Drawings of Old London

In Short

This volume serves as an antiquarian visual record and descriptive guide to a collection of artwork portraying London’s disappearing architecture. Philip Norman documents domestic homes, galleried coaching inns, and secluded courtyards threatened by modern expansion and railway construction. Through detailed descriptions of physical dimensions, historical ownership, and literary associations, the text charts the physical evolution of London's neighborhoods from medieval priories to early twentieth-century corporate development. It survives as a precise, affectionate inventory of urban spaces that vanished under the pressures of municipal improvement and private real estate growth.

The Story

The book opens along the coaching routes south of the Thames, detailing the sprawling yards of Southwark. Here, famous inns like the Elephant and Castle, the White Hart, the George, and the Nag’s Head stand as relics of an earlier transit era. Norman records their double tiers of wooden bedroom galleries, clumsy balustrades, and quiet stables. He charts how these sprawling structures survive fires and rebuildings, only to be absorbed by modern railway lines or dismantled for commercial warehouses.

Crossing the river into the dense quarters of the City, the narrative moves through ancient parishes like Holy Trinity in the Minories and the butcher shops of Aldgate. Norman captures old timber-framed structures, such as No. 10 Great St. Helen’s, propped up with beams before their inevitable clearance. He traces the private histories embedded within these structures, noting carved doorways, archaic scoring boards, and painted rooms hidden behind quiet courtyards. In Botolph Lane and Austin Friars, grand seventeenth-century staircases, panelled rooms, and allegorical painted ceilings reveal the domestic elegance of merchant families who once lived alongside medieval monastic ruins.

Moving west toward Holborn and Clerkenwell, the survey highlights legal inns of chancery like Barnard’s Inn and galleried taverns like the Bell. The narrative uncovers multi-layered history buried directly beneath the city floor; beneath a Jacobean cedar room in Coleman Street, workmen uncover peaty soil containing ancient Roman-style timber wells and centuries of discarded pottery. Along the Thames at Paul’s Wharf, picturesque riverside houses with bay windows overhanging the water stand alongside secret subterranean brick tunnels lined with stalactites.

The final section moves into Westminster and the west end, recording stately almshouses, grand aristocratic mansions, and suburban retreats. At Emanuel Hospital, aged pensioners walk the peaceful gardens of Queen Anne almshouses just months before the land is sold off. Great townhouses like Devonshire House, Bourdon House, and Scarsdale House illustrate the shift from farmland to urban estates. Norman follows these properties through their transformations into private courts, boarding schools, and retail annexes, concluding at the river edge in Chelsea with the humble dwellings of artists.

How It Unfolds

The Southwark inns The survey begins south of London Bridge, recording galleried coaching inns like the White Hart and the George. Timber staircases and wide wagon sheds stand quiet as railway companies take over the old yards.

Inside the City walls The focus shifts to merchant houses, ancient taverns, and parish boundaries in Aldgate and Bishopsgate. Seventeenth-century wooden frames and carved tavern doors are documented just prior to street-widening projects.

Hidden courts and staircases The text moves into quiet inner precincts like Botolph Lane and Austin Friars. Detailed notes record painted plaster ceilings, carved mantelpieces, and forgotten medieval arches built into private office walls.

Subterranean and riverside relics Explorations near Coleman Street and Paul’s Pier reveal forgotten layers of urban infrastructure. Deep peaty soil yields ancient timber-hooped wells, medieval pottery, and vaulted brick river tunnels.

Westminster institutions and western mansions The final movement examines outer sanctuaries like Emanuel Hospital and historic West End residences. Quiet courtyards, Jacobean fireplaces, and private gardens are logged as the modern city encroaches.

The People

Philip Norman The artist and antiquarian who walks the streets measuring, sketching, and writing about historic structures before demolition. He seeks to preserve an accurate physical record of domestic and commercial architecture for future students.

Andrew Ducrow The famed equestrian performer born at the Nag's Head Inn in 1796. His origins tie the physical space of the old Southwark coaching inn to London's theatrical history.

Mark and Mary Wayland Tenants of the George Inn in 1670 who rebuilt the property after a devastating local fire. They negotiated reduced rent and longer leases to keep the historic tavern standing through municipal disasters.

Lady Anne Dacre The sixteenth-century founder of Emanuel Hospital whose 1594 will provided an almshouse sanctuary for aged men and women. Her institution survives in Queen Anne buildings governed by the City of London until its end in 1892.

Sir Thomas Grosvenor and Mary Davies The couple whose 1676 marriage brought the Davies estate into the Grosvenor family. Their historic legacy is tied directly to Bourdon House, one of the oldest surviving structures on the property.

In Its Own Voice

"Great, rambling, queer old places they are, with galleries, and passages, and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish material for a hundred ghost stories."

The text quotes Charles Dickens to describe the visual character of the old galleried inns surviving in Southwark.

"He had often said that 'if he were to choose a place to die in it should be an Inn; it looked like a pilgrim's going-home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it.'"

Norman quotes Bishop Burnet regarding Archbishop Leighton, who fulfilled his unique lifelong wish by passing away at the Bell Inn in Warwick Lane.

"It was panelled throughout, and painted from ceiling to floor with strange designs, among which one could dimly discern the figures of Indians, a rhinoceros, antelopes, palm trees, and other signs of tropical life..."

The entry for No. 26 Botolph Lane describes an extraordinary signed 1696 wall painting hidden inside a quiet ward school building.

What It's Really About

The text is fundamentally about the fragile nature of physical heritage in a rapidly modernizing metropolis. Norman documents how private commercial development, street widenings, and expanding railway lines continuously displace historical structures. Beneath this documentation lies an argument for architectural preservation: everyday domestic buildings, galleried taverns, and secluded almshouses hold as much historical value as grand public monuments.

The catalog explores how the physical layers of a city retain human memory. Ancient timber wells, Roman-style construction methods, and forgotten medieval arches continuously surface beneath modern pavement. Norman demonstrates that an urban landscape is an evolving archive, where every carved post, painted panel, and ancient street boundary preserves the quiet history of ordinary residents.

Why Read It Today

This catalog offers an exceptionally precise visual and historical tour of a vanished urban environment. Readers who enjoy architectural history, historical geography, or traditional topographies will appreciate Norman's meticulous documentation of structural layouts, dimensional measurements, and property deeds. The prose moves with quiet authority, offering clarity without poetic embellishment or nostalgic sentimentality.

The text requires patience with dense structural details, exact room measurements, and extensive lists of historical leases. Readers must navigate unfamiliar early twentieth-century street layouts and frequent references to property transfers. Yet what stays with you is the vivid sense of physical loss—the realization that dozens of centuries-old galleried yards, carved mantelpieces, and quiet almshouse gardens disappeared within a single generation of Victorian and Edwardian municipal expansion.