7

Shaping the city (c. ad 52–60)

New streets for old

Within a decade of the Roman conquest, London was Britain’s largest settlement: a creation that owed little to anything previously seen in Britain and everything to Roman ideas of town planning. Its growth appears to have been charged by a phase of rebuilding in the early 50s. Evidence for extensive cadastral reform of this date has been found throughout the settlement’s south-eastern quarter. At Plantation Place the ‘decumanus’ was widened by 1.5 metres creating space for pedestrians and pack-animals, adjacent houses were demolished to clear a path for the construction of a new north-south road, and the earlier intervallum street was made redundant as new buildings were set over its line. ¹ Sweeping pre-Boudican changes were also recorded at 20 Fenchurch Street, the site of the skyscraper known as the ‘walkie-talkie’, where a north-south road was replaced by a new street a few metres to its west. Works east of the forum also involved new planning: an east-west street was inserted, cutting across an earlier north-south alleyway and adjacent buildings. ² A room in one of the buildings erected at this time was repainted four times before its destruction in ad 60/61, placing these alterations no later than the early 50s.

By the end of the 50s a regularly surveyed street grid extended across the urban area. Lacey Wallace has identified six north-south aligned roads either side of the ‘cardo’ rising from London Bridge, creating evenly sized blocks of housing about 300 ft. wide by 450 ft. long (using the Roman pes monetalis). ³ She suggests that this orthogonal layout was confined to an area south of the forum, although findings at Whittington Avenue imply that it extended further north. ⁴ The reconstruction proposed here identifies a chequerboard settlement served by three streets aligned east-west and seven north-south, covering a somewhat smaller area than the Claudian defensive enclosure (Fig. 7.1). In several areas the new engineering showed little respect for earlier land division, introducing new property rights and responsibilities. The invention of this street grid was an important statement, incorporating changed expectations of how London was to be ordered. It carried ideological force. In becoming a place of order, London established a community of rights whilst affirming a sacred identity. It is from this point that it appears convincingly urban.

Fig. 7.1 A proposed reconstruction of London c. ad 52. The sites of bathhouses are those suggested by concentrations of redeposited building materials but their locations have not been confirmed by discoveries of in-situ structural remains. Drawn by Justin Russell.

Investigations in the town centre show that the new streets were laid out in the early 50s, but a more exact date is suggested by evidence from the town borders. Major repairs to the ‘decumanus’ at One Poultry, west of the Walbrook, involved the insertion of a new culvert using timbers felled in the winter of ad 51/52, whilst adjacent building plots were prepared for development with timbers felled ad 52/53. ⁵ If these roadworks were contemporary with those in the town centre, which seems likely since they addressed different ends of the same street, then the re-planning of London took place c. ad 52. Rebuilding at this date also embraced the Thames waterfront, where beaching facilities were established on the foreshore. Hardstandings of mortared gravel, and sloping flint and chalk surfaces, were laid near the low water mark upriver and downriver of London Bridge, creating areas where shallow flat bottomed boats could beach and vehicles might meet them at the water’s edge. ⁶ Associated waterfront revetments incorporated timbers felled in the spring of ad 52, drawing on both Roman and insular styles of woodworking. ⁷ Timber jetties and landing stages were subsequently built into the river a little further upstream, where post-and-plank revetments employed piles felled in the winter of ad 54/55 and the riverbank behind was terraced for development. ⁸

More structural timbers are dated ad 52–5 than from any equivalent period in the history of Roman London. ⁹ These witness a major programme of rebuilding that started in the year that Didius Gallus replaced Ostorius Scapula as provincial governor. ¹⁰ Gallus’ appointment has been argued to have involved a suspension of Claudian aspirations for further conquest in Britain. If so, the rebuilding of London might be deemed an exercise in consolidation within pacified territories. It seems more likely, however, that Gallus’ intentions were more ambitious than the sources allow, and investment in London’s transport infrastructure anticipated campaigns of conquest that came to be postponed. The accession of Nero in ad 54 may have imposed delay, consistent with Suetonius’ observation that he had considered withdrawing from Britain. ¹¹

