I curl around the railings into a side street and then see a concrete staircase under the concrete walkway I have been trying to reach. As I climb the piss-smelling stairs to an abandoned and boarded mini shopping precinct that looks like a 70s cowboy town I think quite clearly - oh I am going to be murdered now - for this place just seems so abandoned, so desolate, so unsafe. In a cutaway from the walkway a flint arch rises through the curve of paving slabs and it is possible to look down over the ruins of a medieval church alongside brown-dog coloured dug earth, with building machinery littered around. There appears to be a plan for this area but it isn't apparent what it could be. Nor is the wall I think, though I am certain I am near.
I woke up this morning a bit hungover ( PSM came to dinner the night before / it's in the name first time readers / a joke when she became a SM too and we shared a bottle of wine, discussing our children and our woes and became The Pissed Single Mothers Club though occasionally we are disturbingly good to our name ) I sat and wrote a list - make chicken pie, wash and iron sheets, sort out cupboard under the sink, clean bathroom, buy boy's socks from John Lewis, type up changes to novel, walk perimeter of City of London wall. Then I made a cup of tea, found some paper and just wrote for 5 hours solidly. I kept thinking - I have to stop and do one of the other things on the list - watching helplessly as the day evolved into a completely different one than I had planned and the things I needed to do gathered behind as if crooked fingers wagging disapproval.
At 3.30 I cycled out. I had dithered about where to start my 'London Wall' walk - near to Newgate where I would approach it from Westminster - or from the Tower of London ( so I can find a chuch to enter near to the end of my walk? ) It is solved by Peter Ackroyd who describes exactly the walk I want to make - from Tower Hill to the river by Blackfriars. On the bike the journey to Tower Hill is ridiculously quick. Passing through the City I can see churches tucked everywhere though St Pauls is like a white cliff face, a whale, an enormous thing, and all I can think is how am I ever going to find time to write about that? I circle around at Tower Hill looking for a docking bay for the bike. Unexpectedly through the glass grand foyer of a hotel I see a section of the wall sandwiched into a back carpark - like a zoo animal too big for it's enclosure. I don't have a map and though I have brought the Peter Ackroyd book - the huge tome is in a backpack with some apples and some chocolate - I am trying just to work it out. I remember vaguely there is a section right near to the Tower of London itself - and follow tourists down a walkway starting to doubt myself. But there under the 1970s concrete bridge is the ruins of a gateway and on the wall alongside a plaque numbered one, with the history of the wall and a numbered map on how to complete the walk. Oh I think breezily with the confidence of the hangover I will just follow the plaques. My plan is to trace the boundaries of the city before visiting the churches within the City. I notice a bird with a really bright eye sitting on the railings as if talking to me and realise a slight mania to my thoughts - I am overwhelmed by this trail of history - overwhelmed by everything I am meant to be doing.
http://www.london-footprints.co.uk/wklondonwallroute.htm
The journey starts well - number two - a huge slab of wall by Tower Hill tube station - where the layers - roman, medieval are clear and the ditch the other side still exists. Then the section behind the hotel - a cut through alongside the valet parking. Here behind the facades of buildings I can see an untidy route, scraps of overgrown waste ground squeezed and then stunted by office blocks then set off to find the next part of wall. I lose my way. I find myself in a dead end thinking there is an alleyway only to find the backdoor to a pub. The route becomes hazy - I find a scrap of wall by Aldgate roundabout, then a part alongside a church with gravestones flush to the bricks of the wall.
The wall was initially built by the Romans circa AD 200 the second largest construction in Britain after Hadrian's wall, made from Kentish ragstone, brought by water from Maidstone. It has been calculated that some 1,300 barge journeys would have been made to transport the thousands of tons of stone necessary to build the wall that stretched for 2miles and incorporated an existing Roman fort at the NW corner. The wall had many 'gates' that opened to important Roman roads leading to other towns in the country. Initially: Aldgate, Bishopgate, Cripplegate, Newgate and Ludgate though Aldersgate was added later and Moorgate an even later medieval addition. In Saxon times some of the wall decayed but was built up again in medieval and tudor times though as London grew, its defensive role became no longer necessary and much of the wall was demolished or disappeared beneath shops and warehouses. By 1760 parliament chose to remove the city gates and much of the structure disappeared through the evolution and building of the City. Like a historic tide the wall has been built and disappeared: during WW2 when London was bombed and some remains were demolished in other places great chunks of the wall were unearthed under flattened buildings.
