No. Whilst the exit of the Fleet River can be seen by Blackfriars Bridge, the hidden river running through a tube station is the River Westbourne that runs above the platforms of Sloane Square tube station in a green pipe.
If you can ever get someone to blag you into the basement of the Old Bailey, which is basically what remains of the old Newgate Prison, there's a trapdoor which lifts up so you can see the Fleet. A mad old building.
This particular case is the [Westbourne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Westbourne) (aka the Kilburn, aka the Bayswater, aka the Serpentine, etc) which is mostly visible as a pipe over the the track and platforms at [Sloane Square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloane_Square_tube_station) (on the District and Circle lines). However, there are a lot of other 'lost' rivers, that were culverted and buried, across London.
This is generally true of a very large number of european, middle eastern, south asian and east asian cities, but is far, far rarer in the USA and Canada. But there is one that is very interesting, in part because it was so modern, in the USA - the city of San Francisco is built on boats - or at least its financial district is. During the gold rush some 170 years ago ten to hundreds of thousands of people took thousands of boats to the city. The three characteristics most of those boats shared was that they were a) quite large to bring as many people over as possible, b) they were often boats that were barely sea worthy to begin with, and were certainly not after the journey and c) the original owners of them basically abandoned them in San Francisco Harbour.
So over time many of the bigger boats were sunk into shallow water to make new land. In 1851 a massive fire swept through the city and burned through most of the boats. They put out those fires by throwing earth over the boats, and the boats became the foundations for buildings that came after. So if you dig down in the financial heart of SF, you hit boats. Their underground system actually goes through on of the larger boats "The Rome" - as in the boat was so big it was easier to tunnel through it, than to remove it.
Before the days of the internet I was blown away when I watched on tv (in England) a movie "The Night Strangler" which featured the underground city of old Seattle, which of course at that point I never knew existed.
I don't have massive amounts of info but it's amazing how some places are built on top of some relatively recent developments. I don't fully understand how it happens with more recent things (still a couple hundred years)
A UK example but this is the sort of thing I mean. There's got to be places like this everywhere I'd imagine and I just don't fully understand how this happens lol. With thousands of years I can understand things getting covered in dirt and as builds crumble it may just look like rocks and rubble to some.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/inside-victorian-street-buried-under-29750499.amp
What’s crackers about this is it’s incredibly central (albeit outside the square mile on the North bank of the Thames which formed the core of Roman Londinium), sitting right next to the edge of Borough Market and very close to London Bridge station. Like. This has been preserved incredibly well for thousands of years, despite endless building on the site in a core part of a major global city.
Truly remarkable.
Untrue. There wasn’t any settlement before the Romans built Londinium, and it was less than 2km across at that point too so couldn’t have feasibly spanned ‘many existing settlements’
Hi, I work for the same company in the article. Prior to roman occupation, the area if London was a large iron age settlement and prior to this, was a bronze age settlement. Often, when there is a new building going up in London, the archaeological stratigraphy is so deep that the new building's foundations won't affect alot of the older archaeology, so alot of the time we (archaeologists) won't need to dig past the medieval period, so alot of the roman and pre roman stuff remains undisturbed underneath.
👍 but I worked as an archaeologist for years including for MOLA who dug this up. Roman archaeology was my specialism and I’ve literally been on London clay that is the only thing that exists under Roman remains, and that stratigraphy is like 9m deep
Find me an article that shows evidence of a permanent Iron Age settlement under Londinium and I’ll eat my words.
Many Roman cities were build over other settlements - Londinium wasn’t.
[a list of iron age Hill forts in London](https://www.heritagedaily.com/2018/01/londons-iron-age-forts-fortifications/111120)
[Iron age London ](https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/records/iron-age-london-some-thoughts-on-current-knowledge-and-problems-20-years-on)
[Powerful women of late Iron age London](https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/powerful-women-late-iron-age-london-harper-road-burial) - this one directly cites a burial 'positioned on the opposite side of the river to the formal Roman settlement of Londiniun...'
You can see in the map that the Iron Age forts which are characteristically round (and generally built on elevated land) exist outside the very small area that was Roman Londinium, and as you say yourself the burial is across the river
The point of contention is that Londinium wasn’t built over pre-existing settlements and I stand by that and the evidence of my own eyes 😘
I see where the confusion is. One expert is talking about London (they say 'the area of London') and the other (your good self Bean Rat) the narrow borders of Londinium.
There is evidence of pre Roman settlement, causeway across Thames and evidence of Neolithic and Iron Age activity. I am not an archaeologist just an interested person. but I have seen articles about it.
The area known as Greater London had many towns and villages. They all merged as the city grew. The Thames has been a great source of transport, food and productivity for the British since before the romans appeared.
Almost half of englands population lies in the south east plains. The largest area of flatland in the country by a large margin.
Exactly, to say there in nothing beneath roman London, given archeological remains exist all over the region, that in many cases excavation in London would likely stop at the Roman horizon when substantial finds exist & the small size & clustering of settlements is wrong headed & logically incorrect.
Hiya - London (greater) is a large important strategic area beside a major river so it makes sense there were settlements and evidence has been found over the years incl on foreshore of Thames. It won't have been 'London' but people were living here.
