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Tyburn. Yet it was demolished to make way for new building. There was still very little interest in what lay under the ground and it was consigned to what one contemporary publication called “the abyss of oblivion.”
    When in 1867 building work was being undertaken inBouverie Street, offFleet Street, the crypt of an ancientCarmelite monastery was revealed. It was promptly converted into a coal cellar. In the nineteenth century the world under the ground was considered in some way to be dirty and diseased. Subsequent excavations in 1910 revealed that this crypt “is of dressed stonework.… Deep ribs, springing from the angles and from the centre of each side, meet in a large boss carved with a rose.” So in imagination the monastery of Whitefriars rises from the ground of Fleet Street and its environs. We may see the monks in the garden walks and hear them singing their orisons. The Cheshire Cheese tavern rests upon the northern gatehouse; a garden lane, justbeyond the northern wall of the monastery, has becomeWine Office Court. Part of the crypt can still be seen inAshentree Court, off Whitefriars Street. It nudges the passer-by into the consciousness of the past, but it is not much visited. WhenCounty Hall was being built, in 1910, part of a Romanship emerged from the black silt of the ancient river; it had been sunk by a stone cannonball at the end of the third century. Thus, in random and accidental manner, that which had been buried once more came into the light.
    The archaeology of the city really only began at the beginning of the last century, with salvage work undertaken by theGuildhall Museum. Largely driven by enthusiastic diggers and antiquarians, the museum housedcoins and pottery vessels found in all parts of London; prehistoric objects, from stone tools to bronze weapons, were taken from the Thames and added to the collection. The curators would visit the sites of demolition or excavation, and remove any object that seemed to be of historical value. They often purchased items from the building workers themselves and accumulated many Roman, medieval and post-medieval relics. One curator,G. F. Lawrence, found more than 1,600 objects in the first six months of his employment. The past was flowing out. In this period was found the “Palaeolithic floor” lying beneathStoke Newington Common; it has since been covered over and concealed by new building.

    The Roman galley discovered during the building ofCounty Hall, 1910 (illustration credit Ill.3)
    T he bombing of the Second World War marks the emergence of proper archaeological investigation in the city. The bombs destroyed London’s present but helped to rebuild London’s past. They revealedRoman London, for example, and the extent of the great Roman wall around the city became known. As the sites of bombing were thoroughly investigated, the wall rose again. In the underground car park beneathLondon Wall a large section of the original Kentish ragstone and red clay tiles can still be seen; in another part of the same building the foundations of the western corner of a fort have been preserved.
    A fragment of London’sbasilica rests in the basement of a shop inLeadenhall Market. Beneath theGuildhall lay an amphitheatre capable of holding 6,000 spectators; the wooden gateway to the arena was 16 feet wide. A great building that is likely to be a cathedral, the first Christian cathedral in England, has been revealed beneathPepys Street byTower Hill. Will St. Paul’s be found on some future date beneath the earth?
    In the basement of 100Lower Thames Street extends a complete Roman bath-house; within the debris was found a Saxonbrooch, dropped by a woman when clambering over the ruins. Tiled pavements of Roman London have been found at various locations. Roman curses, inscribed onpottery and stone, have also been revealed.A painting of a robed woman lay beneath 5Fenchurch Street; she may have been the decoration of a tavern. An iron ring was found atNew Fresh