordinary drama that we couldn't possibly have anticipated we stopped at some traffic lights and who should be there but would you want to tell the story a wang one of our wangs james who i think works at the guild hall yeah um stopped us and said the sentence that i think both of us have been waiting all our lives to hear i'm one of your wangs so so james if you uh if you hear this uh it was great to meet you um and uh i hope you're enjoying this show and just to explain the producers say just before we're cancelled on

the grounds of just saying demented mad stuff um the wangs are members of the restless history club which you can of course join at restless history pod.com james very reasonable price yeah it's james will tell you it is practically yeah peanuts get all kinds of treats and delights we're giving them away uh now back to the roman wall we've walked along the course of the wall and here we are and it is actually a genuine bit of wall tom it is genuinely more than a trace although what we're so we're now on the barbican and um the barbican takes its name uh from a latin word a late latin Latin word, Barbicana, which is a watchtower. Okay.

It was built towards the end of the Roman period. But the stretch of wall that we're looking at now is not actually built by the Romans. Oh. So we're looking at crenellations and this was built by a friend of the show, Edward IV. Oh my word, Tom, this is incredibly disappointing. But the medieval wall, of course, is built on the friend of the show, Edward IV. Oh, my word, Tom. This is incredibly disappointing.

But the medieval wall, of course, is built on the line of the Roman wall. Right. So the Roman wall is... The bricks are wrong, aren't they? They're not the same very low kind of bricks that the Romans were. So, you know, again and again, the Roman city lies underground because there's been this kind of accumulation. The reason I brought you here is we're just um we're just east of cripplegate so why is it called cripplegate well according to stowe our antiquarian friend from the elizabethan period it derives from the cripples begging there all right that's what he says i mean that seems

the most improbable explanation really i think so i think he's i don't i think people have no idea why it has that name. But Cripplegate, we're now on the site of the Roman fort. So the Roman fort was built before the walls were built around AD 120. And the walls kind of, the line of the wall was joined up with the fort. And so that, you know, this garrison protecting the city, protecting the governor, this kind of crucial center of the Roman province. But I want to take you to see one particular stretch of authentic, act Roman wall. When you say authentic, I mean, is this authentic?

It is properly Roman. OK. But to do that, unsurprisingly, we have to go underground. OK, you're always luring me into basements okay so dominic i've i've brought you further um further westwards we're now um yeah we're outside the london entrance into a multi-story car park that is it well it's not a multi-story car park but it is it is an underground car park we're by the museum of london there's another chunk of the of the medieval wall so this is edward the over the fourth wall actually i think this is actually um i think this is um maybe even early modern i think it's it's um tudor yeah i think this is tudor anyway we're now at the london wall car park never let it be said that we don't go to the most exotic and glamorous locations um so we're going into the car park um and we're directly

under the line so so this the street overhead us is called london wall yeah and all of this stretch got blitzed the road that is called london wall which is basically runs along the line of the london wall um didn't exist before the Blitz. So this is all part of the city redevelopment that included the building of the Barbican. Yeah. So the Barbican, for those people who don't know, who don't know London, is this sort of colossal complex,

this sort of monument, isn't it, to the 60s kind of spirit, isn't it? Yeah. It's kind of semi-brutalist. Famously, you get lost. You just kind of... I got lost in famously you get lost you just yeah kind of i've got a lot of many times yes um it's a brutalist maze so but this car park was built as part of the redevelopment uh and once again you know a familiar story on this episode uh

the developers found uh something unexpected which was a chunk of the original roman wall tom does it not occur to you that there must have been so much destroyed in the 19th century yeah when they were digging the underground and so on i mean imagine the roman artifacts that must have been lost yeah i think back then if you were digging foundations and you discovered some roman remains you i mean you'd probably keep it you give a few chunks of it to an antiquarian and then you just get on with the business yeah you would i mean it's an you know interestingly bearing in mind that britain in in the roman period was a very peripheral province very kind of minor province we probably know more about uh the archaeology of britain than we do of any other comparable province really because the um the laws that have been brought in to conserve

right are so good and have been so good um and the tradition of antiquarianism in this country is is is so venerable that we actually know quite a lot about roman britain um and and that's so i can't i can't help feeling that we're just trudging endlessly through an underground car park. So we've been trudging through this car park and there are bays, so we've got to 34 now and now we've got to 35, so this is probably the most thrilling podcast

has never been more exciting and we just need to go a little bit further on and Dominic, you will see something truly astonishing. But the problem is we've now only reached 38 and we still what can we talk about to keep this going um well okay i'll tell you about hadrian yeah so um hadrian famously comes to it uh comes to britain uh and builds his wall. But it seems that during, either before or probably before, just before he arrives, there seems to have been fires in London.

Yep. And so he may well have sponsored much of the redevelopment. And it's unclear whether these fires were just kind of isolated accidents of the kind that happened all the time or whether perhaps there'd been some uprising we just don't know this is probably the point to which i should tell the audience that i'm wearing new shoes yeah that are unbelievably painful whereas i'm wearing walking boots so while tom is whispering on about adrian i'm just in mute agony until he continues to trudge okay through this

underground car park we've now reached 48 what do we have to get to 49 50 51 and at bay 52 we are at journey's end and Dominic I think you will agree that it's worth the trudge it's worth the blisters it's worth the uh the slog along the very unromantic environs of an underground car park to see what we have so tell us what tell us what we have here it's just a bit of war isn't it i mean it is a bit of war so this is roman i mean you can sort of tell by the, again, you've got these very long kind of flat low bricks, haven't you? Very recognizable to anyone who's been to it. But I mean, do you not, I mean, you're not sounding impressed.