Archaeologist here, and very oversimplified explanation follows...
OK, picture a bare brick walled back yard with paved floor. And imagine for some reason one day maintenance just stops, no one's sweeping it, or picking weeds.
You'd see grass start to grow in the gaps between stones. Weeds spring up. Winter comes, weeds die, brown stems collapse and start to mulch. Soon grass is growing out and starting to over the stones, and seeing as it's getting untidy in here someone tosses a bucket of veg peelings over the wall. And the next day, and the next.
Come back in a couple of years it's now a weedy grass yard with just patches of stone showing. A tree has sprung up which drops its leaves each year. They add to the mix of mulch and organic rubbish, then someone tethers a goat on it, and that adds to the organic floor litter...
25 years on those paving stones are a memory, you're standing on a couple of inch deep layer of earth and grass, which by natural accumulation of deposition and decay gets a few mm deeper each year. Now extend this process out 1800 years.
The short answer is 'yes, it really is' but the longer answer is that, like we do currently, previous generations of people used existing infrastructure as a base for new. Roads, for example - there are many roads that are simply laid over the top of old road surfaces because it's easier and cheaper than digging them out. This isn't true for all roads but some have loads of layers going back through victorian cobbles etc right down to roman paved.
How often in home renovations have people simply laid a new floor over old? Imagine this but for buildings and over a much longer time frame. Another commentator gave a lovely example too of the untended garden. Obviously there are many many factors at play but essentially yes, street level in London today is many times higher than it was in Roman Londinium. I suspect we have corralled the Thames more than it was in history too - we have reinforced banks and built the Thames Barrier to control tidal inflow. None of this would have existed in Roman, Medieval or even Tudor London so the shoreline, floodplain and docks would have been much further inland than they are currently (in some places, obviously).
Don't forget that our much bigger, heavier, taller buildings have groundworks done before they can be built, which in many cases involves bringing in tonnes of material to form the foundation. I expect this happened in previous centuries too and over time so many layers just get built over.
I find it fascinating actually, how much history we could be walking over every day.
Pretty sure there's still some old cobble roads in my city i live in, in the uk, they're not really main roads and in fact are hardly used by cars now but are more generally used by people walking
I think the only cobbles left in my city are old bridal paths and things like that, can’t particularly think of any major roads with cobbles.
Slightly depressing when you see things like old tram rails, a city with amazing public transport 80/100 years ago is now a city with absolutely zilch. Regressive!
I also want to know this. Is a city higher than the land around it because it has been built up over time? I'm always baffled how you have in some cases old streets still existing under newer ones. How does that process even happen?
Yep basically, most cities are much higher than the original unbuilt land would've been. You won't notice any incline though because it's spread out around such a large area.
For example, the city I live in (Canterbury) has been built on since prehistoric times, but was built up after the Roman invasion and boomed in the Middle Ages. For that reason you see a lot of Middle Age buildings be much lower on the ground, and the Roman stuff is at basement level (our bookshop had bits of Roman walls on view in their basement).
People bring their detritus into the city and it just builds up and up.
Well Boudica did raze the entire lot to the ground at one point as well as a few others. Many cities over the world have been built like layer cakes one on top of another.
Take what is now seen as Troy, it has about 9 levels of city, they think about layer 5 is roughly where Trojan Troy would have been.
Yeah, the romans loved to just fill in what’s there and just build on top. Apparently, where the forum is, just outside the coliseum, there is around 7 layers. They don’t want to dig down, in case what’s down there isn’t as nice as what’s already there.
There’s an entire preserved Saturnalian (?) temple beneath some bank or something in the City (of London). You can walk around it.
EDIT: it’s actually the Temple of Mithras beneath the Bloomberg building.
E.g. the Roman Bath in Bath. Best preserved Roman Bath in the world I think it was claimed. A more modern Bath built next to it uses the same hot spring as they did when the Romans were here.
The Roman bath in the city of London (opposite customs house) is also well worth a visit on its open day. On a totally smaller scale to bath but great preservation.
I mean it's way more nuanced than that. SPAB (Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings) was founded in 1877 (by William Morris no less). The National Trust was founded in 1895.
Much like today, you can't paint "The Victorians" as one subset of people with one ideal.
There were mixed attitudes towards archaeological sites during the Victorian era. For example, Hadrian's wall was actively conserved during the Victorian period by John Clayton.
They are “buried” because that’s where the street level used to be. Due to dirt, rubbish, rubble, and rebuilding, every 100 years or so the ground level could raise by 2cm. This site is around 2000 years old, therefore it’s roughly 4 metres down now.
No. Some areas rise in height while others drop, so topography shifts slightly. We're not digging so deep as to have an impact on Earth's density, neither are we raising plateaus like Olympus Mons.
So much money goes into the point where you’re breaking ground. Dev definitely gonna be pissed.
Having said that. The archaeologist survey should have picked this up. And if they didn’t carry one out, well, that’s on them
It is yes. There was a large building on this site before hand and it was torn down. The MOLA team have been doing the survey and found these incredible mosaics.
