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Unknown London
Unknown London was published shortly before the First World War. Walter Bell’s thesis is that London is full of artifacts which have links to fascinating stories, but that people do not comprehend their importance. This failure occurs for a mixture of reasons. Sometimes an artifact is ignored because the glamour of another experience overwhelms it. An example he gives is an altar in a great cathedral, which goes ignored among the tombs of kings and poets. Often, the object is ignored simply because its history is superficially unknowable. In Bell’s pre-internet life, a person seeing a block of odd masonry could only discover it was a chunk of Roman wall through academic research or folk history. Bell’s artifacts did not, in many cases, survive the Blitz. This makes his book the final record of the point where his stories preserve a lost oral tradition. Bell himself does not know this, of course, but it adds an extra layer of tragedy to the book for modern readers. Illustrated with photos.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1919
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 11, 2025
It’s always a great sorrow to have lived in a city and taken hardly the slightest notice of it, then years later, living miles and miles away, be told of everything I should have done or seen.
No so with London though. Walter George Bell’s Unknown London, has done a fine job filling me in on many parts of London I knew little or nothing about. And what’s more, doing it with such eagerness and enthusiasm that it’s been easy to imagine I was right there with him; listening as he told his anecdotes and led me around Victorian alleyways, chatting away like some Dickensian character bubbling over with an encyclopedic knowledge he just has to share.
Bell made it all so much fun that for once it didn’t matter that I missed out first time round.
No so with London though. Walter George Bell’s Unknown London, has done a fine job filling me in on many parts of London I knew little or nothing about. And what’s more, doing it with such eagerness and enthusiasm that it’s been easy to imagine I was right there with him; listening as he told his anecdotes and led me around Victorian alleyways, chatting away like some Dickensian character bubbling over with an encyclopedic knowledge he just has to share.
Bell made it all so much fun that for once it didn’t matter that I missed out first time round.
November 7, 2014
I admit to a weakness for books of history with “unknown” in the title. And I always enjoy collections of then-present-day observations written in the semi-distant past. Well, 1919 doesn’t really seem that ancient to me -- but it’s ninety years ago now, nearly a century, so I suppose that says something about me. The Great War had just ended and Bell the antiquarian was continuing his lifelong habit of poking about in the city of his birth, climbing down ladders into medieval basements, opening cupboards in ancient churches, and discovering things of which, he laments, the people about him walking to work are completely oblivious. And many of the small, unknown pieces of London’s history which he describes here would not survive the Blitz twenty years later or the savaging that redevelopment would continue to do to the city’s historical fabric.
His first chapter is also one of the best, about Henry Grey, the Duke of Suffolk (and father of the ill-used Lady Jane Grey), who was executed by having his head struck off on Tower Hill in 1554 -- largely because of his own foolishness and weakness of character. But the head apparently survived, having been rescued by his widow (who didn’t want to see it spiked on London Bridge), and was found nearly three centuries later, tucked away in a nearby church. It was still there in 1919 and Bell actually held in his hands the glass box in which it was preserved. In fact, the book includes a photograph of it. (Is it still there, somewhere? The church appears to be gone, but I haven’t been able to find out.)
Bell was also a fan of London’s Roman remains -- the surviving sections of the city wall, now built into warehouse walls and hidden in basements (and, more recently, in a parking garage), and the two baths discovered by 19th-century workmen preparing to erect new office buildings. Then there’s the City merchant’s mansion rebuilt just after the Great Fire of 1666 -- goods stored in the cellar, offices on the ground floor, spacious living quarters above that -- which still stands today at No. 34 Great Tower Street. The only remaining building of its kind, certainly in London, probably in England.
And his exploration of Wapping High Street and the Old Stairs down to the Thames at the end of it, which served both the Navy and the merchant sea trade, and which, in its heyday, was one of the most roisterous and dangerous neighborhoods in Greater London. By the time Bell compiled this volume, it was a dead and dull area of warehouses with few residents. (Nowadays, Wapping is being cautiously gentrified, but the sailors never returned.)