I think this is the most amazing thing to find in a car park. It's a chunk of Roman wall occupying two bays. It's very moving. Yeah, you're right. And they've built, you know, the... They've built the car park around it. They've built the car park around the wall. There's a few old scooters around. Okay, I thought you'd be more impressed by this.

I think the fact they fenced it off was a bit disappointing. Yeah, but it kind of adds to the whole ambience. There's just a bloody big sign in front saying, City of London, no parking. Well, obviously you can't park there because there's a chunk of roman wall yeah somebody's scribbled a bit of graffiti next to the wall that says oddly priority okay well i i think this is one of the great sites of of not just the city of london but just to be absolutely clear if you're flying to london from let's say

america on holiday yeah go straight here I don't think this should be... Yeah. I don't think it should be in your top ten. I think it should. What, above... Well, the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, it's too obvious, but you want to see a chunk of Roman wall in a car park.

This is where you come. Yeah, your children will thank you for it. Well, Dominic, you're a Doctor Who fan. Yeah. So the way that you get out of that, we go through a door over here and there is a very, very Doctor Who passageway. And what we're going you get out of that, we go through a door over here and there is a very, very Doctor Who passageway.

And what we're going to do now... Oh God, he's still going. Well, I just want you to see the Doctor Who passageway. You might be more excited about that than the chunk of wall. Okay. Oh, it's actually quite dark.

Maybe we shouldn't go long here. You sure this is... No, this is not sensible. No, this is not sensible. This is not sensible. Normally... Oh, we'll just show Dominic how Doctor Who it is. Oh yeah, that is not sensible. No, this is not sensible. This is not sensible. Normally... Oh, we'll just show Dominic how Doctor Who it is.

Oh, yeah, that is quite... Yeah. It's quite spooky, isn't it? I don't know if we can get out. Let's go and find out. Maybe not. Tony, I wouldn't shut that door. Oh, my God, and here's a Dalek.

I've got one more place, Dominic, to show you, and that is a kind of very moving sight, unexpected sight that takes us back is it to the end of is it in a car park no it's not let's do it so dominic we've been seeing um highlights of the great days of roman london but for the end of the show the end of our tour I've brought you to the foot of the gherkin this kind of weird shaped tower in and not just the foot of the gherkin Tom we are literally right outside a building that says in gigantic silver letters Holland house yeah well where else absolutely my favorite place in London and properly where I should be living and I hate

one day to to move in take it over but dominic the reason i've brought you here you are actually now standing you're standing on a grave oh my word so buried here so what we've got at the in front of the gherkin there is a a black paving slab with um a kind of laurel wreath on it and then next to it there is some marble engraved and you've got in latin these manibus puella incognita londoniansis hicksapulta est translation to the spirits of the dead the unknown young girl from roman london lies buried here so what's the story tom so when they would dig and again it's you know again and again it's about developers digging stuff up and to their fury discovering traces of the roman city

and what they found here was something really really amazing which was the grave of of a young girl um and that's odd because the romans did not bury people within the city limits yeah they buried them so there's a clue there that probably she is Christian because those kind of earlier taboos prevailed much less with Christians. Right. And sure enough, when they dated the bones, they found that they dated her to 350, 400.

So it's plausible she could have been a Christian. Yeah, and so it's towards the end of Roman Britain. And the city of London by this point was in decline decline we are within the limits of the city walls but perhaps by this point you know already the population is falling uh buildings are kind of being given up to market gardens so what we can imagine is sort of this is an area of what allotments yes exactly maybe already becoming ruined yeah exactly kind of so so um the the focus of of activity in the very very kind of last decades of roman london would have been down towards the port down towards the docks um and we are further up from that so you can imagine that this would

perhaps be kind of agricultural land by by the end of the fourth century but the story her story is i think i mean it's very touching and it kind of it's a perfect end for this tour because again and again we've also been saying another theme is is how people kind of project fantasies onto these strange trace elements that they find so what happened with this was that that her remains were put into storage in the museum of london for about i think about three years and then 2007 once the Gherkin had been completed, they held a religious ceremony for her. So there was a memorial service. Of what religion? Well, so there was a memorial service held for her at St. Bottles Church, which is around the corner at Aldgate. And there was a full-blown procession

from the church that came here. So there were vicars and all kinds of people. But there was also the Lady Mares. And they came here and laid her beneath this slab that we're standing next to now. And the Lady Mares scattered rose petals over her. Is that what the Lady Mares thought Romans would have done? I think so. Well, you have to kind of create traditions, don't you? They're basically inventing a Roman now.

You have to invent traditions. Russell Crowe came and scattered some soil and the wonderful thing was is that is that um uh so ever since the mid 19th century yeah there's been a ban on burying people within the limits of the city but they they put in a special provision that um uh in in um in in 2007 that you could you could um you could bury people here um you could reuse burial plots if the previous occupant on the site had been there for more than 75 years and so obviously with her you could because she'd been here for kind of 1600 years so um that kind of intersection of developers and archaeology, of material finds and fantasy.

It's the story of this episode, isn't it? It's the story of this episode. It's a nicely kind of melancholy, haunting note on which to end. Yes, and it reminds us that essentially Roman London fades away and ebbs away, and we don't really know what happens. Well, we will be taking up the story of london in future podcasts won't we we will by the time we finish we'll have been through every period of the capital's history but i think for now we would say what do you say valet valet at quay

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