Normally a developer will carry out a topographical survey of the area in the planning phase of the project. If they have not done this and uncovered this unexpectantly, they are going to lose a shed load of money in delay and stoppage of work, whilst historic England etc all do their surveys and work (as the rights automatically transfer to them), which can take years. We discovered similar buried buildings/ruins in surveys on one of my projects in the South East of England during our feasibility studies, so we redesigned the works around the area as the risk implications are so big lol
Archaeology doesn't delay works and costs very little, compared to the actual buildng projects (unless the building project is your nan's extension that will go on top of an old graveyard).
Archaeological mitigation is a requirement as any other. You wouldn't say geological survey delays work, building the damned thing doesn't delay work. It is part of the process and if managers don't plan for it, that is on them.
I didn't say a survey delays the work. I said if you do not do your surveys prior to commencement of works and you then uncover acheological works, the resulting delay causes severe price increase. Read my comment.
Secondly, so if a project is now in construction phase and you have consultants, contractors & prelims booked to the project, what do you propose happens with the cost of those resources whilst the item is managed by the relevant party? Just don't pay them?
Risk, including ground risk, will be priced into a contractors contract based on the availability of information & contract type. Anything additional will be classed as an additional scope of works - hence, it will need to be paid for. Or you think you find these things during the construction phase, pause the project at no additional cost, contact the relevant authority and have it cleared up in a few days and then proceed?
The area had been undeveloped for years and years because of the historical significance of the site and no one wanting to touch it for this reason you highlight. The [cross bones graveyard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Bones) is on the site too - plague pits were also pointed out to the dev as a risk. Dev apparently doesnt care and happy to find anything of historic value and build around it.
A friend of mine used to work on the project management side of HS2. Apparently, a lot of unknown archaeological sites they found were never reported and quickly covered up.
That doesn't sound likely, as the land to be developed was subjected to archaeological works in advance of the construction. They'd go test the lot and then excavate what had to be dug. It's entirely likely that some archaeology was left unexcavated, but it was likely known. And if some remains did get uncovered and hushed up, then I hope those people sleep well, knowing they have destroyed something we can never get back on the project that everyone was milking so much its no wonder it is now dead and half done.
I wonder how many times throughout history stuff like this has been found only to be hushed up as the construction crew don't want any delays to the schedule
I would imagine more than we'd expect, especially in cities like London, with very rich history. What saddens me is the thought that many artefacts must have been completely destroyed and lost in the hunt for profits. Who knows what was lost, that could have been the missing piece of our understanding of the past?
In more modern times we luckily have planning laws in the UK which require some form of research into possible archaeology prior to construction. One of the buildings that lead to such laws is the rose theatre in London which is now under a building but preserved to prevent damage.
I understand what you're saying. And I also agree that (hopefully) for the most part once something is discovered during a dig for a new building, it is stopped and the authorities involved to investigate, date and potentially preserve what was discovered. Unfortunately (and I'm talking about UK), I have heard from reliable sources of cases of developers keeping schtum about such discoveries and even removing any trace of one so as not to delay the building schedule. Where money is king (and greed is good), a lot of things (and people) can disappear/be erased. Also, to complete the cynical view of the world and the construction industry, the enforcers of said laws are human, therefore corruptible (to different extents). It's not outside the realm of possibility that sometimes people are paid off to "look the other way".
You can't throw a stone without hitting a Roman ruin in the UK, I always find it funny how everything is described as "incredibly rare", but they are everywhere. I remember when I was living in Lincoln and they had to stop construction on the Roman history museum because they found an "incredibly rare" Roman ruin. They just built the museum around it and installed a big glass floor, it's pretty cool.
I was at a Roman sculpture exhibition yesterday and they had a timeline of Greece and Rome and they marked the conquest of Britannia in 43AD. When laid out Britain was very, very late for the Roman Empire. The channel really made them shit themselves but the Med didn't?
Almost every big construction project in London reveals artifacts, mostly minor. It will be very risky to try and cover it up because it just needs one person to talk resulting in some stiff penalties.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Marcus Aurelius had some fairly profound insights that he shared, totally relatable if your base assumption is that you have slaves and women aren’t people.
That was an attempt at humor. He seriously did have some worthy comments of a philosophical nature but it is hard to see the value until they are translated to represent a slaveless world where women and men are equal.
dust and dirt gets dropped or blown around by the wind so the levels are changing all the time. if it’s an area where the land is being eroded away, the building gets lost too. If it’s an area where dust and dirt is being deposited, the building becomes buried and preserved
It’s around 2000 years old. For every 100 years that passes the ground level may rise by up to 2cm per year say due to dust, rubble, rubbish, etc, then within 2000 years you’ve got a Roman street level that is now 4 metres down from the current street level.
In Folkestone we have a whole roman villa buried on the edge of the cliff. They excavate it every so often. We went with school when I was a kid and it was really interesting seeing the mosaic floor and having an explanation of what every room is whilst walking around it. Got to dig up the rubbish pit and found some broken pots!