Around the forum

London’s importance to the business of the new province is described in letters and contracts inscribed in Latin on wax-coated wooden tablets found at the Bloomberg headquarters. One, from a context dated no later than c. ad 53, advised its recipient to be more discrete in money-lending activities since ‘throughout the entire marketplace (per forum totum), [your debtors] are boasting that you have lent them money’. ¹² London’s forum was already a place for banking. Money-lending lubricated the transactions that turned conquest to profit, and business credit secured the flow of supplies needed by the Roman administration. In another document, dated 8 January ad 57, Tibullus promised to repay Gratus 105 denarii for goods delivered. ¹³ This, the earliest legal contract known from Britain, was made between two men described as freedmen and concerned a sum equivalent to half a year’s pay for a Roman legionary.

Some supplies were kept in a large building south-east of the forum hardstanding. ¹⁴ This was a massive structure, some 55.3 metres long, built alongside the ‘decumanus’. Its walls of air-dried bricks were set over concreted flint foundations in a distinctive architecture previously found in Lyon and barrack blocks at Colchester (Fig. 7.2). ¹⁵ The building housed a row of stores, offices and workshops, broadly similar to those arranged around the later forum courtyard and identifiable as tabernae. A broad veranda or portico added to the façade provided a covered area suitable for goods handling. ¹⁶ Bread wheat was kept in one of the rooms at the time of the Boudican revolt. ¹⁷ Weeds within the crop of de-husked spelt wheat included alien elements such as bitter vetch that suggest it to have been imported from the Mediterranean or Near East. Sacks would have been shipped up the Thames, unloaded onto the foreshore, and carried to the forum by cart or pack-animal. We don’t know if this grain was waiting to be moved along Watling Street to feed the army or was imported for London’s use, but long-distance shipments were a feature of military supply and reserves of this sort would have anticipated the needs of the ad 60 campaign season. These imports contrasted with contemporary crop-processing waste from the outskirts of town that included a mix of grain, seeds, and chaff indicative of the small-scale hand-cleaning of cereals, perhaps obtained locally for sale from roadside premises. ¹⁸

Fig. 7.2 The forum area prior to the Boudican revolt (derived largely from Philp 1977; Marsden 1987; and Dunwoodie 2004). The northern and western limits of the central gravel hardstanding have yet to be located. Drawn by Justin Russell.

London’s granaries created an environment where new species of pest thrived. Remains of black rat have been found near to the forum in pre-Boudican contexts. ¹⁹ Several sites preserve grain burnt and buried after being spoiled by flour beetle infestation. ²⁰ Quantities of such material were incorporated into stable waste and domestic rubbish dumped on the banks of the Walbrook at One Poultry during construction in ad 53, probably brought here from the town centre as land-fill. ²¹ The presence of red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum) suggest that some of the grain spoiled by ad 53 was also imported from the Mediterranean or Near East, where this species can over-winter in unheated stores. ²²

The forum didn’t yet incorporate monumental civic architecture, but a fragment of coloured marble from the Greek island of Skyros reused in a later repair hints at the high-status decor of parts of the Fenchurch Street building. ²³ Elite architecture is also indicated by fragments of marble veneer and mosaic pavement from a pre-Boudican pit at Leadenhall Court. ²⁴ The official nature of the Cornhill settlement is implied by an unusual concentration of pre-Flavian Samian inkwells and seal boxes at Plantation Place. ²⁵ The area also housed armourer’s workshops where military fittings could be repaired or recycled, as indicated by items of Roman body armour (lorica segmentata). ²⁶ Similar activities might account for small-scale iron and bronze working opposite the forum, and metal working waste on the Thames foreshore. ²⁷ A pre-Flavian pit within the town centre, at Eastcheap, contained four unfinished intaglios that may have been a gem-workers stock. ²⁸ These gems, destined to be set within seal-rings, were part of the executive paraphernalia required by senior officers and administrators. These finds reflect on London’s role as an operational base for Britain’s colonial government, and the expansion under Gallus’ administration is likely to have been planned for this purpose.

