London Under by Peter Ackroyd Read Free Book Online Page A

Farquhar, in
Sir Harry Wildair
(1701), refers to “the dear perfume of Fleet Ditch.” Alexander Pope completes this litany of Fleet elegists with the
Dunciad
(1728), in which the river forms the suitably murky background to a satire on London corruption and wretchedness; on its stream rolls “the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames.”
    The canal was found to be less than useful to the merchants and wholesalers who, by encroaching on the whole area, reduced it to chaos and dirt once more. On 24 August 1736 the
Gentleman’s Magazine
reported that “a fatter boar was hardly ever seen than one taken up this day, coming out of the Fleet Ditch into the Thames.It proved to be a butcher’s near Smithfield Bar, who had missed him five month, all which time he had been in the common sewer, and was improved in price from ten shillings to two guineas.” In the winter of 1763 a barber from Bromley, the worse for drink, fell into the waters and was so enmired in mud that he froze to death overnight.
    Eventually the canal was built over, and the wharves became streets; a public market was erected just above the junction withFleet Street, now calledLudgate Circus, and in the 1820sFarringdon Street was built. The task of hiding the Fleet was more or less complete. Yet it was not wholly or safely buried. In 1846 it blew up and its fetid gases, as well as its waters, escaped into the outer world. The roads became impassable, and the houses inundated. Three poorhouses were deluged and partly destroyed by a great wave of sewage. A steamboat was smashed against theBlackfriars Bridge. At times of storm the river still proves hazardous for those who live along its course. The tunnels of London Underground in the vicinity are kept dry by means of pumps.
    The archaeology of the area is matter for wonder and contemplation. The skeleton of an infant was found on the southern edge of one of the two islands; the child came from a time before the foundation of Roman London, but the anaerobic conditions allowed some of its flesh and skin to survive. Whether it drowned, or was killed, is of course not known. Glass kilns were builtby the eastern bank of the river in the third century. Evidence also exists from theRoman period ofcoins and pottery, of rings and glasses, of leather shoes and wooden writing tablets, of spatulas and hooks used for surgical purposes. Three keys from the medieval period had dropped down to the Roman level. The foods of various periods—the fruits, the nuts, the cereals—have been found. All the panoply of early London life is here.

    TheFleet Ditch, behind Field Lane, 1841 (illustration credit Ill.11)
    Yet time may also be suspended above the river. Traces of the Roman road leading out of Newgate have been discovered; the modernHolborn Viaduct followsprecisely the same path. The same building stood onLudgate Hill, overlooking theFleet, from the twelfth century until a night in 1940 when it was destroyed by fire bombs; it had no doubt served a variety of purposes over its long life, including those of a shop, an inn and a lodging house.
    An octagonal stone building, most likely to be a Romano-Celtic temple, was built close to the banks of the river. Its interior was red with a border of green and white lines. A pit beside it contained flecks of charcoal and a human skull. The Fleet was once a sacred place, associated with the Celtic worship of the head. The skulls ofthe Walbrook offer a parallel. The temple was destroyed at the beginning of the fourth century, at the time when Christianity had become the dominant religion of London. A large building of many rooms was then built on the same site. It has been suggested, therefore, that the temple was torn down and a bishop’s palace erected in its place. Two Roman images, of Bacchus and of Ceres, had been flung into the waters; the
Mirror
of 22 March 1834 also reported the discovery of “a considerable number of medals, with crosses, crucifixes and Ave Marias engraved