A warm welcome to Joe Saunders, the latest addition to the Placecloud team of experts. Joe is a PhD student at the University of York, and will be publishing 10 viewpoints in June on various fascinating sites around Early Modern London:
St Pauls Cathedral: from Reformation to the Fire – The story of London’s great Cathedral through the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century and the civil wars. In this time there was devastation and rebuilding of this medieval landmark culminating in its final destruction in the Great Fire, ready to rise from the ashes.
The Folkmoot – This ‘meeting of people’ was an opportunity for Londoners to come together, discuss and debate from Anglo-Saxon times through the middle ages. From its mysterious origins we learn how it came to be a key place in the medieval city.
Paul’s Cross – The north-east corner of St Paul’s Churchyard was from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries a space where people came to gather and hear sermons preached from an open-air pulpit. During the fierce debates of the Reformation it was on the frontline of a vicious war of words.
The Stationers of St Pauls Churchyard – From the early sixteenth centuries the area around St Pauls Cathedral including the famous Paternoster Row, were the centre of publishing trade in England. Printers and booksellers working from shops here spread ideas and information across the country.
The Radicals of Coleman Street – Coleman Street during the civil wars of the seventeenth century became home to religious and political firebrands, a hotbed of radical ideas during a period when the world was turned upside down.
Cheapside – Cheapside takes its name from ‘chepe’, a Saxon word for a market and was a main thoroughfare of London for much of the city’s history possibly from the time of Alfred the Great. In this street was seen trade of all kinds. Eventually it became an avenue for royal processions, such was its importance.
Eastcheap – In medieval times, Eastcheap was the main meat market in the City of London, with butchers stalls lining both sides. It was also the location of Falstaff’s Boar’s Head Inn featured in Shakespeare’s plays and home to Nehemiah Wallington the woodturner whose notebooks reveal a great deal about life in the seventeenth-century city.
Lombard Street – Originally one of the main Roman roads of Londinium this main city street was inhabited during the medieval period by many immigrants from Lombardy in northern Italy. In time it hosted many early coffee houses, the Post Office and eventually became famous as a centre for banking.
The Whalebone and the Levellers – This tavern in Lothbury was once a headquarters of the Levellers, radicals who during the English civil proposed changes to the political and legal systems in what are today seen as early calls for democracy.
The Battle of Turnham Green – This battle took place in November 1642 near the village of Turnham Green in the first few months of the English Civil War. The Parliamentary army, along with many ordinary Londoners rallied to prevent the forces of King Charles I take the city in an important strategic victory.