Oldal 75 [75]
THE GROWTH OF THE CITY 53
of London, and the fortifications were kept in order, so that when the
Danes overran all the rest of England, the city alone withstood them,
and King Athelred owed his safety to the walls. Even a disastrous
fire—the first of many—in 982 left the defences intact; and Cnut,
in order to get above the bridge, had to make some kind of canal
for his shallow boats round
Southwark. It re is possible to
form some kind fie hee of picture in our
minds eye as to what London
looked like in
times. Suppose
those remote
that to avoid
the Danes round
crossed the
up, at what is
ster. A few
stand up from
Southwark, we
Thames higher
now Westmin¬
hillocks would
the mud flats,
( and it might be
Aide to go from
Watling Street
to the other at
anything worse
Weshould make
possible at low
one end of the
at Stane Gate
Tothill, without
than wet feet.
our way north¬
and desolate till we reached what is now Hyde Park Corner. Turning
eastward, then along the Roman road to Reading, we should cross
the Tyburn at Cowford, where afterwards was the Stone Bridge,
and later again the uninterrupted line of Piccadilly clubs and palaces.
Thence, keeping rather to the north, we should reach the road now called
Holborn, from the brook which here makes itself a narrow “hole”
through which to flow before it becomes the tidal Fleet. In front of
ká