Other chapters will take you to the pavement of Smithfield where religious martyrs, both Catholic and Protestant, were burned at the stake, and will show you the funereal waxworks of the late great, still preserved at Westminster Abbey, and will investigate the ghosts of the Tower. And Bell will turn the pages of Domesday Book for you, and will examine the hitherto secret parchments recording the details of the trial of Anne Boleyn -- which, in 1919, any student could handle just by filling out the request slip at the Public Record Office. Unbelievable.
Bell is completely and totally fascinated by all this, and it comes through in his knowledgeable but never stuffy prose. You have the sense of your tour guide tugging you along to the next amazing sight, listening to his descriptions and commentary about things and places you never knew were there, just around the corner.
The sequel volume continues in very much the same vein, with the author remembering his youthful introduction to the sights of the Guildhall -- including a naval dispatch written in 1340 by Edward III to his son, the ten-year-old Duke of Cornwall, and still (in 1920) to be found in their archives; the Duke later became the Black Prince, victory of Crecy and Poitiers. Then there’s the City’s own execution ground (not the same as Tower Hill), where sentences were carried out personally by the Sheriff of London, and which now stands in a very pleasant garden. And there’s the 17th-century printing house in Cheapside, possibly the earliest remaining structure from the vast rebuilding that followed the Great Fire. (The tablet on the wall tells the passerby that the building actually predates and survived the Fire, but Bell doesn’t believe that, and he tells you why.) And, naturally, there are more Roman sites to be explored, too. If you’re interested in the history of London, or if you simply enjoy a fascinating bit of sightseeing, I cannot recommend these two books highly enough. And, in a sign of our own times, of which I think Bell would have approved, both can now be found at Google Books as downloadable PDF files.
His first chapter is also one of the best, about Henry Grey, the Duke of Suffolk (and father of the ill-used Lady Jane Grey), who was executed by having his head struck off on Tower Hill in 1554 -- largely because of his own foolishness and weakness of character. But the head apparently survived, having been rescued by his widow (who didn’t want to see it spiked on London Bridge), and was found nearly three centuries later, tucked away in a nearby church. It was still there in 1919 and Bell actually held in his hands the glass box in which it was preserved. In fact, the book includes a photograph of it. (Is it still there, somewhere? The church appears to be gone, but I haven’t been able to find out.)
Bell was also a fan of London’s Roman remains -- the surviving sections of the city wall, now built into warehouse walls and hidden in basements (and, more recently, in a parking garage), and the two baths discovered by 19th-century workmen preparing to erect new office buildings. Then there’s the City merchant’s mansion rebuilt just after the Great Fire of 1666 -- goods stored in the cellar, offices on the ground floor, spacious living quarters above that -- which still stands today at No. 34 Great Tower Street. The only remaining building of its kind, certainly in London, probably in England.
And his exploration of Wapping High Street and the Old Stairs down to the Thames at the end of it, which served both the Navy and the merchant sea trade, and which, in its heyday, was one of the most roisterous and dangerous neighborhoods in Greater London. By the time Bell compiled this volume, it was a dead and dull area of warehouses with few residents. (Nowadays, Wapping is being cautiously gentrified, but the sailors never returned.)
Other chapters will take you to the pavement of Smithfield where religious martyrs, both Catholic and Protestant, were burned at the stake, and will show you the funereal waxworks of the late great, still preserved at Westminster Abbey, and will investigate the ghosts of the Tower. And Bell will turn the pages of Domesday Book for you, and will examine the hitherto secret parchments recording the details of the trial of Anne Boleyn -- which, in 1919, any student could handle just by filling out the request slip at the Public Record Office. Unbelievable.
Bell is completely and totally fascinated by all this, and it comes through in his knowledgeable but never stuffy prose. You have the sense of your tour guide tugging you along to the next amazing sight, listening to his descriptions and commentary about things and places you never knew were there, just around the corner.
