OLD LONDON HISTORY
NOW LOST FOR EVER THE DEBRIS OF CENTURIES The great building operations going on at present throughout London, but especially in the city, have produced a situation which is not generally appreciated. Archaeology in the City of London is having its last chance. Or, as arclueologists themselves prefer to put it, the last chance for gaining information about the first days of London is passing away without even being seized. Tho reason ol this lies in the character of the test building methods. Previous generations of builders built in greater or in lesser part upon the foundations of those who came before them. But the foundations of the buildings now being raised arc going down far deeper, not on to the debris of previousgenerations, but right' through every layci or soil. The buildings will rest upon virgin depths which havo never borne the weight of man’s handiwork bofoie.
Great piers of rciniorccd concrete arc descending to unprecedented deeps through the layers of British, Norman, Saxon, and Roman civilisations, to the natural strata, so that all human evidence upon these sites is being destroyed irretrievably. For example, as the three great un-der-ground floors of the new Bank ol England arc being created, the soil, said a prominent arclneologist, in a conversation with a ‘ Daily Mail ’ contributor recently, is being carted away. The writer says: “ Jt would he a useful and worthy act if, both there and wherever operations are being carried out in tho city, someone with archaiclogical training were posted by the city authorities to observe tho soil ere it was displaced for the last time. “ There would be no question of interlering with the excavations. A competent man could sit at the edge of the pit or find an unobtrusive corner within it and just make notes of what ho saw. If anything were found it could be shown to him. However, it is not upon such chance finds that stress is laid. Archaeologists have changed. Treasuretrove means less to them now than the gathering of historic information, which by their training they arc able to deduce from looking at sections of soil, by making comparisons between strata.
“Archaeologists, watching the Dank of England work, have noted that the earlier piles supporting buildings in this urea were held up by Homan debris. From this it can be deduced that there was not here, as supposed, a Celtic village. Every age leaves a layer of debris behind it, and if there bad been an earlier village it is reasonable to assume its debris would have supported the piles. “The modern concrete piles under the bank but carry on an ancient tradition and necessity. Owing to the infiltration of water from the Wall Brook successive races have been obliged to build upon piles. The Soamcs building, now being destroyed, was raised on piles like its predecessor, and so it goes back through history. There has boon a perfect forest of piles beneath the bank’s site, and the same thing is, it would seem, true of the Mansion House.”
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Evening Star, Issue 19791, 15 February 1928, Page 11
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510OLD LONDON HISTORY Evening Star, Issue 19791, 15 February 1928, Page 11
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