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Lost Londinium: What I learnt walking the route of London's ancient city wall

Segments of the ancient wall can be spotted throughout the City of London - Credit: Ashton East / Alamy Stock Photo
Segments of the ancient wall can be spotted throughout the City of London - Credit: Ashton East / Alamy Stock Photo

Yesterday morning I walked the circumference of London in just over two hours. Not London as we know it now, of course, bursting at the seams and spilling out towards the M25, but London as it was nearly 2,000 years ago; Londinium, if you will.

For London’s city walls enveloped all that was the city of London - giving what we know today as the City its moniker - for hundreds of years, from their initial construction by the Romans from the 2nd century, through Medieval renovations and refurbishment, until they were no longer fit for purpose and represented only the inner sanctum of an ever-growing metropolis. Today, the walls are all but gone, bombed and bulldozed, and the border they represented not much more than an historical quirk.

But to wander its path - or as closely as possible - on a chilly morning in December is to spend a few hours in the company of a history so often forgotten in an age where London hustles and bustles with so much more than its Roman roots. 

Tours with an expert are available, but Historic UK offers a self-guided option, beginning at the Barbican. The Brutalist estate, built as a showcase for town planning in the wake of the destruction of the Second World War, was previously the site of London’s main Roman fort, and is now home to some of the most evocative remnants of the medieval wall.

Head to the Barbican’s Highwalk, which offers charming views of the estate and its gardens and lake, for a bird’s eye view of a remarkably intact stretch of what was once the north-western corner of the city, as well as the old Roman fort built in 120 AD. Today, it juts out at 90 degrees from a Sixties office block, startling in contrasts to its concrete surroundings.

From the Barbican, the route runs south and west - in the nearby St Alphege Garden, you can see part of the wall that still stands despite the loss of the church built on top of it - to perhaps one of the best-known sections of the city’s western boundary at Noble Street.

This 50-metre stretch sits in a sunken garden, beneath Plaisterers’ Hall, with railings and information boards drawing tourists while city workers pass without interest. It is baffling to look at these rough and ready fortifications and imagine that the city they enclosed - dirty and crude - was the seed of the city that rushes on around it today. As the walk progresses it feels more and more like a treasure hunt, spying out Roman and medieval masonry amid the sandwich shops, bars and gyms.

Another key I-spy element is having to spot the plaques that mark the sites of the city’s seven lost gates. At this western edge, they come thick and fast. Cripplegate was where the Barbican is now; it is followed by Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate. The remaining three - Aldgate, Moorgate and Bishopsgate - are on the eastern side of the city. 

A section of the wall at Salters' Gardens - Credit: istock
A section of the wall at Salters' Gardens Credit: istock

The modern road layout by and large makes the route of the old boundary navigable, but some sections are interrupted by gleaming office blocks, forcing a detour. That almost everything within the city walls was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666 gave the area’s layout a clean start, so there is some healthy deviation from the original street plan.

I’m now headed south and excited about hitting the river - the view up and down the Thames should make the heart of even the surliest Londoner skip a beat - only I do not quite make it. Following the course of the former River Fleet, which ran into the Thames at what is now Blackfriars (covered in 1769, it is now one of London’s “lost rivers”), my online guide tells me to take a left at Queen Victoria Street and I begin to follow the course of the old river wall. In centuries gone by, the north bank of the Thames was some 50 metres further north, but has since retreated, meaning London’s once-watery southern boundary is now very much on land.

Still, I do not sulk as I’m metres away from what I consider one of the city’s most invigorating views - crossing Peter’s Hill, to look south towards the Millennium Bridge or, this is the one, north up at St Paul’s, sat proud and majestic above the steps that rise from the Thames, its domed headdress perfectly framed by the city’s architectural congestion. It’s marvellous. But nothing to do with the wall, so I walk on.

The Roman parts of the wall are identifiable by the red bricks - Credit: hugh morris
The wall at the Grange City Hotel Credit: hugh morris

I strike out towards the Tower of London, the old city’s eastern boundary, and regret not counting every church spire I passed. There have been dozens. Sometimes it felt like the boundary of one medieval church had barely ended before another begun. I cross the road at St Magnus the Martyr, pondering poor Magnus’s fate, and steal a detour onto the Thames Path, despite its lack of wall.

It is north of the Tower - as fine as it is, but teeming with tourists - where I find the most impressive section of the city’s ancient wall. To witness it you must leave the road and make as if you have a room booked at the Grange City Hotel. Across the court outside its doors is a vast, windowed mass of old London wall, with medieval construction at its top and original Roman brickwork at its foot. Smothered away among the skyscrapers, hidden in the City’s rabbit warren streets, is a hefty chunk of London’s old defenses.

I spend a minute with its unruly foundations then head north, one road over from Houndsditch - so-named as it was once the ditch that lay beyond the eastern walls - before reaching Bishopsgate (and plaque) and joining London Wall, once the northern boundary.

As the Barbican rears into view, I struggle to comprehend that I’ve just walked the circumference of ancient London before lunch. Through the noise and fumes of the city’s Monday morning traffic, across busy streets in and out of office blocks and Prets, dodging smokers on the pavement while craning my neck for plaques, I feel like I’ve had my own quiet moment with the capital’s history. I leave Londinium, heading west, knowing I’ll never look at the City in the same way again.