1 in 1991, and records of excavations in the City of Archaeological excavations London after 1991 are not covered in this Guide . in the City of London 1907– The third archive of excavations before 1991 in the City concerns the excavations of W F Grimes 91 between 1946 and 1962, which are the subject of a separate guide (Shepherd in prep). Edited by John Schofield with Cath Maloney text of 1998 The Guildhall Museum was set up in 1826, as an Cite as on-line version, 2021 adjunct to Guildhall Library which had been page numbers will be different, and there are no established only two years before. At first it illustrations in this version comprised only a small room attached to the original text © Museum of London 1998 Library, which itself was only a narrow corridor. In 1874 the Museum transferred to new premises in Basinghall Street, which it was to occupy until Contents 1939. After the Second World War the main gallery was subdivided with a mezzanine floor and Introduction .................................................. 1 furnished with metal racking for the Library, and An outline of the archaeology of the City from this and adjacent rooms coincidentally became the the evidence in the archive ............................. 6 home of the DUA from 1976 to 1981. The character of the archive and the principles behind its formation ..................................... 14 The history of the Guildhall Museum, and of the Editorial method and conventions ................ 18 London Museum with which it was joined in 1975 Acknowledgements ..................................... 20 to form the Museum of London, has been written References .................................................. 20 by Francis Sheppard (1991); an outline of archaeological work in the City of London up to the Guildhall Museum sites before 1973 ............ 25 1960s forms part of the introduction by Ralph DUA sitecodes of 1973–91 ......................... 30 Merrifield to his Roman city of London in 1965. In Sites investigated by the Guildhall Museum the 19th century, under pressure from antiquaries before 1973 ................................................. 38 such as Charles Roach Smith (1806–90), the Sites investigated by the Department of Urban Museum haphazardly acquired objects from Archaeology 1973–1991 ........................... 132 building sites in the City. Many large construction schemes were digging up immense volumes of earth which comprised the strata of the Roman and later city: the formation of King William Street and the Introduction new London Bridge in 1829–35, for instance, or the trenches for the Underground railway from the This Archive Guide catalogues the records held in 1860s. Some discoveries were reported in the Museum of London concerning archaeological archaeological journals, though much material still excavations, observations and salvage work in the lies unpublished (e.g. Fig 1). There were few City of London from 1907 to 1991, and provides archaeological excavations in the City in the 19th brief summaries of those excavations. The records century; one of the earliest was by Colonel Lane- of archaeological work in the City are in three Fox, later known as General Pitt-Rivers, who separate archives, all now within the Museum of recorded pile structures in the Walbrook valley in London (MoL), and this Guide is concerned with 1866 without fully understanding them. The the first two: (i) sites of 1907 to 1973 observed by London and Middlesex Archaeological Society staff of the former Guildhall Museum, which (founded 1855), led by J E Price, secured accurate became part of MoL in 1975; (ii) sites in 1973 to measurements of the Bucklersbury Roman 1991 excavated or observed by the Department of pavement which was unearthed in 1869, and Urban Archaeology (DUA), initally of the contributed to the successful arguments for its Guildhall Museum, and therefore part of MoL from preservation at the new Museum. In 1872–3 Price, 1975. The DUA in turn became part of the new then Museum Clerk for Guildhall Library, Museum of London Archaeology Service (MoLAS) recovered a large quantity of Roman artefacts from 2 the ancient Walbrook valley during construction Lambert, who carried out the recording in 1914, work of the National Safe Deposit Company was still in position after the First World War when building immediately west of Mansion House building work recommenced (Lambert 1921). In (Puleston & Price 1873; Merrifield 1995); these 1912 the London Museum had been founded, and now form a substantial part of the Museum’s from then on until their union in 1975 both considerable collection of Roman metal tools and Museums had a part to play in City archaeology. other objects. In 1876 the Society conducted an For the Guildhall Museum, Lambert’s successor in excavation on the site of the Roman interval tower 1924 until his retirement in 1945 was Quintin or