Alongside the abandoned concrete shops at the edge of the Barbican I haven't found a plaque since number 6 and I am tired and frightened. I can't explain exactly the feeling of real dread - though perhaps it is just 'cutting myself off' the feeling of walking further and further into an empty dead end. On another piss smelling staircase but going back down now I notice a strange growth on the floor of a landing - a small smooth mound in the shape of a small foot like a scrap of ice. A drip, a repetitive leak of water has formed the base of a stalagmite on the 1970s staircase. By the side of a children's protection service office I find a patch of park with a plaque and the wall. A church had been built here to venerate the murdered archbishop St Alphage. The word murdered confirms the fear I feel. I am forcing myself to explore the wall, to look round the park I can hear running water from the overgrown corner of the park, through a gateway, cutting myself off further and further as I go deeper into the small park. It is a fountain, an innocent babbling magical thing only spied through undergrowth but I am relieved to be able to leave the area, leave this place behind. I have friends who live in the Barbican and I make myself laugh by imagining them looking out of their window to see me rooting around the undergrowth of a scabby park on my own. I look up to the flats and see on a walkway a trendy group - a pretty girl flanked by two men and see that they are taking a picture of me. I am not sure what the picture they are taking means to them but I feel very alone though very observed. I feel I am too far out of reach. Perhaps she is who I would like to be, taking a picture of who she doesn't want to be I think and see them laughing.
Further into the Barbican ( along concrete walkways marked by bike tracks like sand erosion, and squeezing past Pizza Express where the walkway is nearly cut off ) there is a huge part of the wall. I am still completely alone in a garden walking the perimeter, still scared but overlooked by luxury flats and alongside another water feature - much more modern with sprinkling fountains. The wall has alcoves in the exterior like sentry posts, thickly covered in ivy. On the interior side it is richly planted and in a wooden box like a bird hut there is a leaflet about the bishop's garden with a sign saying 'please return after use'.
Above a muslim family are taking pictures of the wall with me in their picture for some reason they make me feel anchored, in their pictures, in history. Perhaps I think when I am writing this the whole journey is about being inside or outside of the wall. It is an odd historic concept - the included and the excluded - and the city wall is the line that denotes it - I feel I am moving between both. Much later I am surprised to find this on wikipedia:
The suffix words "Without" and "Within" denote whether an area of the City – and usually applied to the wards – fell outside or within the London Wall, though only Farringdon and (formerly) Bridge have been split into separate wards this way (Bridge Without falling beyond the gates on London Bridge). Some wards – Aldersgate, Bishopsgate and Cripplegate – cover an area that was both within and outside the wall and, although not split into separate wards, often the part (or "division") within the Wall is denoted (on maps, in documents, etc.) as being "within" and the part outside the Wall as being "without". Archaically "Infra" (within) and "Extra" (without) were also used[12] and the terms "intramural" and "extramural"[13][14] are also used to describe being within or outside the walled part of the city.
I had been thinking about the excluded that historically lived outside the wall - the lepers and cripples though I also find mention of 'The tenement of the Hermit of Crepelgate' and a suggestion there was a structure there for a hermit even before Roman times.
Still dithering around I find a long section of wall on Noble St - though I have got to plaque 20 unexpectedly - the last one I found was 13. I don't really understand either how I could have wandered in such a huge area around the Barbican and then find a long intact piece here but I have to accept what I can see. Later I realise this is where the Roman Fort was so the route does kind of bulge and then fall back into a line. Though I also discover that the wall walk - created in the 1980s hasn't been maintained, that the plaques do indeed peter out in places like the crumbling battlements of the wall itself - the tide of time has swept away some of the jaunty typeface plaques of the walk. Indeed an IRA bomb in 1993 took both the plaque 8 and the remains of the wall it described. I order a London Wall Walk 1985 vintage guide book on ebay and also Walking London Wall by Ed Harris - published in 2009, who introduces his book with dismay at the historic marginal interest the wall generates and the trouble of writing a guide when buildings change and disappear leaving co ordinates like sand.
I am feeling increasingly melancholy - I can't seem to fit the day, can't find what I thought I wanted. Though walking alongside the low wall of what seems to be a public park I can see graves. I once heard on the radio about a park in London with a memorial to citizens who lost their life helping others. I always imagined it in East London but for some unknown reason - I think - looking through the railings - oh it is here. At the gate there is a simple sign - fascinating enough - saying 'Postman's Park A Christian Open Air Meeting is held here Monday 1.15pm from May - Sept by kind permission of the church.' I walk in - there are a few people milling around but I keep walking. I am not sure how I knew - but there - under a wooden roofed structure - are the tiled memorials to 'Heroic Self Sacrifice'. Conceived of by George Frederic Watts in 1887 to celebrate ordinary people who died while saving the lives of others, there are beautiful arts and crafts memorial tablets with messages, almost like haikus of heroic acts and consequent deaths. Each is a short story: 'Thomas Griffin Fitters Labourer April 12 1899 in a boiler explosion at a Battersea Sugar Refinery was fatally scalded in returning to search for his mate.' 'George Stephen Funnell Police Constable Dec 22 1899 In a fire at the Elephant and Castle Wick Road, Hackney Wick after rescuing two lives went back into the flames, saving a barmaid at the risk of his own life.' 'David Selves aged 12 Off Woolwich supported his drowning playfellow and sank with him clasped in his arms.' 'September 1886, Ernest Benning Compositor aged 22 Upset from a boat one dark night off Pimlico Pier Grasped an oar with one hand supporting a woman with the other but sank as she was rescued.' Inflammable dresses, unmanageable horses, the dangerous entanglement of river weed - the dangers of mortality are vivid and selfless. Later I discover that a mobile app has recently been launched with detailed accounts of the 54 dramatic incidents and intend to take my sons.
