Author: Richard Thomson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bridges
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Author: Dorian Gerhold
Publisher: Oxbow Books
ISBN: 1789257549
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
London Bridge lined with houses from end to end was one of the most extraordinary structures ever seen in London. It was home to over 500 people, perched above the rushing waters of the Thames, and was one of the city’s main shopping streets. It is among the most familiar images of London in the past, but little has previously been known about the houses and the people who lived and worked in them. This book uses plentiful newly-discovered evidence, including detailed descriptions of nearly every house, to tell the story of the bridge and its houses and inhabitants. With the new information it is possible to reconstruct the plan of the bridge and houses in the seventeenth century, to trace the history of each house back through rentals and a survey to 1358, revealing the original layout, to date most of the houses which appear in later views, and to show how the houses and their occupants changed during five and half centuries. The book describes what stopped the houses falling into the river, how the houses were gradually enlarged, what their layout was inside, what goods were sold on the bridge and how these changed over time, the extensive rebuilding in 1477-1548 and 1683-96, and the removal of the houses around 1760. There are many new discoveries - about the structure of the bridge, the width of the roadway, the original layout of the houses, how the houses were supported, the size and internal planning of the houses, the quality of their architecture, and the trades practised on the bridge. The book includes five newly-commissioned reconstruction drawings showing what we now know about the bridge and its houses.

Author: Richard Thomson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bridges
Languages : en
Pages : 726

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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English periodicals
Languages : en
Pages : 712

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Author: David Madden
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1572339284
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
“Like Dr. Frankenstein’s invented creature, the larger-than-life, flesh-and-blood characters of London Bridge in Plague and Fireare made from pieces of the dead past that are forged in the consciousness of an historian—himself a creation of history and of David Madden’s literary magic. Struck by the lightning bolt of the co-joined imaginations of Madden and his reader, the fabricated beings rise up and walk on London Bridge, and they have the audacity to speak for themselves in completely convincing and haunting voices.” —Allen Wier, author of Tehano For more than two thousand years, Old London Bridge evolved through many fragile wooden forms until it became the first bridge built of stone since the Roman invaders. With over two hundred houses and shops built directly upon the bridge, it was a wonder of the world until it was dismantled in 1832. In this stunningly original novel, Old London Bridge is as much a living, breathing character as its architect, the priest Peter de Colechurch, who began work on it in 1176, partly to honor Archbishop Thomas à Becket, murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1665, the year of the Great Plague, Peter’s history is unknown, but Daryl Braintree, a young poet living on the bridge, resurrects him through inspired flights of imagination. As Daryl chronicles the history of the bridge and composes poems about it, he reads his work to his witty mistress, who prefers making love. Among other key characters is Lucien Redd, who as a boy was sexually brutalized by both Puritans and Cavaliers during the English Civil War before being kidnapped off London Bridge onto a merchant ship. Thus traumatized, he aspires to become Lucifer’s most evil disciple. Twenty years later, young Morgan Wood is forced into seafaring service to pay off his father’s debts; and, compelled by obsessive nostalgia for his early life on the bridge, he keeps a journal. Joining Morgan aboard ship, Lucien “befriends” him—to devastating effect. The shops and houses on the bridge survive both the Great Plague and Great Fire, believed to be God’s wrath upon sinful London. Fearing that God may next destroy the bridge and its eight hundred denizens, seven of its merchant leaders revert to a pagan appeasement ritual by selecting one of their virgin daughters for sacrifice. To enact their plan, they hire Lucien, who has returned to the bridge to burn it out of pure meanness. But as Lucien discovers, the chosen victim may be more Lucifer’s favorite than he is. Like his creation Daryl Braintree, David Madden employs diverse innovative ways to tell this complex, often shocking, but also lyrical story. The author of ten novels—including The Suicide’s Wife, Bijou, and most recently, Abducted by Circumstance and Sharpshooter—Madden has, with London Bridge in Plague and Fire, given us the most ambitious and imaginative work of his distinguished career.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English essays
Languages : en
Pages : 718

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Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Great Britain
Languages : en
Pages : 718

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Author: Richard Thomson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : London Bridge (London, England)
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Author: Manual
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Author: Julia Boffey
Publisher: Medieval Institute Publications
ISBN: 1580443842
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
This modernized extract from The Great Chronicle of London covers the reign of England's first Tudor king, Henry VII (1485-1509). It gives an eye-witness account of events in London, and of news from elsewhere, from the viewpoint of a well-to- do citizen who was closely involved in civic administration. It describes many notable public events: riots and uprisings, executions, coronations, royal marriages and funerals, and ceremonial activities involving the mayor and aldermen. Its year by year entries also cover matters like the weather, the cost of living, taxes, and the effects of building work undertaken in the city. Although its compiler worked to a scheme common to other London chronicles from the period, he was ready to express his own views on a number of matters, and wrote with keen observation and occasional wit.