When Walbrook Creek was a landing-place having a road connecting it with the interior, we may be sure that boating passages across the Thames would be common, and very soon a link with the road to Dover would be formed on this line. Thus, the road through Southwark must have followed the foundation of London immediately. As is well known, Ptolemy put Londinium in Kent, but he—as Dr. Bradley pointed out—was frequently very wrong in regard to inland places.
Fig. 171.
Fig. 172.
An ancient bronze mace-head was discovered in the gravel taken from under old London Bridge, which, I believe, has never been illustrated (Fig. [171]). It was one of the mace-heads which are classed in the British Museum as of the Bronze Age, but they are, I think, early British. I have found a drawing of the mace-head in question in some interesting volumes of sketches by Fairholt at the South Kensington Museum. Fairholt’s note reads: “Bronze mace found at Barnes, November 10, 1841, amongst the gravel taken from old London Bridge.” Fig. [a]172] is an early bronze mace-head from Italy, in the British Museum, given for comparison.
The conditions were favourable for establishing a way in the line of London Bridge, for hard ground here approaches near to the south bank of the river. That the Roman city spread from Walbrook Creek as a centre is now generally agreed. Mr. Lambert’s plan of the finding-places of Claudian and pre-Claudian coins shows them distributed near the primitive port. Again, the city Watling Street is probably the beginning of the old road from the port. Wren found traces of an old street running aslant under the end of old St. Paul’s, and this probably formed part of the way towards Aldersgate. The acceptance of such a route as the main street of the oldest London would solve the difficulty of the “fault” in the lines of Newgate Street and Cheapside. I suppose that the Roman street through Newgate (which all would agree was formed at a late time when the walls and gates were built) branched westward from the old Verulam road I have been describing. In a similar way, the Roman road on the course of Old Street probably branched to the east out of the same ancient Verulam road. Mr. Codrington and others have supposed that the road to the east was continued also westward, but no evidence of this has been found. Stow, in his account of Aldersgate Street, says: “On the east side at a Red Cross turneth the Ealde Street, so called for that it was the old highway from Aldersgate Street for the north-east parts of England before Bishopsgate was builded.”
Fig. 173.
The Westminster Crossing.—It was remarked above that the emergence of Verulam into importance probably followed on the use of a river crossing at Westminster and a trackway in the course of Edgware Road, which is known to have been part of a later Roman highway—the Great Watling Street. It is generally allowed, as by Dr. Rice Holmes, that a British trackway underlies the general course of this great Roman highway from Dover to St. Albans and beyond. The monk Higden, writing about 1360, said that Watling Street passed to the west of Westminster, but it has been objected that what the monk thought was not evidence. However, in his time and until about two centuries ago, an important river crossing was maintained at the Horse-Ferry. The Horse-Ferry Road appears to have been made to divert a direct passage at Westminster when the great hall of the new Palace was built, about 1100. Sighting the line of Tothill Street, we see that it would have passed by the old Palace, but that the Hall blocks the way. The Abbey lies at the side of this line, which seems to mark the boundary of St. Margaret’s churchyard. Here, too, were found the Roman tomb and what appears to be a terminus mark (T II). The Horse-ferry is mentioned in an order of 1246: “The Bailiff of Kennington is to cause a barge to be made to carry people and horses over the Thames” (Hudson Turner’s Domestic Architecture, vol. i.). Canterbury documents show that the ferry was later in the charge of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and doubtless Lambeth Palace exists here as being on the great road. In the more direct line there still exists a short street called Stangate, which is an old name for a paved way. When Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VII., died at Eltham, “her body was conveyed to Stangate over against Westminster” (Sandford). A way to the river also was long maintained through New Palace Yard to a landing-place (see Fig. [173]), from Norden’s map, c. 1600). Matthew Paris, in his route map of the way to Jerusalem, shows London Bridge and also the Westminster and Lambeth route, because these were alternative crossings. Tothill Street is mentioned in mediæval documents. It is possible that in early days there was a ford at Westminster, for Mr. Lambert has given reasons for thinking that formerly the tide did not rise so high as at present by 6 ft. Testimony on the course of the way from Westminster to Edgware Road is given in Ogilvie’s Road Book, 1675: “Piccadilly ... on the left falls in the way from Westminster by Tuttle Street; four poles from this corner, you have a way on the right by the side of Hyde Park into the other road at Tyburn.” The ancient road from Westminster would have crossed what is now Green Park in the direction of Tyburn Lane, now Park Lane. Here, in Tyburn Lane, was “Osulstone,” which gave its name to the Hundred in which London city is situated (see map recently reproduced by London Topographical Society). Tyburn, close by, was the place of execution, and doubtless the place of meeting of the old folk-mote of the Hundred, because it was at the cross roads. I have more detail establishing the continuity of this route (on which Dr. Haverfield expressed doubt), but I will pass to a few general final considerations.