Baths and temples

The new town was provided with the facilities essential for Roman social life, and these included heated bathhouses. ²⁹ These are only known from scatters of demolition debris and were probably small establishments catering for select communities, with larger public baths not built before the Flavian period. One of the earliest was probably situated just inside the east gate, which would have been a sensible location for a bathhouse following an arrangement familiar from Roman forts. ³⁰ Gateway sites were easy to supply with fuel and made focal points suited for public architecture. Box-flue and voussoir tiles from heating systems and vaulted roofs were found in debris beneath the ramparts of the Neronian fort at Plantation Place. Some of this material was scorched, presumably from destruction in ad 60/61. It also included a Carrara marble moulding from the architrave of an entablature that possibly adorned the façade of a bathhouse, an oolitic limestone Attic column from a colonnade, and fragments of marble wall veneers, opus sectile and mosaic floors from decorated interiors. ³¹ This material was tipped onto site without sorting for reuse and is unlikely to have travelled far. ³² The presence of this bathhouse is also implied by a water-pipe along the northern side of the ‘decumanus’, drawing water from springs or wells north-west of the forum to supply a site near the town’s eastern entrance. ³³ Valuable bathhouse equipment, consisting of a strigil for cleansing oiled skin and a splendid six nozzled bronze lamp for illuminating a hot-room, was buried nearby at 116–20 Fenchurch Street. ³⁴ These discoveries combine to suggest that the baths stood somewhere between Mincing Lane and Mark Lane. Excavations here in 1923 revealed the foundations of a brick-walled building with heated rooms that may have housed the warm rooms (tepidaria) of a small bathhouse, and a curved foundation that might have supported the apsidal end of a hot room (caldaria). ³⁵ These features are, however, undated and may belong to later rebuilding. Another bathhouse may have been established on a terrace overlooking the Thames at Arthur Street, upstream of London Bridge. This was the site of a precociously early masonry building with an apsidal chamber and building debris that included roofing tiles, bricks, and painted wall plaster. ³⁶ The later Neronian addition of water-lifting machinery suggests a bathing establishment, perhaps serving an important town house.

In another sign of the gathering complexity of social life within the new community, a religious precinct may have been established around springs on the hillside north-west of the urban settlement. This site was later marked by a series of Romano-Celtic temples, but the earlier importance of the precinct is suggested by its primacy within the urban topography. A road leading here, on a diagonal to the later street grid, was planned as early as ad 48. ³⁷ A large pond, 20 metres long and 10 metres across, was dug where roads converged, and parts of a bronze statue in its fills hint at votive deposition (p. 112). ³⁸ The area presents similarities with the ceremonial enclosure at Folly Lane which overlooked Verulamium across the river Ver. ³⁹ Both sites attracted unusual Claudio-Neronian practices that generated scatters of stray human bone, and were later subsumed within religious complexes containing temples and baths (p. 153). At Folly Lane, these activities developed around the site of a mortuary shaft with exceptionally rich pyre offerings. Nothing similar has been found in London where the ceremonial focus may have been provided by holy springs rather than a princely burial. Springs formed points of contact with other worlds and religious sites commonly began as open-air sanctuaries. ⁴⁰ Prominent hilltop locations were also widely favoured, complying with Vitruvian prescription that gods associated with city protection should be housed on the highest ground. ⁴¹ Border sanctuaries mediated the fraught relationship between urban order and the wild beyond, and the anchors provided by these hilltop springs would have been particularly meaningful in a city of new invention. ⁴²

South of the river

The south-bank settlement retained its earlier importance. Attempts to order the site may be represented by ditch-and-bank arrangements along the foreshore at Winchester Palace and Toppings Wharf, perhaps intended as river-defences in areas susceptible to flooding. ⁴³ No orthogonal street grid was imposed: the topography simply did not allow, with development constrained by the need to follow higher ground between tidal channels and marsh. The main roads converged on the London Bridge crossing. The Kent road (Watling Street) is roughly beneath modern Borough High Street, reaching the mainland around the site of St George the Martyr where it swung east to form Watling Street (to Canterbury). A gravel-surfaced road also converged on the bridgehead across Southwark’s north island. Remains beneath Southwark Cathedral suggest that it was built in the late 50s, although the route may have been used before it was metalled. At 8 metres wide, this was unusually substantial for a secondary street, marking the importance of this settlement. ⁴⁴

