South London. Walter Besant

Trajectus, the mediæval ferry, now St. Mary Overies Dock.

      Observe, however, that we are as yet very far from embanking the river, or draining the marsh, or making it inhabitable. If you walk across Hackney Marsh by one of its causeways any autumnal morning, especially after rain, you will understand something of what Southwark looked like. Two high causeways crossed the marsh, of which as yet not a square foot had been drained or reclaimed; yet the place was not so wild as it had been; the wild birds had been partly driven away by the noise and crowd of London, and by the concourse of ships sailing continually up and down. There was as yet no bridge. The ferry crossed the river backwards and forwards all day long. The causeways were crowded with people; but as yet nothing on the lowlands. Before the marshes could be drained the river had to be embanked.

      No one knows when that was done. It was done, however. At some time or other a high earthwork was raised along the north and south banks of the river, enclosing the marshes, converting them into pasture and arable land, and keeping out the tides of Thames. It was a work of the most signal benefit; it was also a colossal piece of work, measured by hundreds of miles, for it was continued all round the islets and coast of Essex. It was a work requiring constant repair, though most of it has stood splendidly. The wall gave way, however, at Barking in the time of Henry the Second; at Wapping in the time of Elizabeth; at Dagenham early in the last century: at each of these places the repair of the wall was costly and difficult. The embankment left behind it a low-lying ground, rich and fertile; orchards and woods began to grow and to flourish upon it; yet it was still swampy in parts, numerous ponds lay about on it, streams wound their way confined in channels, and let out through the embankment at low tide by culverts.

      Whether the bridge came before the embankment I cannot decide. Yet I think that the embankment came first; for the existence of Southwark – that of any part of South London – depended not on the bridge, but on the embankment and the ferry. Given, however, the embankment; the two causeways; the bridge; two ferries – one at St. Mary Overies and the other lower down, opposite the Tower: given, also, direct communication with Dover, with Thorney – thence with the midlands and the north: there could not fail to arise a settlement or town of some kind on the south of the Thames.

      Let us next consider the conditions under which the town of Southwark began to exist and to continue for a great many years.

      (1) There was no wall or any means of defence, except the marsh which surrounded it and prohibited the approach of an army except along the causeway.

      (2) The ground lay low on either side the causeway, and south of the embankment. Although the tide no longer ebbed and flowed among the reeds and islets of the marsh, yet it was covered with small ponds, some of them stagnant, others formed by the many streams which flowed towards the culverts on the embankment, through which at low tide they escaped into the Thames; until some kind of drainage was attempted, the place caused agues and fevers for any who slept in its white miasma. In other words, not an embankment only, but drainage of some kind, had to be undertaken before life was possible on the marsh.

      (3) There were no quays, no shipping, no merchants, no trade, on the south side. All merchandise coming up from the south for export at the port of London, all merchandise landed at the port for the south, had to be carried across the bridge.

      (4) The crowds of people connected with the trade of London – the porters, carriers, drivers, grooms and stable-boys, stevedores, lightermen, sailors foreign and native, the employés of the merchants, their wives, women and children – all these people lived in London itself; they had their taverns and drinking shops; their sleeping places and eating places, in London; all the people employed in providing food and drink and sport, lived on the other side. South London had to be a place without trade, without noise, without disturbance of workmen, without broils among the sailors or fights among foreigners.

      (5) It stood on the south bank of a river swarming with fish.

      (6) The only parts on which houses could be built were along the line of the causeways, or along the line of the embankment.

      These were the conditions. We should expect, therefore, to find the place thinly inhabited; and to find that the houses were all built beside or along the raised ways. We should next expect to find along the causeways that the houses belonged to the wealthier class.

      We should expect, further, to find no sailors' or working men's quarters. The former because there were no ships; the latter because there were no markets. Lastly, we should not be surprised to find the place very early occupied by inns and places of accommodation for those who resorted to London.

      All this was, in fact, what did take place. The Roman remains are numerous; they are all found along the causeways; the existence of a Roman cemetery shows that it was a place of some importance. I say some, because its very limited extent proves that it was never a large place. I will return immediately to the Roman remains.

      There was, however, one trade, one class of working men which took up its abode along the embankment of Southwark: it was that of the fishermen, driven across the river by the growth of London. There was no room for the fishermen with their coracles and nets along the line of quays on the north side; they wanted a place to haul up their boats, and a place to spread their nets, – they could not find either in the north; nor would the fish be caught in waters troubled perpetually by oars and keels. The fisherfolk, therefore, put up their huts along the embankment; for long centuries afterwards the fisherfolk continued to live in South London. The last remnant of Thames fishermen occupied, well into the present century, a single court in Lambeth; it is described as unpaved, unglazed, unlighted, dirty, and insanitary. But the last salmon had been caught in the river; the Thames fishermen were by that time almost starved out of existence. I am sure that the south was always their place of residence; the foreshore offered them what they could not find on the north bank. To him, however, who considers the fisheries of the Thames, there are many points on which, for want of exact information, he may speculate and theorise as much as he pleases. For instance, later on, there were fishermen living at Limehouse. Some of the Thames watermen lived here also – the legend of Awdry the ferryman assigns to him a residence on the south; their favourite place of residence, however, was St. Katherine's first, and Wapping afterwards.

      The Roman remains found up and down the place prove my assertion that the people who lived here were what we should call substantial. One need not catalogue the long list of Roman trouvailles; but, to take the more important, in the year 1819 there was discovered, in taking up the foundations of some old houses belonging to St. Thomas's Hospital, in St. Thomas's Street, a fine tesselated pavement, about ten feet below the surface of the ground. In the following year, in the area facing St. Saviour's Grammar School, seven or eight feet below the surface, there was found another, of a more elaborate design. Only a part of this was uncovered, as the Governors of the School forbade further investigation: it remains to this day still to be examined and unearthed, under the present potato and fruit market. At the entrance of King Street, at a depth of fifteen or sixteen feet, were found a great many Roman lamps, a vase, and other sepulchral deposits. And in tunnelling for a new sewer through Blackman Street and Snow Fields, in 1818 and 1819, and again in Union Street, in 1823, numerous Roman antiquities were discovered. In Trinity Square was found a coin of Gordianus Africanus. In Deverill Street, south of the Dover road, other coins were discovered; in St. Saviour's churchyard, a coin of Antoninus Pius. It has also been proved that an extensive Roman cemetery existed on the south of the ancient settlement. In the year 1840, when excavations were going on for the purpose of building a new wing to St. Thomas's Hospital, another tesselated pavement was disclosed, with passages and walls of other chambers, all built on piles, showing that the houses beside the causeway were thus supported in the marshy ground; Roman coins and pottery were also found here. Another pavement was discovered on the opposite side, south of Winchester Palace. On the river bank, at the corner of Clink Street, an ancient jetty was found; and in the new Southwark Street, deep down, groups of piles, pointed below, on which houses had been built. In many of the later buildings Roman tiles have been found. These remains are quite sufficient to prove that many wealthy people lived in Roman Southwark, and that they occupied villas built on piles beside the causeway.

      Since, too, from the earliest times Southwark was famous for its inns, and since the same conditions prevailed in the fourth as in the fourteenth