The River of London

by Hilaire Belloc

The formation of the surface-soil in this neighbourhood is well worthy of study.

Immediately in the bounds of Lambeth Church and Palace the superficial hard gravels (which have been approaching the river for two miles and leaving a belt of marsh to their right or north) touch the stream. Not quite opposite, but nearly so—quite nearly enough for the establishment of a ferry—the large isolated patch of gravel which lay between the two mouths of the old brooks and which supported the nucleus of Westminster affords a good landing-place. It is true that there is (or was) a patch of bad ground immediately to the north of this gravel, but very soon the rising ground which is now marked by Constitution Hill and Grosvenor Gardens gave good going and led the track up, nearly coincident with Park Lane, to “Tyburn,” whence the Watling Street makes straight for the north and west along the line of the modern Edgware Road.

For a mile or two farther up, until the gravel in Chelsea was reached, opposite the steep land of Battersea crossing may have been difficult, but between Battersea and Chelsea it was certainly as easy in early times, or easier than at London Bridge, and after that, of course, as one goes westward the passage of the river becomes easier and easier until on the present western limits of London, at Brentford, you have what is almost certainly an original ford across the river, at low tide at least, and one which some authorities have regarded as the crossing place of Julius Cæsar.

It is not, therefore, because the crossing at London is unique—it is, on the contrary, but the last of a long series of crossings—it is because it is the lowest crossing of the Thames that it came to be of such capital importance in the history of this island. Upon it converge the great military road from Chichester and the Great Port, the still more important road from the Kentish ports, and in particular from the Straits of Dover, the road from Shoreham going directly northward, of which such slight but such conclusive evidence has been discovered. These from the south—while from the north the great eastern road from Colchester and the corn-lands of Essex, the northern road with its branches to the ports and to the corn-lands of East Anglia, the north-western road from the garrison at Chester with its branch to the arable lands of Lancashire, past the fortress of Manchester, and even the western road from Bath and from the mines of the Mendip and from the garrison of Caerleon, all converge.

Once this scheme of ways had been established (and they were certainly all complete before the end of the fourth century), once London had thus become the hub of a wheel of such spokes and the centre of such a web, the Thames which had made it, making also its commerce from the sea and its value as a point of transhipment between inland and sea-borne traffic, assured its eminence over all the other towns of the island.

I will not here repeat the arguments which I have dealt with in other studies, and which are advanced in defence of various hypothetical dates for the first building of the bridge. Its establishment across the river marked, of course, the completion of the process whereby London was produced. For once the bridge was there it was a necessary terminal to sea-borne traffic, and a convenient one to inland traffic; it was the military communication between north and south, and the commercial one as well. I will close by distinguishing between the very few pieces of actual evidence and the presumption built upon them.

We have a line of Roman remains pointing to a place upon the northern bank, somewhat to the east of London Bridge and almost coincident with the opening of the subway. Opposite it we have the old landing place near “Stoney Lane” which is supposed to indicate a southern causeway meeting this identical causeway from the north. Between the two there may have been in early Roman times a ferry. On the other hand, we have the Stane Street pointing directly at the southern terminal of old London Bridge (a trifle to the east of the modern bridge) and we have the undoubted presence of that bridge through the Dark Ages, which did not, as a rule, possess any considerable monument which they had not inherited from Rome. We have, further, the fact that the earliest line traceable for the Roman town puts London Bridge nearly at its centre; and again the fact that on the line of the bridge certain Roman relics have been unearthed or fished up.

In the absence of more positive evidence we may take it as sufficient for history that in the natural course of things a ferry probably preceded the bridge, yet the bridge existed, if not when the Romans came, at any rate shortly after their occupation.[3]

Thus it was, then, that the River of London seems to have made London.