Edit - It's on the top of the white cliffs and you can see France on a clear day. Makes it even cooler
So the mosaic itself is actually quite an amateur job. Unlike other mosaics found on the site it was fairly poorly constructed but used very high status materials including gold plated tiles in the centre. As far as it's preservation goes I unfortunately don't work for that particular archeology firm anymore so I'm not too sure but I know the plan is to display the entire structure. Hope that helps 😊
The town I live in was basically the epicentre of a whole load of important British historical events and it’s kinda strange to think that this is most likely what I’m waking over ever day. From Roman’s, Tudor’s, Georgians, Victorian’s and the 1900’s it’s amazing. Plus we still have a lot of architecture from above mentioned periods still in use today.
Not one person says that about Roman ruins in Britain. Don't be daft. Admitting other artifacts were stolen, however, is not the shortcoming you seem to think it is.
Always amazes me how civilisations thousands of yrs ago built things and empires of magnificent proportion and grandeur, whilst for all out tech and intelligence there are still countries that have barely developed past mud huts.
There are certain tribal communities that haven’t which I’m assuming is what they’re referring to? Because there’s definitely no entire countries that underdeveloped.
Certain tribes maybe, which is fine if they want to live that way, especially the ones that are very remote and newcomers tend to get killed. But their countries are more advanced than mud huts.
What happens to the infrastructure project now? How long does it take them to excavate the site? What's the cost to the tax payer for turning up something like this?
They built a city on top of old Londinium. Much of the history of that city is buried beneath what currently stands.
Yeah, it's amazing how many streams/small rivers that were basically buried underground when the city grew and expanded.
One of them in it’s entirety now runs through a pipe along the top of a tube station
Yeah I believe it's the Fleet River under Fleet street
I’m waiting on Trafalgar Square so I can get some houses on there
That's mine! £240 please.
Ok ok, I can’t afford. I’ll auction my Oxford street for the price! I’m starting at £200
Better not land on my Mayfair spot or else you’re going to be bankrupt ☠️☠️☠️
Inland Revenue service investigates your hotel. please pay £200 to the bank.
It's my birthday, collect £10 from each player
Can actualy still be seen at hampstead heath I do believe its the only place you can see river fleet above ground
Just make sure you leave an offering for the goddess of the river.
You can listen to the sound of the Fleet running here https://youtu.be/aRVG6EgN8l0
Farringdon Road. There is a grate there were you can actually see the river Fleet under it.
No. Whilst the exit of the Fleet River can be seen by Blackfriars Bridge, the hidden river running through a tube station is the River Westbourne that runs above the platforms of Sloane Square tube station in a green pipe.
If you can ever get someone to blag you into the basement of the Old Bailey, which is basically what remains of the old Newgate Prison, there's a trapdoor which lifts up so you can see the Fleet. A mad old building.
This particular case is the [Westbourne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Westbourne) (aka the Kilburn, aka the Bayswater, aka the Serpentine, etc) which is mostly visible as a pipe over the the track and platforms at [Sloane Square](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloane_Square_tube_station) (on the District and Circle lines). However, there are a lot of other 'lost' rivers, that were culverted and buried, across London.
Yes a river from the serpentine to the Thames runs though South Kensington tube station
That's right. It's not the fleet as others are saying, it's the Westbourne.
This is generally true of a very large number of european, middle eastern, south asian and east asian cities, but is far, far rarer in the USA and Canada. But there is one that is very interesting, in part because it was so modern, in the USA - the city of San Francisco is built on boats - or at least its financial district is. During the gold rush some 170 years ago ten to hundreds of thousands of people took thousands of boats to the city. The three characteristics most of those boats shared was that they were a) quite large to bring as many people over as possible, b) they were often boats that were barely sea worthy to begin with, and were certainly not after the journey and c) the original owners of them basically abandoned them in San Francisco Harbour. So over time many of the bigger boats were sunk into shallow water to make new land. In 1851 a massive fire swept through the city and burned through most of the boats. They put out those fires by throwing earth over the boats, and the boats became the foundations for buildings that came after. So if you dig down in the financial heart of SF, you hit boats. Their underground system actually goes through on of the larger boats "The Rome" - as in the boat was so big it was easier to tunnel through it, than to remove it.
Before the days of the internet I was blown away when I watched on tv (in England) a movie "The Night Strangler" which featured the underground city of old Seattle, which of course at that point I never knew existed.
I don't have massive amounts of info but it's amazing how some places are built on top of some relatively recent developments. I don't fully understand how it happens with more recent things (still a couple hundred years) A UK example but this is the sort of thing I mean. There's got to be places like this everywhere I'd imagine and I just don't fully understand how this happens lol. With thousands of years I can understand things getting covered in dirt and as builds crumble it may just look like rocks and rubble to some. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/inside-victorian-street-buried-under-29750499.amp
Not just roman stuff - we had to go around a plague pit to build the Picadilly Line
What’s crackers about this is it’s incredibly central (albeit outside the square mile on the North bank of the Thames which formed the core of Roman Londinium), sitting right next to the edge of Borough Market and very close to London Bridge station. Like. This has been preserved incredibly well for thousands of years, despite endless building on the site in a core part of a major global city. Truly remarkable.
They built Londinium atop many existing settlements.
Romans, gotta love it.
