In my second column on the archaeology of Greater London, I stroll through the Saxon town, meander through the medieval city, and finally alight on some post-medieval and modern sites. There is a lot to review here, from the evidence of London’s last Romans to those who lived here in some of its most difficult of times: the Blitz during the Second World War.
Saxon Lundenwic
An excellent starting point for this column is CA 213 (December 2007), which reported from St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square during a redevelopment at that time. Among other finds made was that of a sarcophagus containing the body of a middle-aged man buried c.AD 390- 430, at the end of the Roman era and start of the Saxon period. It was linked to the origins of the church in the late Roman era and is therefore among the earliest surviving physical evidence of Christianity in Britain. This sets the scene nicely for wider examinations of the Saxon town of Lundenwic. When Current Archaeology launched in the late 1960s, the town’s precise location was yet to be identified, but we now know it to have been to the west of Roman Londinium, in the modern-day area of the Strand, Aldwych, and Covent Garden, as examined in CA 93 (August 1984), CA 124 (May 1991), and CA 158 (July 1998), among others. The origins of Westminster Abbey, further west, represent the other notable Saxon find from London, examined in CA 162 (April 1999). But it is an all-too-brief snapshot of a still little-known period in the city’s history.
The Medieval City
Moving into the medieval era, the sites and finds come thicker and faster, both within the ‘City’ (the boundaries of the old Roman settlement) and beyond, including back in Westminster. A great review of knowledge from early in the days of Current Archaeology comes in CA 49 (March 1975), and this can be contrasted with another ‘state of the nation’ survey in CA 201 (January 2006), when the medieval galleries of the Museum of London were redeveloped. There is especially rich coverage from along the waterfront in this era: CA 66 (April 1979) and CA 244 (July 2010) give an excellent comparison of knowledge from here across a 30-year timespan, and more recently CA 346 (January 2019) explored the mountains of finds, of all types, made from the waterfront. A personal favourite is CA 391 (October 2022), which explored one of the City’s great lost treasures, its bridge, which was completed in 1209, partially dismantled and widened in 1761, and replaced in 1823-1831.
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