What lies beneath?
6.30pm Thursday 27th April 2017
Westminster Arts Library
35 St Martins Street
London WC1
Ticket includes a capital serving of Hendricks Gin Cocktail
Admission: £6.50/8.50 In advance only HERE
People started living in the lower Thames Valley a very, very long time ago. After about 450,000 years the Romans turned up, bridged the Thames and founded Londinium. It lasted for over 450 years. But, like the empire it fell. Then, after the dark ages, came the little known Lundenwic and then the even less well known Norman Lundenberg. Join archaeological historians BOB COWIE and MICHAEL MARSHALL as they walk the streets of the Londons before London.
Of all the 'Roman' skeletons discovered to date, only one, 'The Spitalfields Woman', was actually from Rome but in other respects Londinium was 'The Eternal City' in miniature. It had its own gladiators, chariot races, an amphitheatre, forum, sewers and baths - basically all the accoutrements of civilised urbane life. Museum of London archaeologist MICHAEL MARSHALL will take us back through the millennia to explore this far flung outpost of the empire - and the very first British city - through the artefacts that survived its decline and fall.
Then, BOB COWIE, project officer of Museum of London Archaeology, will take up the story. Londinium was abandoned in the late 5th century and its haunted ruins must have filled travellers with awe until some again began to occupy the land a mile to the West.
Whereas Londinium is still somewhat with us - in those artefacts, in the 'Square Mile', in the fragments of London Wall and in patterns in the paving, the settlements that succeeded it before our own are now virtually invisible.
At its height in AD 120, Londinium was home to about 45,000 citizens - measly by the standards of today's megalopolis perhaps - but enough to make it the biggest city in Britain for well over a thousand years.
Of all the 'Roman' skeletons discovered to date, only one, 'The Spitalfields Woman', was actually from Rome but in other respects Londinium was 'The Eternal City' in miniature. It had its own gladiators, chariot races, an amphitheatre, forum, sewers and baths - basically all the accoutrements of civilised urbane life. Museum of London archaeologist MICHAEL MARSHALL will take us back through the millennia to explore this far flung outpost of the empire - and the very first British city - through the artefacts that survived its decline and fall.
Then, BOB COWIE, project officer of Museum of London Archaeology, will take up the story. Londinium was abandoned in the late 5th century and its haunted ruins must have filled travellers with awe until some again began to occupy the land a mile to the West.
Whereas Londinium is still somewhat with us - in those artefacts, in the 'Square Mile', in the fragments of London Wall and in patterns in the paving, the settlements that succeeded it before our own are now virtually invisible.
Bob will take us on a mediaeval pageant of the various Anglo-Saxon settlers, immigrants and invaders who made their lives in the riverside Lundenwic and those that followed them to build the Norman Lundenburgh amongst the ruins of the Roman city.
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MICHAEL MARSHALL is Prehistoric and Roman Finds Specialist at MOLA, Museum of London archaeology, where his work involves identifying, recording and interpreting artefacts. He has worked on material from across Britain dating from the Palaeolithic to the post-medieval period but has a particular interest in Bronze Age, Iron Age and Roman finds
BOB COWIE Is a Project Officer and one of MOLA’s most experienced field archaeologists. His urban projects have included high profile and complicated excavations, including the Saxon sites at the Royal Opera House and the National Gallery Extension, in London. He regularly teaches courses in ‘Anglo-Saxon and medieval Britain’
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