Southwark’s first masonry structures are known only through stray building materials, but these hint at the presence of at least three important Claudio-Neronian buildings. One had been demolished before the revolt. Fragments of moulded stone imported from quarries near Reigate and Merstham in Surrey had been reused in the construction of a building at Borough High Street that was destroyed in ad 60/61. ⁴⁵ These must have been salvaged for reuse no later than c. ad 55. The source may have been the building complex at 15–23 Southwark Street. This site, first occupied prior to the conquest, remained an important part of the landscape. ⁴⁶ The Claudio-Neronian features included trenches tentatively identified as the foundations of a substantial earth-walled building. Two oolitic limestone column shafts found on the site indicate that this building included colonnades. Wall tile, box-flue tile, tufa voussoirs and fragments of limestone columns found at Borough Market, Stoney Street and Park Street may have derived from this or associated buildings. ⁴⁷ Items of military equipment and irregular Claudian coins, mostly struck c. ad 50–5, were also concentrated at Southwark Street. ⁴⁸ Some of these irregular issues were probably made in London to rectify shortages of official supply: a hoard buried at corner of St Swithin’s Lane and King William Street included silver plated copies of denarii made from the same small group of dies which hints at local manufacture. ⁴⁹ High concentrations of these coins were a characteristic of early supply-bases.

Another high-status building occupied a commanding riverfront location 200 metres upstream of London Bridge, at Winchester Palace, where Flavian buildings replaced an important Claudian or Neronian complex. ⁵⁰ Demolition debris included quantities of box-flue tiles in the same early fabrics found at Plantation Place, along with ceramic water pipe fragments. These imply the presence of a bathhouse built in tandem with the amenities at Plantation Place. Roads radiating from the site gave it unusual primacy within the urban topography, and later finds suggest an association with the Roman administration (below p. 260). The prominent riverside location would have suited the ‘palatial’ residence of a senior official, and David Mattingly has suggested that this may have been the residence of the imperial procurator whose leading role would have warranted unusual domestic luxury. ⁵¹

A bathhouse may also have stood close to the southern margins of the settlement. Kevin Hayward’s study of building material found at Tabard Square suggests the presence of a Claudio-Neronian building similar to the baths of legionary fortresses. ⁵² Finds included quantities of flue tiles from vaulted ceilings, Purbeck marble fragments similar to mouldings that decorated legionary bathhouses at Exeter and Caerleon, and column fragments and a Bath-stone Tuscan capital similar to stonework in the baths at Silchester. The water-supply for these baths may have relied on wells and water-tanks close to where Watling Street crossed onto the southern island. Excavations at Long Lane found the remains of a 9-metre-long timber landing-stage, incorporating a timber pile felled no later than ad 53, which may have been built for ships delivering building materials and fuel. ⁵³ A bathhouse at this location might have been associated with a religious precinct at the approaches to London, close to the junction of Stane Street and Watling Street. The later temples at Tabard Square (p. 267) may have been attracted to an earlier sacred site defined by votive shafts found at Swan Street. ⁵⁴ Items buried here between the mid-first and mid-second century included human and animal body parts and largely complete pots. These may have been offerings to propitiate spirits in ritual acts of closure following Iron Age and Roman tradition and the faunal assemblages included a high proportion of sheep/goat, which sometimes characterize sites of animal sacrifice. ⁵⁵ This crossroads site on London’s southern boundary was ideally suited for offerings to propitiate the gods from departing travellers or in payment of vows against journeys safely completed.

