In Tudor times - after years wasted in wars of succession (which explains Henry VIII's desperate and bloody attempts to secure a male heir) the dissolution of the monasteries, and terrible religious persecution (the country went from catholic to protestant, back to catholic and Henry VIII's need for a divorce saw the final breach with Rome) led to poverty and mass unemployment. The black death and other plagues decimated the population.
However by the late 16th century, the seeds of England's future as a world trading power were sown with the formation of the Trading Companies - The East India Company, The Muscovy Company the Levant Company, and the Turkey Company, which along with Britain's naval prowess, saw management techniques still venerated by world corporations, conquer the world. England was also at the forefront of the arts with a lively theatre and music scene (the latter eclipsed by one European nation after another, its pre-eminence was not regained until after the first world war).
The Plague in 1665 and the fire in 1666 shook London out of its complacency (there are spectacular accounts of both these in Defoe and Pepys' journals) but also lead to a wave of property development (which is still going on), that saw the forerunners of Sir Richard Rogers (Wren, Hawksmoor and a whole crew of architectural geniuses) dominating the city skylines.
This redevelopment went on into the 18th Century, seeing buildings like The Bank of England and most of the Bridges across the Thames springing up. Tower Bridge (often mistaken for London Bridge, most notably by an American Millionnaire, who transplanted the old London Bridge to Arizona, only finding out on delivery he hadn't bought Tower Bridge) was opened in 1894. The Victorians supervised the transformation of London into a modern city, sewers and underground railways (1863) tunneled beneath the clay of the world's capital, while overground railways (1836) and omnibuses (1855) opened up across the city, and the port of London enjoyed a final flowering.
Despite the presence of the Royal Palaces, Westminster Abbey (a place of pilgrimage) and the country's first printing presses, Westminster really only came into its own in the 19th century, and was granted the title of a City, with its own mayor in 1900. Until the 1850s it was the haunt of criminals who used the sanctuary laws to hide in the precincts of Westminster Abbey - there are still roads such as 'Little Sanctuary' and 'Thieving Lane' which testify to its past. The redesigning of the area under Barry put paid to this unsavoury aspect and saw an expansion which co-incided with the arrival of the railways, Victoria Station occupying the site of several private railway stations which were amalgamated in 1899.
The West End was to Shaw's London what Southwark was to Shakespeare's - the pleasure district, with hotels, theatres, restaurants and shops, while the City remained the financial heart of Europe, and the banking and share trading capital of the world. Prostitution and Crime were the twin blights of this area right up until the end of the war. |
