South London. Walter Besant

decisive proof of complete desertion and ruin. In Southwark, on the other hand, the streets remained the same – they were the two causeways and the embankment – because none others were then possible. High Street, Borough, is still, as it always has been, the ancient causeway connecting the new port of London with the Dover road.

      Between the years 600 and 1000 Southwark suffered the vicissitudes which must happen in a period of continual warfare to an undefended suburb. In times of peace, when trade was possible, the place was what the Icelander Snorro Thirlesen calls an 'emporium.' All the merchandise carried to London from the south for export lay there waiting to be carried across the quays: the merchants themselves found accommodation there. But we cannot believe that when the Danish fleets brought their fierce warriors to the very walls of London, Southwark – or any other settlement – would continue to exist unfortified. That the place remained without a wall, except for certain temporary walls put up by the Danes, proves that it was regarded by itself as of small importance. This is also proved by another fact – namely, that the place was always occupied without defence. When, for instance, the Danes held London for twelve years, leaving it a wreck and a ruin, can we believe that any people remained in Southwark? In times of peace the fishermen lived here for greater convenience of their work; London by this time was impossible for them, because it was walled all along the river side. If peace was prolonged, inns were set up for the merchants: people built houses along the causeway. When war began again, and the enemy once more appeared, Southwark was again abandoned. This is the history of South London for a thousand years – alternate occupation and abandonment.

      There exists a very singular heresy concerning Southwark. I would deal with it tenderly, because one, if not more, of the heretics is a personal friend of my own. It is that the site of the first or original London was on the South; that Roman London stood on the site of Southwark; and that, at some time or other, there was a transference of sites, the whole of Roman London migrating to the other side. It is even maintained that the name of Walworth proves that there was once a wall round the city of the south. To me the name of Walworth indicates the proximity of the high causeway running through its midst. The consideration of the site – the marshy, wet, and unwholesome site – is quite sufficient for me. At no time, not even in the time of the Lake dwellers, have marshes been selected by choice for the building of cities. Before the Embankment and the Causeway, the South of London was impossible for the residence of man.

      The transference of sites is a theory often called in to account for, and make possible, other theories. Thus, the late James Fergusson invented the transference of sites in order to bolster up certain theories of his own on the Holy Places of Jerusalem. Here, however, there is no theory: only a statement by a geographer evidently ignorant of the boundaries of an obscure province of a district in a distant country which he had never seen. London, Ptolemy said, was in Kent. All the Roman remains, as we have seen, are found by the Causeway and the Embankment – there never could have been any wall; and, indeed, the only answer that is required to such a theory is to point to the natural conditions of the site. Is it conceivable that people would settle themselves in a marsh when they had firm and dry ground across the river?

      CHAPTER II

      EARLY HISTORY

      Southwark, then, had no reason for existence at all except for its connection with London by bridge and ferry, and especially by bridge. Before the Ferry and the Bridge there was no Southwark. The history of Southwark is closely connected with the Bridge. It was on the south end of the Bridge that all the fighting took place, London very generously handing over her battles to her daughter of the south. I propose, in this chapter, to discourse about the Bridge and one or two of its earlier battles.

      It is sometimes stated, confidently, that before the Bridge there was the Ferry. Why? To carry people across the river and 'dump' them down in the marsh? But people had no business in the marsh. First came the Bridge and the Causeway to connect it with the Dover road. Then traffic began to cross the Bridge and to meet the Dover road. But as yet there was no ferry. Then came the Embankment, and the appearance of houses along the Causeway and on the Embankment. As the trade of London increased, so Southwark – I would we had the Roman name – increased in proportion. Inns were created for the convenience of merchants, trade was drawn from Thorney on the south by the Bridge, just as it was diverted on the north by the military way connecting the great high road with London. When the Causeway was always filled with caravans and long trains of heavily laden packhorses; when the inns were crowded with merchants and their slaves; when the Bridge was all day covered with passengers and carriers; then the Ferry was demanded as a quicker and an easier way of getting across. Two Ferries, there were; perhaps more. One of these ran from Dowgate Dock to St. Mary Overies; the other crossed the river lower down, nearer the Tower. So things remained for nearly two thousand years – say, from A.D. 100 to A.D. 1750. If a man wanted to get across the river, he did not make his way to London Bridge, and painfully walk across amid the carriers and the caravans, the plunging horses and the droves of oxen; he stepped into the boat and was ferried across. We must not look on the Bridge as a means of getting across the river for the people: it was not; it was the means of conveying merchandise to and fro; it was a construction most important for military purposes; it was a barrier to prevent a hostile fleet from getting higher up the river; but, for the ordinary passenger, the boat was the quicker and the easier means of conveyance.

      When was the Bridge built? It is impossible to say. It was not there A.D. 61, when Queen Boadicea's troops sacked the City and murdered the people. It was there when Allectus led his troops out to fight the Roman legions. It was there very early in the Roman occupation, as is proved by the quantities of Roman coins of the four centuries of their tenure found in the bed of the river on the site of the old Bridge. It is also proved by the fact that Southwark was a settlement of the wealthier class, who could not have lived in a place absolutely without supplies, had there been no bridge. We may take any time we please for the construction of the Bridge, so long as it is quite early – say, before the second century.

      The building of the Bridge can be arrived at with such great certainty that I have no hesitation in presenting a drawing of it. As this Bridge has never before been figured by the pencil of any artist, it will be well for me to indicate the steps by which its reconstruction has been made possible.

      The Britons themselves were quite unable to construct a bridge of any kind, unless in the primitive methods observed at Post Bridge and Two Bridges, on Dartmoor, by a slab of stone laid across two boulders. The work, therefore, was certainly undertaken by Roman engineers. We have, in the next place, to inquire what kind of bridge was built at that time by the Romans. They built bridges of wood and of stone; many of these stone bridges still remain, in other cases the pieces of hewn stone still remain. The Bridge over the Thames, however, was of wood. This is proved by the fact that, had it been of the solid Roman construction in stone, the piers would be still remaining; also by the fact that London had to be contented with a wooden bridge till the year 1176, when the first bridge of stone was commenced. Considerations as to the comparative insignificance of London in the first century, as to the absence of stone in the neighbourhood, and as to the plentiful supply of the best wood in the world from the forests north of the City, confirm the theory that the Bridge was built of wood. We have only, therefore, to learn how Roman engineers built bridges of wood elsewhere, in order to know how they built a bridge of wood over the Thames. And this we know without any doubt.

      First: they drove piles into the bed of the river – not upright piles, but inclined at an angle; they placed two piles side by side, and opposite to these two more; they connected the two piles by ties and the opposite piles with them by transverse girders. Across them they laid a huge beam – a tree roughly hewn, and across these beams they laid the floor of stout planks. The weight of beams and planks and the parapet put up afterwards, with perhaps other planks for greater safety, pressed down the piles and held them in place. To prevent the current from carrying them away, each double pair of piles was protected by a 'starling,' formed by driving upright smaller piles in front at the piers and enclosing a space, which was filled up with stones, so that the force of the current was not felt by the great piles.

      In this way the Roman Bridge was built. You will understand it better from the drawing, which shows the Bridge taken from the Embankment near the present site of St. Mary Overies Church. The gate is the river-gate in the long