Southwark’s other early buildings shared much in common with those north of the river, with building activity drawn along the main roads. Excavations along Borough High Street revealed a building with raised plank floors likely to have housed a granary and bakery, indicated by brick-and-tile ovens and quantities of clean grain charred in the destruction of ad 60/61. ⁵⁶ A nearby building may have been a blacksmith’s, indicated by finds of hammerscale generated from working hot iron. Roman Southwark bears comparison with cross-river sites found associated with other Roman cities such as Lyon, Trier, Cologne, Lincoln, and York. Parallels can also be drawn with the pre-Flavian industrial and commercial site at Sheepen, outside the fort and colony at Colchester. ⁵⁷

Other suburbs

A contemporary suburb stretched alongside the ‘decumanus’ as it crossed Ludgate Hill to the west. Pre-fabricated timber-framed and thatch roofed buildings were built over terraces at One Poultry c. ad 54, drawing on a wide repertoire of advanced woodworking techniques, involving base-plates, stud and post walls, wattle-and-daub infill and boarded coverings (Fig. 7.3). ⁵⁸ One housed a stock of Samian, spoons and spices when razed in the revolt of ad 60/61, offering a selection of fine-dining exotica that mirrored contemporary shop assemblages from Colchester and Verulamium. ⁵⁹ This specialized retail of luxuries for the table met a common demand within Britain’s new cities unmet by other forms of supply. The presence of a tavern was indicated by a concentration of amphorae and Samian drinking vessels alongside high-status food waste, including olives, grapes, and almonds, with traces of grape pollen probably derived from wine. Adjacent Neronian buildings contained decorated reception rooms, using imported marble and hypocaust floors. Wells were dug into the yards, and open drains between house plots carried surface run-off and foul-water into the Walbrook. Environmental data shows that pigs and chickens were kept in the yards, whilst house mice and black rats scavenged amidst household waste. The excavators noted a scarcity of evidence for industrial activity. Shops at this privileged location, London’s original west-end, concentrated on upmarket retail and hospitality instead. Manufacturing sites were found further downstream on the banks of the Walbrook. At the Bloomberg site, banks and ditches defined rectangular enclosures where metalworking workshops recycled and repaired armour and cavalry equipment. ⁶⁰ Miscast and unfinished items show that the craftsmen were working on enamelled mounts, a military belt buckle, and armour including lorica segmentata fittings. A massive assemblage of highly fragmented ox bone in Neronian contexts nearby at The Walbrook may have been waste from boiling down carcasses for grease to treat harnesses and other leather goods. ⁶¹

Fig. 7.3 Neronian shops and houses, at the approximate time of their destruction in the Boudican revolt, found at One Poultry (chiefly from ONE94, after Hill and Rowsome 2011 Fig. 57). Drawn by Justin Russell.

Developments at One Poultry were soon matched by building activities further along the west road. Timbers felled in ad 53 were found in quarries backfilled for house construction at 72–5 Cheapside, and occupation soon extended to 76–80 Newgate Street, 1 kilometre west of the town centre, where three phases of building preceded the destructions of ad 60/61. ⁶² These may have formed a secondary settlement cluster, possibly established before the expansion of c. ad 53. There is evidence of a pre-Boudican military presence nearby: finds from the opposite side of the road, at Paternoster Square, included military equipment and high-status kitchen waste of the sort produced by army supply trains. ⁶³ These included a copper-alloy name-tag that labelled the property of Vitalis, son of Similis, an auxiliary solider with a family name common around Cologne and the lower Rhineland. This roadside settlement served busy traffic along Watling Street, likely to have included convoys of military supplies and troops. As a consequence of this suburban growth the roads into town were no longer cut off from adjacent land by large roadside ditches, but flanked by shops and workshops in a more permeable settlement landscape. A much smaller suburb of houses and workshops flanked the Colchester road leaving the town’s east gate. ⁶⁴ The north road, Ermine Street, destined to connect London with the Legionary fortress at Lincoln, attracted even fewer buildings although gravel surfaces and banked enclosures at Bishopsgate may have formed roadside paddocks outside the Neronian town. ⁶⁵

