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Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

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Re: Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

#61

Post by wongarsu »

mavhc wrote: post #57
tialaramex wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people on HN will have been alive when there was a county of London. It ceased to exist in the 1960s. The UK does not require this layer of subdivision to exist, so it's not that there's a different county or set of counties covering the same area now but rather there is no county. This is a contrast to say the US system where AIUI there must be a county and in some cases that county doesn't really matter (e…

UK is a country made up of 4 countries, I guess we really like to annoy anyone trying to define a hierarchy

And the US the a sovereign state made up of 50 states. They used to be called that because they were independent countries

There are other offenders, but the US and UK together are probably the main reason English no longer has concise but unambiguous way to refer to sovereign states

Re: Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

#62

Post by dmazin »

One more strange place: the barbershop in Leadenhall Market. You can see the wall right in the barbershop.

In fact, this wall drove their rent higher and eventually they closed.

(Forgive the sob story, but the barber was amazing, and they closed down + fired everyone with no notice to customers. I have not been able to track him down since!)

Re: Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

#64

Post by tom_alexander »

pmontra wrote: post #29
tom_alexander wrote: post #5

> ground level then was a few metres lower than now What?! That's huge. What happened?

If you leave ground alone all sort of things grow on it or lay on it. Dirt, mud, leaves etc. Soil grows at about 1 mm per year. 1 meter in 1000 years. Historically cities were hit by floods and wars and new buildings were built on top of the foundations of old ones. We had an article about that church in Rome built over another roman church built over another roman church, etc. down to an old temple on a spring, or s…

Ah I didn't realize it was that fast! I always pictured a few mm per 1k years.

Re: Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

#65

Post by JoeDaDude »

On the subject of walls... Cortez reported seeing a wall blocking off an entire valley on his way to Tenochtitlan. One source reported the wall was 6 miles long, and yet it seems to have disappeared without a trace. And yet, Both the London Wall and Hadrian's Wall, though much older still have surviving ruins to this day.

Re: Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

#66

Post by lukecarr »

In Exeter[1], we still have roughly 70% of our Roman wall[2], and there is even a pedestrian footbridge over a road where part of the "bridge" involves walking along the top of the wall's remains.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isca_Dumnoniorum [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_city_walls

Re: Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

#68

Post by Fluorescence »

MrGreedy wrote: post #47
cairnechou wrote: post #25

[dead]

> That car park in image [4] is wild. The juxtaposition of a mundane parking Meh. Let me introduce you to Colchester, the oldest recorded town in the UK. The wall behind the carpark you see here is the original Roman wall (circa 65 AD) with modern brick on top... (The tourist sign is in the foreground if you zoom in). The walls were built after the city was sacked by the rebel queen Boudica in 60 AD. https://www.goog…

> the oldest recorded town in the UK

It's a bit of an "oldest pub" claim and the council has since upgraded it to "Britain's first City" after getting city status in 2022! It's MP called it "the most arrogant council in Britain" which we can add to it's claims for fame.

There were millions of Britons and plenty of other town-worthy settlements with 1000s of years of human activity but they were mostly proto-literate. There had been 100s of years of trade with Greeks/Romans but pre-conquest writing is imperious enough to refer to land masses or at best the Oppidum (town/stronghold/capital) of a Celtic king but not deign to record the local name.

The key for Colchester was being where someone who could write cared enough to do so. The Roman invasions started in the South East and the Catuvellauni led the resistance. Once defeated the Romans set up a fortress on the site of their capital Camulodunum later turning it into the official colonial capital. Now that it's Roman, it becomes acceptable enough for Pliny to write down it's name.

My best effort to spite Colchester City Council is with coin inscriptions. Celtish Kings with sufficient Roman influence e.g. Gaulish tribes that had migrated, would mint coins with latin script and here is one with that refers to the capital where it was minted 100s of years before Pliny:

https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/C_1988-0627-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calleva_Atrebatum

It's the capital of the Atrebates, Calleva Atrebatum. The oppidum of a king minting coins is a good enough to be a "town" for an HN comment. Congratulations to Silchester in Hampshire!

Re: Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

#69

Post by RobotToaster »

tialaramex wrote: post #12
PaulRobinson wrote: post #2

The Museum of London site (now closed as they prepare to move to their new site, coincidentally near the AWS HQ), and there was a window you could look down on part of the wall, which you can also see from the other side of the road near Barbican. I won't give directions, as that seems futile anywhere near Barbican, but I had only just thought about how weird it is that there is wall at Tower Hill, and wall at Barbic…

The new Museum's site also has a very cool view through a window, but it's a view of the passing trains [underground], because historically that building (one of London's markets) had a freight service and of course there's no room to move a railway line under London so even though it hadn't needed a freight service for decades the passenger service over the same rails still exists and you will be able to wave to sur…

Seems like a missed opportunity to have a tube station inside the museum.

Re: Four strange places to see London's Roman Wall

#70

Post by indoordin0saur »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #65

On the subject of walls... Cortez reported seeing a wall blocking off an entire valley on his way to Tenochtitlan. One source reported the wall was 6 miles long, and yet it seems to have disappeared without a trace. And yet, Both the London Wall and Hadrian's Wall, though much older still have surviving ruins to this day.

I wonder if they exaggerated things to make their conquest seem even more impressive
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