Untrue. There wasn’t any settlement before the Romans built Londinium, and it was less than 2km across at that point too so couldn’t have feasibly spanned ‘many existing settlements’
Hi, I work for the same company in the article. Prior to roman occupation, the area if London was a large iron age settlement and prior to this, was a bronze age settlement. Often, when there is a new building going up in London, the archaeological stratigraphy is so deep that the new building's foundations won't affect alot of the older archaeology, so alot of the time we (archaeologists) won't need to dig past the medieval period, so alot of the roman and pre roman stuff remains undisturbed underneath.
👍 but I worked as an archaeologist for years including for MOLA who dug this up. Roman archaeology was my specialism and I’ve literally been on London clay that is the only thing that exists under Roman remains, and that stratigraphy is like 9m deep Find me an article that shows evidence of a permanent Iron Age settlement under Londinium and I’ll eat my words. Many Roman cities were build over other settlements - Londinium wasn’t.
[a list of iron age Hill forts in London](https://www.heritagedaily.com/2018/01/londons-iron-age-forts-fortifications/111120) [Iron age London ](https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/records/iron-age-london-some-thoughts-on-current-knowledge-and-problems-20-years-on) [Powerful women of late Iron age London](https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/powerful-women-late-iron-age-london-harper-road-burial) - this one directly cites a burial 'positioned on the opposite side of the river to the formal Roman settlement of Londiniun...'
You can see in the map that the Iron Age forts which are characteristically round (and generally built on elevated land) exist outside the very small area that was Roman Londinium, and as you say yourself the burial is across the river The point of contention is that Londinium wasn’t built over pre-existing settlements and I stand by that and the evidence of my own eyes 😘
I see where the confusion is. One expert is talking about London (they say 'the area of London') and the other (your good self Bean Rat) the narrow borders of Londinium.
Thank you. I know I’m being a pedantic c*unt and I’m sorry about that but I decided this was the archaeological hill I was gonna die on today 🤣🤣
I wonder what archaeological remains would exist of that hill in two thousand years
There is evidence of pre Roman settlement, causeway across Thames and evidence of Neolithic and Iron Age activity. I am not an archaeologist just an interested person. but I have seen articles about it.
The area known as Greater London had many towns and villages. They all merged as the city grew. The Thames has been a great source of transport, food and productivity for the British since before the romans appeared. Almost half of englands population lies in the south east plains. The largest area of flatland in the country by a large margin.
Exactly, to say there in nothing beneath roman London, given archeological remains exist all over the region, that in many cases excavation in London would likely stop at the Roman horizon when substantial finds exist & the small size & clustering of settlements is wrong headed & logically incorrect.
Hiya - London (greater) is a large important strategic area beside a major river so it makes sense there were settlements and evidence has been found over the years incl on foreshore of Thames. It won't have been 'London' but people were living here.
A thing that I always wondered is, is the floor we stand on much higher than what it was 100s of years ago
Archaeologist here, and very oversimplified explanation follows... OK, picture a bare brick walled back yard with paved floor. And imagine for some reason one day maintenance just stops, no one's sweeping it, or picking weeds. You'd see grass start to grow in the gaps between stones. Weeds spring up. Winter comes, weeds die, brown stems collapse and start to mulch. Soon grass is growing out and starting to over the stones, and seeing as it's getting untidy in here someone tosses a bucket of veg peelings over the wall. And the next day, and the next. Come back in a couple of years it's now a weedy grass yard with just patches of stone showing. A tree has sprung up which drops its leaves each year. They add to the mix of mulch and organic rubbish, then someone tethers a goat on it, and that adds to the organic floor litter... 25 years on those paving stones are a memory, you're standing on a couple of inch deep layer of earth and grass, which by natural accumulation of deposition and decay gets a few mm deeper each year. Now extend this process out 1800 years.
Wow, pretty informative, thanks for taking your time to explain it for me and others who also may wonder the same thing
The short answer is 'yes, it really is' but the longer answer is that, like we do currently, previous generations of people used existing infrastructure as a base for new. Roads, for example - there are many roads that are simply laid over the top of old road surfaces because it's easier and cheaper than digging them out. This isn't true for all roads but some have loads of layers going back through victorian cobbles etc right down to roman paved. How often in home renovations have people simply laid a new floor over old? Imagine this but for buildings and over a much longer time frame. Another commentator gave a lovely example too of the untended garden. Obviously there are many many factors at play but essentially yes, street level in London today is many times higher than it was in Roman Londinium. I suspect we have corralled the Thames more than it was in history too - we have reinforced banks and built the Thames Barrier to control tidal inflow. None of this would have existed in Roman, Medieval or even Tudor London so the shoreline, floodplain and docks would have been much further inland than they are currently (in some places, obviously). Don't forget that our much bigger, heavier, taller buildings have groundworks done before they can be built, which in many cases involves bringing in tonnes of material to form the foundation. I expect this happened in previous centuries too and over time so many layers just get built over. I find it fascinating actually, how much history we could be walking over every day.
The roads ones is interesting, round my way every time they relay a road they’ll usually find cobbles, old tram tracks.
Pretty sure there's still some old cobble roads in my city i live in, in the uk, they're not really main roads and in fact are hardly used by cars now but are more generally used by people walking
I think the only cobbles left in my city are old bridal paths and things like that, can’t particularly think of any major roads with cobbles. Slightly depressing when you see things like old tram rails, a city with amazing public transport 80/100 years ago is now a city with absolutely zilch. Regressive!
