Tuesday 7 September - Elizabethan London

Tube strike today and meeting in the morning so only a short day to explore. I have a copy of The A-Z of Elizabethan London and plan to use this as my guide today. London was then a small city, and concentrated around the City so seems a good plan. Then the only bridge was London Bridge and it was the old London Bridge with houses and shops strung along it. The book covers three maps of London, all thought to be in the late 1550s. Then London was a small city and largely with the old Roman city walls. Other than the inns of court there is nothing much east of where the Old Bailey now is. Smithfield Market, St Bartholomew's Hospital and Little Britain are all outside the city walls. What is now the 'west end' was then largely fields.

According to the map Covent Garden was a garden, Long Acre was a field, St Martin's fields are there but as yet no church. I presume Haymarket was a hay market (plenty of fields around). Oxford Street was the road to Oxford (and Piccadilly the road to Reading). Westminster is the place of the politics (and church). Westminster Hall (now part of the Houses of Parliament) is there; as are Westminster Abbey (and school)and Lambeth Palace. But the City is London.

I walk along the south bank, then as now a place of entertainment. These days the entertainment is rather more upscale than then. Around about Tate Modern was the site of bear baiting and bull baiting (nothing new about status dogs it seems - although the fights are happening a bit further south now). The Globe was about to be built at the time of my map. Now, the afternoon performance at the rebuilt Globe Theatre seems to have finished and people are pouring out. Groups of young foreign students cluster looking rather bored, older European and American visitors more enthusiastic.

I get the river bus to the Tower of London (I have become a huge fan of the river bus and crossing by boat seems appropriate). My plan is to walk around the city walls (only a couple of miles). The street plan is still much as it was then. Some roads have new names, some of the smaller alleys have disappeared, but most of it is still there. Seething Lane, same as now. Crutched Friars thought to have derived from an order of monks called the Fratres Crucifieri. Houndsditch (the ditch outside the city walls where rubbish and dead dogs were thrown).

I'm fascinated by how many of the street and names remain the same and I begin to realise the origins of the streets I walk every day. The old city was gated and the major roads reflect these old gated entries to the city - Aldgate, Bishopsgate (close by, St Mary's (Ho)Spital and the Spitel fields), Moorgate (Moor Fields just outside the gate) and Aldersgate.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Blitz and outside the Guildhall is a Red Arrow and a Spitfire (now with its wings folded up and ready to go home). The formalities are over but the planes attract men (young and old) on their way home. Phones are out, photos are taken. Because of the tube strike London's streets are much busier than usual. Many people are walking rather than waiting for buses where queues snake out for yards and buses arrive already full. Most people are wearing comfy shoes but there is the occasional high heel devotee striding out defiantly. Having so many people on the streets makes London seem more cheery (though I think many of the walkers are rather grumpy about it). There are some new customers for the Boris bikes, people struggling to work out how to release the bike from its docking station.

The streets are filled with vast buildings most of which seem to be banks from various parts of the world. Here there are taxis waiting, people too busy and important to consider walking. There appears to be lobby competition with banks competing to see who can have the most dramatic entrance (no change there either). Deutsche Bank wears its art collection in its lobby with a huge abstract painting. I once had to interview one of the bankers there and they have a fabulous art collection. Each of the meeting rooms a mini gallery for an artist. I arrived early and the nice receptionist said it was fine to look in at all the empty meeting rooms. My interviewee seemed totally uninterested in the collection and not even to have noticed that there was one.

I wander towards St Paul's (there in Elizabethan times but then with a spire not a dome). Church bells are ringing out from various churches which adds to a sense of atmosphere and the old city. Paternoster Square is looking shiny and new, little sense of the old city in its new, clean squares. The Stock Exchange is here and security is always tight. If you stroll through and don't stop unless to shop or eat then you don't notice. But try taking photographs are you are likely to be moved on by security guards telling you it's not allowed 'for security reasons'.

But despite the new buildings the old names just about survive. Paternoster Square, Ave Maria Lane and Amen Corner. I am rather disappointed that Pissing Alley has not lasted (now part of Cannon Street) although anyone who has walked through London in the early morning knows that its memory is kept alive.

Once again my travels around London have revealed how little things change, or how much the same things keep happening (even if in different forms). The old street names last and the same things motivate people. There seems an endless cycle of boom and bust. The tensions between Westminster and the City are nothing new - politicians have always been concerned about the City's 'special' status. All change and no change.