By Jeri Westerson
Readers have been asking for a map of fourteenth century
London, and as promised, there is one in this edition. Since all of the action
of five of the so-far six books in the series takes place in London, I
naturally needed to acquaint myself with its period streets. Unfortunately, the
London I would love to see doesn’t exist anymore. A couple of fires took care
of that, along with some re-planning and reconstruction throughout the ages and
into the present.
Maps serve to give me the claustrophobic feel of constricted
alleys and a puzzle of lanes. In fact, one can lay these maps on the Google
Earth version of the present day London and match quite a bit of it. Even some
of the names remain the same. My fictional detective, Crispin Guest, a
disgraced knight turned detective and down on his luck, frequents a tavern to
forget his troubles, which is located on Gutter Lane…a street that still exists
by that name. I love that symmetry!
But there are still a few locations that can be found in
present day London that can renew one’s sense of time and place. One obvious
structure is the Tower of London. The outer walls and the White Tower within
are relatively the same, sans the murky moat that used to surround it. And
walking under the arches and sharp teeth of the portcullises one can get a true
sense of its medieval origins, if you can ignore the gift shop signs and
colorfully-dressed tourists. It began life as the castle of William the
Conqueror and as a residence of each monarch after him until digs in
Westminster were built. Only later, well after Crispin’s time, did it become
the dreaded place of imprisonment for London’s elite.
I could name so many places that no longer exist or have
been changed so radically to its Victorian counterpart that it is almost not
worth the mention. London’s city walls, for instance—the square mile that
delineated ancient London—have been obliterated by “new” buildings from the
Georgian and Victorian periods and our modern time, and it is only with a
helpful handheld guide that you can find its remnants. But a walk into a few
structures might bring the medieval back to mind. The 12th century Temple
Church of the Knights Templar on Fleet Street; the 12th century
Priory Church of St. Bartholomew the Great in West Smithfield; the Guildhall, built
between 1411 and 1440, which stands off Gresham and Basinghall streets, served
as the city hall for hundreds of years.
Then there is the wonderfully intact Westminster Hall, the
great hall that was part of the medieval Westminster Palace, whose footprint is
now covered by the Parliament buildings. But the hall is as Crispin would have
remembered it, even with its current hammerbeam ceiling, that his king, Richard
II, put in place to replace the columns that used to support it. It is the largest
medieval timber roof in Northern Europe, measuring 68 by 240 feet. It was used
for feasts, great occasions, law courts, religious ceremonies, and
entertainments.
And, of course, Westminster Abbey itself got a brush up of
remodeling in Crispin's day, and looks a bit different than it did. But
remember, the Abbey and the Hall are in what was the City of Westminster, not
the City of London.
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