And another few things to look out for

Date: 2006-01-23 08:16 am (UTC)
...as you get to know the place better. Which will take several life-times, of course.

London didn't get designed. It grew. There were lots of little villages that gradually got swallowed up - and if you look, they're still there, complete with village greens in some cases, and still feeling that the next village down is different and foreign. And how did it grow? What was it that filled the gaps? Well, it was all the incomers, from all over the world, from every culture in existence. London is a melting pot. We've been absorbing newcomers for the last two or three thousand years, and that pot is still bubbling. And the evidence of the earlier additions is still there. I was walking through the City area once, from one concrete and glass monster to another, and passed a small open area with a sunken building in the middle. A temple to Mithras. Built by some Roman immigrants who were feeling homesick. It's still there, though I'm not sure to what extent it's still used. Go up to the Museum of London, they'll show you the old walls around the City - and the line of carbon in the soil where Boudicca burnt the place to the ground. All right, so some absorptions went a bit more smoothly than others... but she hit London because it was a major city, and that was about two thousand years ago. Take a look at the Chinatown area, it's got its own identity, but it's very much a part of the whole.

There are laws in London created because of things that happened a few centuries ago, and they're still there, and still important. Don't plan on having a thatched roof in central London, it's illegal. After that Great Fire in 1666, they were banned. When the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre was built, it had to have special dispensation, and some very elaborate fire precautions.

Try looking at who's allowed to drive their sheep across London Bridge, and when. (Hint - probably not you).

And the great thing is that this is all a continuing process of change and growth. It isn't "there's History, in a glass case". *We* burnt down those Romans, because we didn't like them. *We* used to live in tenements on the old London Bridge, and throw our broken pots into the river. Last week, last year, last millennium - it's all one story. And yes, so your ancestors wandered off to Foreign Parts for a bit, it's still your story too. What's a few centuries between friends? Now you're home, with new experiences to feed into the mix.
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