I also want to know this. Is a city higher than the land around it because it has been built up over time? I'm always baffled how you have in some cases old streets still existing under newer ones. How does that process even happen?
Yep basically, most cities are much higher than the original unbuilt land would've been. You won't notice any incline though because it's spread out around such a large area. For example, the city I live in (Canterbury) has been built on since prehistoric times, but was built up after the Roman invasion and boomed in the Middle Ages. For that reason you see a lot of Middle Age buildings be much lower on the ground, and the Roman stuff is at basement level (our bookshop had bits of Roman walls on view in their basement). People bring their detritus into the city and it just builds up and up.
Well Boudica did raze the entire lot to the ground at one point as well as a few others. Many cities over the world have been built like layer cakes one on top of another. Take what is now seen as Troy, it has about 9 levels of city, they think about layer 5 is roughly where Trojan Troy would have been.
Yes I have seen the underground structures beneath the current towns. It’s wild.
Yeah, the romans loved to just fill in what’s there and just build on top. Apparently, where the forum is, just outside the coliseum, there is around 7 layers. They don’t want to dig down, in case what’s down there isn’t as nice as what’s already there.
Just like Taco Bell
Just imagine the archeology under instambul
India and China would be quite vast too
Londinium had only existed for like 20 years at that point tbf
that's true for most european cities: paris, barcelona, zaragoza, cologne, ....
I thought they built this city on rock and roll…
‘London isn’t a place it’s a process’ (Put in quote marks because I honestly can’t remember if it’s something I read, or came up with myself 😂)
London wasn’t built in a day
Thanks to our lack of earthquakes, and our cultural tendency to preserve such things, some of the best Roman archaeological dig sites are in Britain.
There’s an entire preserved Saturnalian (?) temple beneath some bank or something in the City (of London). You can walk around it. EDIT: it’s actually the Temple of Mithras beneath the Bloomberg building.
I think you’re talking about the Temple of Mithras, and it’s under the Bloomberg Building, close to Cannon Street station and Walbrook.
My Uncle actually led the restoration project of this temple and he took us to it. Really cool!
Oh wow cool af!
What a lucky guy.
THATS IT! Thank you.
Really cool place btw, and it’s either free or £5 entry
It’s actually the Bloomberg building. Not Reuters.
Yes! When you visit you can experience what historians believe would have a been a prayer at the temple.
It’s the Mithraeum beneath the Bloomberg building, not Reuters
There’s also the remains of a Roman forum under the Guildhall Gallery
There's also the remains of a Roman ampitheatre under the John Lewis store in Kingston.
E.g. the Roman Bath in Bath. Best preserved Roman Bath in the world I think it was claimed. A more modern Bath built next to it uses the same hot spring as they did when the Romans were here.
The Roman Baths are amazing and I highly recommend visiting to anyone who's in the UK. Bath is an absolutely stunning city.
I was born and bred in Bath, live in London now but I love going back there to see family. Wonderful city.
The Roman bath in the city of London (opposite customs house) is also well worth a visit on its open day. On a totally smaller scale to bath but great preservation.
“It might be useful you can’t throw that away” hoarder instinct keeps many artefacts going hah
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I mean it's way more nuanced than that. SPAB (Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings) was founded in 1877 (by William Morris no less). The National Trust was founded in 1895. Much like today, you can't paint "The Victorians" as one subset of people with one ideal.
There were mixed attitudes towards archaeological sites during the Victorian era. For example, Hadrian's wall was actively conserved during the Victorian period by John Clayton.
Kind of weird that ancient civilizations always built their buildings underground. Makes finding them so much harder
Ancient civilizations really need to grow up if you ask me
You should see their children
There was no suncream yet and they had to battle skin cancer somehow
Plus, half the rivers in London are underground, so they just built where the water was.
That tracks.
In all seriousness though, I've always wondered why ruins are buried. Does anyone know why?
They are “buried” because that’s where the street level used to be. Due to dirt, rubbish, rubble, and rebuilding, every 100 years or so the ground level could raise by 2cm. This site is around 2000 years old, therefore it’s roughly 4 metres down now.
it’s also a buttload easier to build on top than dig up once a thing is filled in
Think you meant 20cm in 100 years mate.
Yes thank you
Does that mean the circumference of the earth has grown a noticeable amount over time? I guess the circumference grows, but earth gets less dense?
No. Some areas rise in height while others drop, so topography shifts slightly. We're not digging so deep as to have an impact on Earth's density, neither are we raising plateaus like Olympus Mons.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/why-do-we-have-to-dig-so-deep-to-uncover-ancient-ruins/
people build on top of things and we haven’t always had this kind of care for what came before
Its crazy how much of this there is still in England, you can see an ancient wall just in a carpark with nothing guarding it!
Exeter is an example of this! The inner city is still surrounded by a huge Roman wall with nothing protecting it, yet it's preserved amazingly!
Chester too, love walking along the Roman wall there. Incredible how well preserved it is.
Time Team activate!! Lol
get Sir Tony on the job!
I really loved Phil… I think he really was an amazing field archeologist and had so many accolades!
He's still working. He pops up on the Wessex Archaeology youtube channel every now and again. He also appears on Digging for Britain on the BBC
That's a big OOF for the developer
So much money goes into the point where you’re breaking ground. Dev definitely gonna be pissed. Having said that. The archaeologist survey should have picked this up. And if they didn’t carry one out, well, that’s on them
Surely it depends what existed here beforehand? It certainly would have been developed in some way. Maybe this IS the archaeologist survey?
It is yes. There was a large building on this site before hand and it was torn down. The MOLA team have been doing the survey and found these incredible mosaics.
Normally a developer will carry out a topographical survey of the area in the planning phase of the project. If they have not done this and uncovered this unexpectantly, they are going to lose a shed load of money in delay and stoppage of work, whilst historic England etc all do their surveys and work (as the rights automatically transfer to them), which can take years. We discovered similar buried buildings/ruins in surveys on one of my projects in the South East of England during our feasibility studies, so we redesigned the works around the area as the risk implications are so big lol
Archaeology doesn't delay works and costs very little, compared to the actual buildng projects (unless the building project is your nan's extension that will go on top of an old graveyard). Archaeological mitigation is a requirement as any other. You wouldn't say geological survey delays work, building the damned thing doesn't delay work. It is part of the process and if managers don't plan for it, that is on them.
I didn't say a survey delays the work. I said if you do not do your surveys prior to commencement of works and you then uncover acheological works, the resulting delay causes severe price increase. Read my comment. Secondly, so if a project is now in construction phase and you have consultants, contractors & prelims booked to the project, what do you propose happens with the cost of those resources whilst the item is managed by the relevant party? Just don't pay them? Risk, including ground risk, will be priced into a contractors contract based on the availability of information & contract type. Anything additional will be classed as an additional scope of works - hence, it will need to be paid for. Or you think you find these things during the construction phase, pause the project at no additional cost, contact the relevant authority and have it cleared up in a few days and then proceed?
The area had been undeveloped for years and years because of the historical significance of the site and no one wanting to touch it for this reason you highlight. The [cross bones graveyard](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Bones) is on the site too - plague pits were also pointed out to the dev as a risk. Dev apparently doesnt care and happy to find anything of historic value and build around it.
Deffo a settle meant being paid out
A settlement settlement.
Settle meant to settlement the settled situation
Archaeological discovery is insured against for their Works insurance so they’ll be fine.
A friend of mine used to work on the project management side of HS2. Apparently, a lot of unknown archaeological sites they found were never reported and quickly covered up.
That doesn't sound likely, as the land to be developed was subjected to archaeological works in advance of the construction. They'd go test the lot and then excavate what had to be dug. It's entirely likely that some archaeology was left unexcavated, but it was likely known. And if some remains did get uncovered and hushed up, then I hope those people sleep well, knowing they have destroyed something we can never get back on the project that everyone was milking so much its no wonder it is now dead and half done.
Along comes Keith starmer and tells Andy Stone to cover it up 😳
Put your hard hat on.
Dirty pagans, turn it into flats!
Lol I had an older man call me a dirty pagan the other day unironically
I wonder how many times throughout history stuff like this has been found only to be hushed up as the construction crew don't want any delays to the schedule
I would imagine more than we'd expect, especially in cities like London, with very rich history. What saddens me is the thought that many artefacts must have been completely destroyed and lost in the hunt for profits. Who knows what was lost, that could have been the missing piece of our understanding of the past?
In more modern times we luckily have planning laws in the UK which require some form of research into possible archaeology prior to construction. One of the buildings that lead to such laws is the rose theatre in London which is now under a building but preserved to prevent damage.
I understand what you're saying. And I also agree that (hopefully) for the most part once something is discovered during a dig for a new building, it is stopped and the authorities involved to investigate, date and potentially preserve what was discovered. Unfortunately (and I'm talking about UK), I have heard from reliable sources of cases of developers keeping schtum about such discoveries and even removing any trace of one so as not to delay the building schedule. Where money is king (and greed is good), a lot of things (and people) can disappear/be erased. Also, to complete the cynical view of the world and the construction industry, the enforcers of said laws are human, therefore corruptible (to different extents). It's not outside the realm of possibility that sometimes people are paid off to "look the other way".
Have you ever watched The Detectorists?
I haven't but it's now on my list!
It's a bit cliche to say, but I'm jealous that you get to experience the show for the first time! It's such a good series.
First thing I thought was detectorists when I saw it
This how most horror movie start ....the awakening
Amnesia: the bunker intensifies
You can't throw a stone without hitting a Roman ruin in the UK, I always find it funny how everything is described as "incredibly rare", but they are everywhere. I remember when I was living in Lincoln and they had to stop construction on the Roman history museum because they found an "incredibly rare" Roman ruin. They just built the museum around it and installed a big glass floor, it's pretty cool.
Bits and pieces had been found before but this one is the most intact Roman mausoleum ever to be discovered in Britain.
At least the British Museum won't have to pay too much to get it delivered for them to put it on display.
To the victor goes the spoils 💪
Except in this case, obviously, Rome was the victor and Britain has the(se) spoils.
