If you walk from our Shoreditch office down Bishopsgate you will find yourself in Londinium, Roman London. The line of Bishopsgate St follows that of Ermine St which was the major Roman road north from London Bridge. Tombs once lined the path as it approached the City, just as they did along the Appian Way in Rome. The essential plan of the City of London was laid out by the Romans when they built their wall around Londinium at the end of the second century, after Boudica and her tribes burnt the settlement. Eighty years earlier, the Romans had constructed a fort where the Barbican stands today and, in their defensive plan, they extended its walls south to the Thames and in an easterly arc that met the river where the Tower of London stands now.

Yet, in the mile between Bishopsgate and the Barbican, very little has survived from the centuries in which stone from the Londinium wall was pillaged for other buildings. It is possible to seek access to some corporate premises with lone fragments marooned in the basement. Or if you visit the London Wall Underground Car Park in EC2  you will bizarrely find a section of Roman Wall lodged in parking place 52. Furthermore this fragment of the wall will alleged be integrated into a private member’s club, The Shower Club… a modern variant on the Roman Baths no doubt.

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