The sequel volume continues in very much the same vein, with the author remembering his youthful introduction to the sights of the Guildhall -- including a naval dispatch written in 1340 by Edward III to his son, the ten-year-old Duke of Cornwall, and still (in 1920) to be found in their archives; the Duke later became the Black Prince, victory of Crecy and Poitiers. Then there’s the City’s own execution ground (not the same as Tower Hill), where sentences were carried out personally by the Sheriff of London, and which now stands in a very pleasant garden. And there’s the 17th-century printing house in Cheapside, possibly the earliest remaining structure from the vast rebuilding that followed the Great Fire. (The tablet on the wall tells the passerby that the building actually predates and survived the Fire, but Bell doesn’t believe that, and he tells you why.) And, naturally, there are more Roman sites to be explored, too. If you’re interested in the history of London, or if you simply enjoy a fascinating bit of sightseeing, I cannot recommend these two books highly enough. And, in a sign of our own times, of which I think Bell would have approved, both can now be found at Google Books as downloadable PDF files.
November 17, 2015
Unknown London is a small book published slightly before the First World War. Walter Bell’s thesis is that London is full of artifacts which have links to fascinating stories, but that people do not comprehend their importance. This failure occurs for a mixture of reasons. Sometimes an artifact is ignored because the glamour of another experience overwhelms it. An example he gives is an altar in a great cathedral, which goes ignored among the tombs of kings and poets. Often, the object is ignored simply because its history is superficially unknowable. In Bell’s pre-internet life, a person seeing a block of odd masonry could only discover it was a chunk of Roman wall through academic research or folk history.
Bell’s book is not folkloristic in the sense of having ghosts in it, but it reminds me of certain types of fairy story. You won’t find Narnia in the back of any of his cupboards, but you might find the head of an earl, or the ashes of a saint, or a stone reputed to be magical. In its own modest way it’s a brilliant little work of oral history.
Bell’s artifacts did not, in many cases, survive the Blitz. This makes his book the final record of them: the point where his stories preserve a lost oral tradition. Bell himself does not know this, of course, but it adds an extra layer of tragedy to the book for modern readers.
I listened to the book as a free Librivox download, but it is also available as a free e-text. There is a sequel, More about Unknown London, which has not yet been recorded.
This review first appeared on book coasters
Bell’s book is not folkloristic in the sense of having ghosts in it, but it reminds me of certain types of fairy story. You won’t find Narnia in the back of any of his cupboards, but you might find the head of an earl, or the ashes of a saint, or a stone reputed to be magical. In its own modest way it’s a brilliant little work of oral history.
Bell’s artifacts did not, in many cases, survive the Blitz. This makes his book the final record of them: the point where his stories preserve a lost oral tradition. Bell himself does not know this, of course, but it adds an extra layer of tragedy to the book for modern readers.
I listened to the book as a free Librivox download, but it is also available as a free e-text. There is a sequel, More about Unknown London, which has not yet been recorded.
This review first appeared on book coasters
May 19, 2020
An interesting little book telling the history of London through a series of less-known points of interest. The most intriguing thing about this, that I found personally, was the original volume was published in 1919, well before the London Blitz. It adapted and updated for subsequent printings - my edition is from 1966.
June 10, 2020
I’m a sucker for London history so this book was a natural choice for me - unfortunately the writing style is hard going, likely because it was written in 1919 (didn’t know that before reading reviews) so it is packed with difficult allusions and paragraph-long sentences jammed with colons and semicolons like beaded jewelry.
July 11, 2015
This was an audiobook from LibriVox.
https://librivox.org/unknown-london-b...
https://librivox.org/unknown-london-b...
October 21, 2015
Great back story to some of London's unknown history.
Read
March 28, 2019Mostly interesting. I read in reviews that many of the places and artifacts highlighted in this book did not survive WWII. If any have, they would make good geocache locations.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews