On 5 June 1698, John Evelyn went down to Deptford to look at what was left of his house. He was seventy-seven years old. He had lived at Sayes Court for forty years, laid out its garden himself, and written some of the most influential books in England there. For the previous three months the…

On 28 December 1598, in the dead middle of the Christmas holidays, about a dozen men walked into a yard in Shoreditch with a master carpenter and began taking a building to pieces. They worked fast. The landlord was away in the country, which was the point. What they were dismantling was The Theatre, the…

In 1908, men went into a warehouse on Bishopsgate with chalk and stencils and began writing numbers on a fifteenth-century oriel window. Every stone got a mark. Every roof timber got a mark. Then they took the whole thing apart and put it into storage, and eighteen months later it went back up again four…

In 1907, a demolition crew clearing a site on the Rotherhithe riverside broke through the fabric of a warehouse and found themselves looking at something that had no business being there. Medieval masonry, six metres high, with four arched window openings on the ground floor and more above them. Not footings. A building, standing, held…

In the spring of 1912, a gang of demolition workers breaking up the floor of a building on Cheapside made a discovery that would baffle historians, dazzle jewellers, and quietly rewrite our understanding of early modern London. What they found was not a structural curiosity or a forgotten Victorian relic. It was a wooden box…

Beneath the waves of the Thames Estuary, just off the shore of Purfleet, Essex, lie the remnants of an ancient woodland, a submerged forest that dates back millennia. The trees and flora, preserved in waterlogged layers of peat, tell a story of the Earth’s shifting climate and how humanity and nature must adapt when the…

The discovery of Roman relics beneath modern London has captivated historians for over a century, unveiling the city’s layered history as it once was—a bustling Roman hub known as Londinium. Among the remarkable finds lies the Roman House at Billingsgate, a rare example of Roman domestic life in Britain. This ancient dwelling gives us a…

The London Mithraeum stands as one of the most intriguing relics of ancient Londinium, deeply rooted in the mystery cult of Mithras. Found beneath the modern streets of the bustling city, it provides a rare glimpse into the spiritual lives of Roman soldiers and citizens who called Londinium home in the late third and early…

We all know the most imposing structures that remind us of London’s medieval grandeur—Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, Jewel Tower, Winchester Palace. But there are so many other great buildings we have lost—churches, forts, and townhouses—that have equally fascinating histories to the ones that survived. Among the lost treasures of this city’s architectural heritage…

Tucked away in the quiet district of Abbey Wood in southeast London, the ruins of Lesnes Abbey offer a glimpse into the religious, social, and political landscape of medieval England. Once a thriving centre of monastic life, the abbey now stands as a reminder of the country’s shifting tides in history—from its founding in 1178…