I fiddle around now passed the bombed remains of the tower of Christ Church Greyfriars, round the back of the Old Bailey, then out to St Sepulchre where a plaque claims there is a ghost of a black dog that stalks the churchyard. I am trying to find a church that is open now - there is barely any trace of the wall left - finish up and get home and on with those chores stacked up behind me still to do.
On Ludgate, I find the church of St Martin's at Ludgate and the door is open. I climb the stairs but a Chinese couple are locking up and won't let me in. I walk around the back searching for the last traces of the wall. At a locked gateway a black dog sat flat like a shadow bays dolefully and I do actually think for a second that I am through some doorway of sense or time everything just seems so heightened though the Chinese couple who wouldn't let me in the church calm the dog and myself to reality. Finally I find a scrap of wall packed between office blocks then straggle the last vanished outline of the wall to the Thames and I have finished.
At home I wash my hands and make the pastry - then sit with a cup of tea and write a list of this journey - I am still slightly manic - but I can't actually write the blog until the pie is made and the under sink cupboard cleaned.
Afterwards I make a roux sauce - and cook the bacon garlic and onions - roll the pastry. Briefly I feel really, really annoyed that the thing I want to do - just write this - is on hold for this pie that I have to make. But I can't waste the meat leftover from a roasted chicken and want to prepare this meal for my sons for the night before they go back to school.
Later, much much later when my life has swamped me I look back to this day like the shore I have departed from. Late that night - the cupboard clean, the pie cooked I sat and wrote most of the city wall journey. Then like a tidal wave as the new term starts - fighting the tax credit people, secondary school applications for my eldest son and just worrying takes over my time late at night. This is the slot, the tiny part for saved for me, saved for writing and I feel it vanish like the glitter of salt in water. As I watch it disappear, then recede to a memory I run out of the confidence in the blog, in my writing, in my own fun and optimism. Secondary school research takes all the diligent fiddly-fingered late night internet investigations that this blog takes. Fighting the tax credit people takes the sense that things can be fair, that one day everything will get better, that we will be alright. Though at a crazy point I send the tax credit people pages from this blog - for it details so exactly what has happened - that exh does not live here, has been housed in a hostel then moved to illegal commercial properties - all so hard to prove when it is true. I imagine them stuck up in an office in Preston as an example of the loony lengths benefit cheats will go to though a lawyer friend I tell looks horrified at my madness. A letter threatening me with the bailiffs arrives though I am still in appeal. It is a mistake they say coolly when I ring to remonstrate. Yes they say they are targeting single mums when I ask if they have targets to reach.
Oh. oh. I think I don't deserve this. No single mum deserves this. Every bit of surviving, of bringing up those two boys with little money and little support, of holding back the flood of chaos that all these things brought has been done with determination and fun and dedication. Now I am exhausted. I find myself unable to talk or even think about it without crying. Friend's turn their faces kind to my tears and tales of misfortune though I am embarrassed that it doesn't seem to end. Being a working single mum is tough - hard work and sometimes lonely - and yet the worst of it is that however hard you work or try you do a bad job of almost everything. That despite the relentless good cheer and dogged work - everything is only tidy for a second, the children only well-behaved briefly and one son is angry and the other one anxious.
Sitting down now five months later to write about visiting St Martin's within Ludgate I realise I remember very little of the visit. Rebuilt by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire, in the shade of St Paul's he designed it to sit against the city wall, designed it in juxtoposition to the Cathedral. I went in a lunchtime a few days after my perimeter walk, climbing the steps up and into the church from the flat-facade that sits tight to the pavement. There was a man just infront of me going up the steps, both of us in a hurry both gazing around the dark interior together though he then sits to pray. I sense we are both slightly annoyed that the other is ruining the peace of the place for the other. I remember a really lovely quietness and some old wooden racks that were used for bread to be left for the poor. Though I discover that St Martin of Tours was the patron saint of travellers and that churches dedicated to him always stand just within city gates. The earliest mention of a church on the site is from 1174 though the legend is that "Cadwallo King of the Britons is said to have been buried here in 677". Cadwallo's image was allegedly placed on Ludgate, to frighten away the Saxons. I remember I still want to see the statue of Lud that decorated a later Ludgate and now sits in a dark arch within the churchyard of St Dunstan's of the West and I think briefly I should go back to see St Martin's and then cycle out of the reach of these old city walls to see the statue now 'without /extra'. But I don't. I still have very little time though I am writing again which makes me feel happy.
