EVOLUTION OF LONDON.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 490, 24 April 1909, Page 10

EVOLUTION OF LONDON.

FROM MUD HUTS TO THE WORLD'S ■;■..' GREATEST CITY. ~ ' ; The evolution of London from a collection of mud huts near tho site of St. Paul's to tho greatest aggregate of buildings in the world 'was traced recently by Mr. J. George.Head in a lecture at tho Surveyors' Institutioh, Westminster. From a village of one aero in oxtont London had expanded in 2000 years to ft metropolis covering 117 square miles, ing:— . : ; . ; . 2134 miles of streets 5,000,000 residents 632,591 houses. 329 railway stations. When ono.thought of tho six horseshoes paid in tho reign o£ Edward the First and still paid by the Corporation of London as the rent of a piece of land in St. Clement Danes, near tho present Lnyr : Court's, the freehold of which was now worth three or four pounds for'every squarofoot of surface, , , of the lands allotted to provide small.annual sums forNchnrity, which now: year by year, produce a c princely revenue devoted to the same end; when one learnt that •jinoo 1339 the rateable value of tho City of London hnd increased from .£12,000 a year, to more than £5,000,000: a year, or'loo times-as much, it sounded as if the countryman's faith that the streets of London were paved with gold was not. altogether ill-founded. . . ' Over three hundred years ngo tho advisers of Qneen Elizabeth thought London was getting too big. To-day the piant city is fifty times the size of the city that was proving too unwieldly for. the Elizabethans.. , ..■' ': From horsqshoos to sovereigns rallies had progressed between the reigns of the First and the Seventh Edward,'and it was indeed a far cry from tho no man's land "of Lyhdyn lo tho Administrative County of London, with its annual value of .£55,000,000. . ; .•'•