bastion at Camomile Street (producing some of Waddington, who recorded 14 sites which have the earliest photographs of excavated remains from records remaining (GM6, 8, 24, 60, 62 64, 89, 122, London), and this was the first experience of city 159, 266, 268, 276, 287, 292). He also worked on archaeology for a young architect called Henry some further sites and recovered unstratified Hodge. He went on to make valuable watercolour material of significance, but these observations are drawings of many parts of the Roman basilica and not noted here as they have left no site records in medieval Leadenhall, uncovered at Leadenhall the museum. Some of these other sites up to 1928 Street in the 1880s (used in redrawn form in the are reported in the Roman London volume by the archaeological report on the forum and basilica by Royal Commission on Historical Monuments Marsden, 1987); and of other masonry monuments: (England) of that year (RCHM 1928, 111, 134). for instance, part of a wall of the 15th-century This was one of a 5-volume survey of monuments Ludgate prison, which had survived the Great Fire and buildings in central London up to the early 18th and which probably still survives between buildings century by the Commission, as part of its national on Ludgate Hill (GM251). Most of these programme of recording of standing structures. watercolours are in Guildhall Library (GL). Another volume on The City (RCHM 1929) Although a small number of sites in this guide were catalogued the medieval buildings and fragments observed before 1907, their records formerly in the then standing, and the Wren churches (many of Guildhall Museum and now in the Museum of which were to be damaged a few years later in the London only comprise a few photographs, and the Second World War). start of archaeological work is taken as 1907, when Frank Lambert was appointed by the Guildhall Under pressure from Mortimer Wheeler and others, Museum as the first qualified museum assistant the Society of Antiquaries funded a second post for with experience in archaeology. an archaeologist to visit building-sites: successively Eric Birley (1927–8; he observed only one site, the Towards the end of the 19th century and in the first Midland Bank in Poultry, but this site is not in the decade of the 20th century several observers, present Guide as there are no records in the notably Philip Norman and Francis Reader, were GM/MoL archive), Gerald Dunning (1928–34) (15 recording remains on construction sites ( eg Norman sites: GM46, 73, 104–5, 117, 121, 218, 221, 226, 1902; 1904; Norman & Reader 1906; 1912; not 248, 252–5, 261) and Frank Cottrill (1934–7) (31 summarised in detail here except for photographs sites: GM 9, 15, 18, 32, 34, 49, 51, 54, 59, 68, 70, from one site, GM146); in addition Norman has left 72–3, 79, 81, 85, 87, 102–3, 114, 119, 125, 164, an enormous legacy of watercolours of vanished 214, 220, 222, 225, 244, 246, 249, 257, 298). medieval and post-medieval buildings (there are Their successes included the recording, albeit in collections in GL and MoL). In 1914, Norman also summary form, of sumptuous Roman buildings at successfully applied to the Goldsmiths’ Company the Bank of England, parts of the Roman basilica and to the Court of Common Council of the and the city wall, along with many Roman Corporation for funds to assist in recovery of buildings on other sites. There are also some artefacts from the large site opposite Goldsmiths’ observations of 1925–7, perhaps by Wheeler Hall, on the east side of St Martin’s-le-Grand himself, in the RCHM’s Roman London volume of (GM138). It was to be another 64 years before a 1928 (RCHM 1928, 116, 119, 134, 145; these are widespread policy of private (non-state) funding for also not in the GM series of site records). After archaeology in the City could be successfully Cottrill’s departure in 1937 no successor was pursued. appointed. In 1939–40 Adrian Oswald, for the Guildhall Museum, recorded remains of the Saxon 3 and medieval church at All Hallows Lombard in his own words ‘a young unsuccessful Street and other sites such as Roman Aldersgate playwright’ who had spent the spring and summer (four sites: GM1, 5, 101, 215). of 1949 picking up artefacts on the Thames foreshore and bringing them for identification to At the London Museum, meanwhile, Mortimer Adrian Oswald at the Museum. From 1949, for Wheeler was also producing catalogues of Saxon eight years, Noël Hume was responsible for rescue and Viking material, including finds from the City archaeology in the City (Noël Hume 1978). He was and from what we now know is the Saxon Strand supported at the Museum by Ralph Merrifield, who settlement of Lundenwic around the Strand. In arrived in 1950, who served both the Guildhall 1940, J B Ward-Perkins produced the masterly Museum and Museum of London until his London Museum Medieval Catalogue , largely of retirement in 1978.