Whilst most roadside properties were built using techniques familiar from Roman Gaul and Germany, some roundhouses were built following insular traditions. At 76–80 Newgate Street, three wattle-and-daub roundhouses, up to 6.5 metres wide, were built in a backyard behind roadside buildings where they were burnt ad 60/61. ⁶⁶ A similar building, about 5 metres wide, temporarily occupied a site along the ‘decumanus’ at Cheapside. ⁶⁷ Others were found in a later Neronian enclosure at Gresham Street (Fig. 9.5), outside the east gate, and on the Southwark waterfront. ⁶⁸ Some of these buildings housed small-scale industrial production following pre-Roman technologies. It has been suggested that they housed Britons drawn to London by opportunities for trade and social advancement, but who used indigenous styles of housing and pottery to set themselves apart. ⁶⁹ Adam Rogers argues that it would be over simplistic to assume that circular buildings were inferior to rectangular ones because of their form. ⁷⁰ It must be noted, however, that London’s circular structures were smaller than most Iron Age roundhouses, better resembling the lesser outbuildings of the period. ⁷¹ They were placed within the curtilage of larger rectangular buildings in undistinguished suburbs, built from slight wattle-and-daub walls, and housed noxious industrial practices in cramped quarters. Whether through choice or circumstance their occupation generated finds assemblages that appear impoverished. ⁷² It therefore seems likely that London’s roundhouses were the workshop-dwellings of an under-class with limited access to the technologies and resources that allowed alternative forms of self-representation. It is even possible that they had quartered British slaves, using ‘native’ architectures to set them apart from the dominant community. ⁷³

Craft technologies drawing on pre-Roman technologies were housed in other street-side buildings on the outskirts of town. A bowl furnace was associated with metalworking involving bronze and brass alloys at Arcadia Buildings, some 1.4 kilometres south of London Bridge, using crucibles made following pre-Roman Iron Age traditions. ⁷⁴ These insular craft traditions were only evident on London’s outer margins, and despite London’s increased permeability some communities may have been excluded from the town centre. There is little evidence for post-Neronian continuities in the techniques that drew on pre-Roman traditions, although a late first-century timber roundhouse used for metalworking at Toppings Wharf in Southwark may be an exception. ⁷⁵

Other forms of industrial production also gravitated to the borderlands. A pottery kiln manufacturing flagons and tablewares of types previously made in southern Burgundy was established at Sugar Loaf Court on the Thames riverfront to the west the Walbrook, where misfired wasters were found near Neronian timber buildings. ⁷⁶ An amphora made here carried a stamp that identified the potter Gaius Albucius. His wares are unevenly distributed through London, appearing commonly on sites with a military connection from ad 50/55. They account for almost half of all oxidized wares in pre-Boudican London, but disappeared soon after the revolt. The highest concentrations of these products were on Cornhill, along Fenchurch Street, and at One Poultry, perhaps reaching these sites by way of the forum. Early pottery production also took place at kilns on the eastern borders of town, where two hearths or clamp kilns were associated with wasters from oxidized ware manufactured in local clay. The products made here included a range of flagons. ⁷⁷ A tile kiln was located near to Paternoster Row, south of the ‘decumanus’, where over-fired and misshapen wasters from the manufacture of bricks and roof-tiles were reused in pre-Boudican road foundations and associated buildings. ⁷⁸

Early Roman finds have also been made at Smithfield near St Bartholomew’s church, 600 metres north-west of the Roman town. We know little about this area since opportunities for excavation have been limited, but the south-east corner of a large ditched enclosure was identified in 2016. ⁷⁹ This consisted of a V-shaped ditch, 1.5 metres deep and 3.3 metres wide with an ‘ankle breaker’ slot at the base. This was perhaps a camp for troops in transit on the outskirts of town, although too little information is presently available to know when it was in operation. Whatever its purpose it appears to have attracted satellite occupation, including at least one house with a cement (opus signinum) floor. ⁸⁰