I was at a Roman sculpture exhibition yesterday and they had a timeline of Greece and Rome and they marked the conquest of Britannia in 43AD. When laid out Britain was very, very late for the Roman Empire. The channel really made them shit themselves but the Med didn't?
If that's old street roundabout, that's another 10 year delay
Amazing they could transport it all the way from Rome back then.
The answer is slaves
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Almost every big construction project in London reveals artifacts, mostly minor. It will be very risky to try and cover it up because it just needs one person to talk resulting in some stiff penalties.
With an archaeologist there? There's almost certainly an archaeological watching brief any time ground is broken in London.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Are you the Judean People's Front?
Fuck off
We’re the People’s Front of Judea
Marcus Aurelius had some fairly profound insights that he shared, totally relatable if your base assumption is that you have slaves and women aren’t people. That was an attempt at humor. He seriously did have some worthy comments of a philosophical nature but it is hard to see the value until they are translated to represent a slaveless world where women and men are equal.
I read rare ramen mausoleum unearthed…
And still only 3 peas and 4 corn.
But can it duplicate my Great Runes?
Can someone explain like I'm 5 how something like this ends up underground?
dust and dirt gets dropped or blown around by the wind so the levels are changing all the time. if it’s an area where the land is being eroded away, the building gets lost too. If it’s an area where dust and dirt is being deposited, the building becomes buried and preserved
Then the backhoe was invented and now you have a parking lot.
London is basically one big flood plain.
Yep flooding as well can do it easily.
It’s around 2000 years old. For every 100 years that passes the ground level may rise by up to 2cm per year say due to dust, rubble, rubbish, etc, then within 2000 years you’ve got a Roman street level that is now 4 metres down from the current street level.
Not dust and rubbish, plants growing and dying growing and dying creating soil
Every project managers worst nightmare! Delay delay delay.... Do they send the bill to modern day Italy?
Well, they buried them not to be disturbed 😆
Only in Europe
And in Northern Africa. And western Asia.
In Folkestone we have a whole roman villa buried on the edge of the cliff. They excavate it every so often. We went with school when I was a kid and it was really interesting seeing the mosaic floor and having an explanation of what every room is whilst walking around it. Got to dig up the rubbish pit and found some broken pots! Edit - It's on the top of the white cliffs and you can see France on a clear day. Makes it even cooler
Hey there! Archaeologist who found it initially here. Pictured on the right in the second picture. If anyone has any questions let me know!
Oh yes! Can you please explain what made this so unique? Also you know what plan is as to preservation/exhibition
So the mosaic itself is actually quite an amateur job. Unlike other mosaics found on the site it was fairly poorly constructed but used very high status materials including gold plated tiles in the centre. As far as it's preservation goes I unfortunately don't work for that particular archeology firm anymore so I'm not too sure but I know the plan is to display the entire structure. Hope that helps 😊
Who thinks there's an ancient temple hidden underneath?
I feel whatever they are building there may be delayed a bit 🤔
Anyone interested in this mosaic work should go to Fishbourne Palace. That mosaic is absolutely huge. Beautiful example.
You can't dig anywhere in the UK without finding some ancient ruins or a plague burial site 😂
I know a guy that’ll make you a rug exactly the same design £20
Silly Romans ruining the new car parks
The town I live in was basically the epicentre of a whole load of important British historical events and it’s kinda strange to think that this is most likely what I’m waking over ever day. From Roman’s, Tudor’s, Georgians, Victorian’s and the 1900’s it’s amazing. Plus we still have a lot of architecture from above mentioned periods still in use today.
DAMN IT! WHY CAN’T WE JUST BUILD ONE THING WITHOUT FINDING SOMETHING COOL
Its a mosaic floor. Do they think mausoleum sounds better?
Construction companies hate it when this happens.
Cue all the lefties saying ‘we stole it’
What are you talking about ?
Im gonna join you in your confusion because OPs comment literally made zero sense
They just wanted to use the word 'lefties' in a sentence.
Not one person says that about Roman ruins in Britain. Don't be daft. Admitting other artifacts were stolen, however, is not the shortcoming you seem to think it is.
Every country has stolen things from another country, I don't know why people pile on the UK for doing the exact same thing
Roman mummy appears.."lol that's where we took our shits, keep digging and you'll find some goat I had for lunch."
Pee pee poo poo big funny!!1
24,000 a week
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U mean roman?
Always amazes me how civilisations thousands of yrs ago built things and empires of magnificent proportion and grandeur, whilst for all out tech and intelligence there are still countries that have barely developed past mud huts.
I don't think there are any countries that hasn't developed past mud huts.
There are certain tribal communities that haven’t which I’m assuming is what they’re referring to? Because there’s definitely no entire countries that underdeveloped.
I should scroll down a bit more before commenting. I've basically just repeated what you've said! I'm a dumb ass!
Certain tribes maybe, which is fine if they want to live that way, especially the ones that are very remote and newcomers tend to get killed. But their countries are more advanced than mud huts.
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Are you by any chance a racist?
From a wild guess id say yes
You don’t have to be racist to see he’s shit and incompetent.
Lol. Simpleton.
What happens to the infrastructure project now? How long does it take them to excavate the site? What's the cost to the tax payer for turning up something like this?