![Atop Empire State- in construction; Chrysler Bldg & [Daily] News in middle foreground. (1931)](http://www.retronaut.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Atop-Empire-State-in-construction-Chrysler-Bldg-Daily-News-in-middle-foreground.-1931--199x123.jpg "Balancing on the Empire State, 1920s")
“I would dearly love to rent the room that is to let in this old building in Aldgate, photographed by Henry Dixon for the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London. Too bad it was demolished in 1882.
Founded by a group of friends who wanted to save the Oxford Arms, threatened with demolition in 1875, the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London touched a popular chord with the pictures they published of age-old buildings that seem to incarnate the very soul of the ancient city. London never looked so old as in these atmospheric images of buildings forgotten generations ago.
How much I should delight to lock the creaky old door, leaving my rented room in Aldgate, so conveniently placed above the business premises of John Robbins, the practical optician, and take a stroll across this magical city, where the dusk gathers eternally. Let us go together now, on this cloudy November day, through the streets of old London. We shall set out from my room in Aldgate over to Smithfield and Clerkenwell, then walk down to cross the Thames, explore the inns of Southwark and discover where our footsteps lead …”
At the corner of St Mary Axe and Bevis Marks, this overhanging gabled house was destroyed in 1882
At the George, Borough High St
At the rear of St Bartholomew’s Church
In Bermondsey St
In Charterhouse, Wash House Court
In Cloth Fair, next to Smithfield Market
King’s Head Inn Yard
In the graveyard of St Bartholomew the Great
Old buildings in Aldersgate St
Queen’s Head Inn Yard
Shaftesbury House by Inigo Jones in Aldersgate St, demolished after this photo was taken in 1882
Sir Paul Pindar’s House in Bishopsgate was moved to the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1890
St Giles Cripplegate, which now stands at the centre of Barbican complex
St Mary Overy’s Dock
The cloisters at Charterhouse
This row of shambles was destroyed for the extension of the Metropolitan Railway from Aldgate to Tower Hill, 1883
White Hart Inn Yard
…..
Images © Bishopsgate Institute
Thank you to Alex Butterworth
You can still go to the George Inn and it is recognisably the building in that picture. How I would have loved to rent that room and do that walk too.
London’s last remaining galleried coaching inn, now protected by the National Trust.
it makes me sad to think so much of these beautiful, charming and important buildings are gone. I would have liked to have gone to the City Bicycle School very much.
Ah the George – My local, impossible to get in when its sunny and full to the rafters with drunk Nurses!
now that graveyard of St Barts looks interesting…
I am pondering what “Shakespeare House” was…
Can’t you just see The Ripper wandering these mean streets?
And “old”, really? None of them predate the Great Fire of 1666, so only 200 years old at the most. Just poor and worn.
Sigh. Modernization can ruin a city….
A stunning sequence of photographs.
Oh to be able to go back in time.
-Dangerous. Do not meet current health or safety code. Interiors lit by open gas jets (high class) or coal oil lanterns (lower class).
-Drafty. No HVAC systems, uncomfortable in winter and summer.
-Dirty. Coal smoke everywhere, animal waste all over the streets.
-Uncomfortable. Hot and cold running water? Toilets? Decent mattress to sleep on?
Those who wax poetic about the past would likely not care to spend a week there except as one of the ultra rich (life has been good for them in any age).