The new west-end

By c. ad 70, new residential districts had been laid out over the backlands behind the ribbon development west of the Walbrook, perhaps in planned urban expansion (Fig. 7.4). Two areas of housing can be identified: one to the north of the ‘decumanus’ (beneath Cheapside) and another to its south. These were laid out on slightly different orientations, resulting in a herringbone configuration against the Cheapside spine. It is possible that the addition of these areas was decided on shortly prior to the Boudican revolt, although they were not fully developed until the following decade. The planned nature of this expansion is suggested by the topography between Cheapside and the Thames. This area was opened for development by a road along the line of modern Cannon Street. There has been some uncertainty over whether this was built before the Boudican revolt or in early Flavian renewal, but since it gave access to a pre-Flavian timber bridge over the Walbrook the earlier date is more likely. ⁸¹ Remains of this lower Walbrook crossing were found at the Bloomberg headquarters, where its 6.3-metre-wide foundations employed timbers felled after ad 48 but before ad 60. ⁸² The road eventually headed west towards a bridge over the Fleet, from which it gave access to Westminster. ⁸³ Although most development on Ludgate Hill post-dated the revolt, some structures were destroyed in a fire tentatively dated ad 60/61. ⁸⁴ These included a building at Watling Court with a raised plank-and-joist floor of a type associated with granaries. These developments established property boundaries followed in subsequent phases. The area covered by this new quarter extended westwards towards the site of St Paul’s where excavations at 25 Cannon Street revealed timber buildings apparently built during the 50s. ⁸⁵

Fig. 7.4 A proposed reconstruction of London c. ad 60. The city was undergoing a busy phase of expansion in the year prior to the revolt. Drawn by Justin Russell.

Development north of the ‘decumanus’, between Cheapside and springs to the north, introduced a series of parallel north-south roads that defined new street blocks. Pottery suggests that the street closest to the Walbrook was laid out after c. ad 55, giving access to buildings destroyed in the Boudican revolt, and excavations at Milk Street gave a pre-Flavian date for the roadside ditch associated with another of these north-south streets. ⁸⁶ The westernmost element of the new district was formed by a gravelled road at Foster Lane, tentatively identified as pre-Flavian and flanked by buildings destroyed in a fire thought to have been Boudican. ⁸⁷

Altogether these areas of settlement added about 12–16 hectares to London’s extent. The low density of housing, and absence of phases of alteration before ad 60/61, suggests that this district was in its infancy when it burnt. This is consistent with a wider pattern of investment in London’s infrastructure c. ad 60. Large oak baulks felled in the winter of ad 59/60 were deployed to create terraced platforms for new buildings at One Poultry, and contemporary timbers formed post-and-plank revetments along the waterfront. ⁸⁸ A massive worked stone block abandoned on the Thames foreshore at the time of the revolt was perhaps destined to be an engaged pilaster section for use in a major public building, such as a ceremonial arch. ⁸⁹ These strands of evidence show that London’s infrastructure was undergoing improvement c. ad 60, probably following expansionary policies introduced by Suetonius Paullinus on his arrival as governor in ad 58. ⁹⁰

The London that emerged from this urban expansion comprised three distinct neighbourhoods: one either side of the Walbrook (Ludgate Hill and Cornhill) and another south of the Thames (Southwark). London’s three areas of settlement had somewhat different origins and topographies, and it is tempting to see them as having housed differently organized communities. There is, however, little evidence—in either the architecture or patterns of consumption—of significant difference. Greater contrasts are found between sites within the urban core and those on its margins. For example, rubbish found on the borders of town contains fewer of the finds that mark high-status activities, such as tablewares, lamps, coins and writing implements. ⁹¹ A contrast has been drawn between pottery discarded at 76–80 Newgate Street, on the outskirts, and contemporary refuse behind the site later occupied by the forum at Leadenhall Court. ⁹² A higher proportion of storage jars at Newgate Street might reflect on a preference for serving food from jars brought to the meal, rather than using tablewares of dishes, bowls, and cups as preferred in the town centre.

This reconstruction of London’s Claudio-Neronian geography shows how the orthogonally planned town sat at the core of a wider landscape. A regularly ordered city of streets and houses around the central hardstanding stood in contrast with different worlds beyond the city boundary. Here the presence of springs and rivers where gods were found and burial sites where ancestors could be commemorated dictated patterns of development and provided nodal points for an architectural armature that emerged with greater clarity in later building programmes. This later architecture offers proof that the ritual and political topographies shaped in the first years of London’s existence remained fundamental to the developing townscape, establishing a framework that was manipulated and enhanced by later generations.