Day 23: Old London

The financial district in Old London, including a statue of the Duke of Wellington.

Our final event in London was another one of New Europe’s walking tours – this one of Old London.  In this case, “Old London” consists of about a square mile in the center of London which predates the founding of the British Parliament, and is essentially a city within a city with its own laws, its own mayor, it’s own police force, etc. – and it’s the one place in all the United Kingdom in which the monarch has no authority.  The old city dates back to Roman times where, thereabouts 47 AD, they founded Londinium.

The Temple Bar monument marks the division of Old London and the rest of the city, and is notable in that the Queen is placed beneath the dragon (featured on the city’s coat of arms).  If the King or Queen were visiting the old city, this is where he or she would meet the mayor and request permission to enter the city.	Bikes are a common site in London due to high congestion (and congestion taxes).  A Top Gear challenge pitted an SUV, mass transit, a bike, and a boat against each other in a race across London (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkOzNK4l8KY).  Richard Hammond, the bike rider in that race, had ample commentary about bikes and busses riding in the same lane.

To make things even more interesting, there’s a city within a city within a city – Temple, an area centered around a temple that formerly belonged to the Knights Templar but whose main specialty in modern days is lawyers which have inhabited Temple for the past six hundred years.  The Knights Templar originally had their start protecting pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade (roughly the 12th Century), and eventually became a rudimentary bank (banks in the modern sense didn’t exist until the 15th-17th Century depending on location).  Due to the distance and time required back then to travel from Europe to the Holy Land, not to mention the dangers of bandits, the Templars adopted a system of credit in which the Knights would oversee property and assets while the pilgrim was traveling and would be given essentially a receipt which could be redeemed in the Holy Land.  As a result, the Templar organization became very wealthy and following the loss of the Holy Land in the 14th Century they were eventually persecuted and disbanded.

The Temple in Temple, London.

As we continued our tour, we came across the originally named “Monument” which is… a monument to the Great Fire of London which destroyed about 7/8ths of the city as it existed in 1666.  The fire raged for three days having its origins in a bakery and this monument was built a few hundred feet from where the fire started.  Although it is not much higher than the surrounding buildings, when it was initially built in the years following the fire it dwarfed the surrounding buildings.  Even now, it is still the tallest isolated stone column in the world, standing just over 200 feet tall.  There is a narrow staircase with which people can climb to an observation deck at the top of the monument.

Monument to the Great Fire of London.

We came to the Thames and walked along the river for a while, in which our tour guide lamented the exorbitant prices for the London Eye (a Ferris wheel built in 1999 which is the tallest in Europe at 443 feet and was featured in the Doctor Who episode “Rose” as a device by which aliens would enslave the human race).  We saw from a distance the HMS Belfast, a British Navy light cruiser that served during World War II and the Korean War.  The ship is open for tours as a part of the Imperial War Museum but we didn’t have time. 

The HMS Belfast.  To correct a common misconception, a cruiser is not a battleship – the Belfast displaces 11,500 tons, the USS Iowa displaces 55,000 tons and its 6” gun fires a 112lb round, compared to the 2700lb round of an Iowa-class 16” gun.  Still, the Belfast can pump out over one hundred 6” shells a minute.	Tower Bridge in its Olympic décor.  Contrary to popular belief, this is not London Bridge.  London Bridge is a rather unremarkable bridge built in the 70s that replaced an earlier bridge by the same name that was sold to an American and is now located in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

The tour ended at the Tower of London.  The Tower of London is a castle that was originally built in the 11th Century by the Normans during their conquest of England.  It’s been used as a prison for about 900 years, houses the Royal Mint, and holds the Crown Jewels of the UK. 

The Tower of London.  The moat, intended to be filled from the Thames, never worked out.  Poor water flow caused the moat to turn into a cesspit and it was eventually filled in for public health reasons.