The City through Time

Today was a City day, not just London, but the City of London, the hub that makes the financial world spin around its axis. Some banks absconded to Canary Wharf and the hedge funds settled in genteel Mayfair, but the City is still where you feel the buzz. Maybe not so much in August when everyone has buzzed off to France or Tuscany or Corfu for the month. And not on a day when intermittent sun is interrupted regularly by monsoon like rain storms.

We began with the Bank of England Museum where Bob had never been because it is only open during banking hours, when he would have been working. The museum has only a few exhibiton rooms, but they offer an interesting history of how the bank came into being in the 1690s when the increase in commerce, domestic and international, required better safeguards for credit transactions. There are letters are on display such as one from George and Martha Washington inquiring about an annuity left to Martha by her first husband. There are displays on the history of British coins and paper money. All those coins in English literature become visible: guineas and sovereigns, crowns and half-crowns, a bob is a shilling. Britain only adopted a decimal currency in 1971. On my first trip to England in 1974, I remember there were still dual price tags for some items. The old system still seems pretty opaque to me. A few years ago, I learned from a lovely Irish woman who worked in classy dress shops before the currency transition, that even money had a role in upper class snobbery. She told me that a guinea was "one pound plus one shilling," and in classy shops, the customer expected prices to be in guineas, not pounds.

On our way to the Museum of London, we stopped off at the Guildhall, the 15th century city hall. The banqueting room is still 15th century, but the building was blitzed, so the exterior has that too new to be so old look. The Roman Amphitheatre has been found under the Guildhall. We visited it several years ago when it was first opened to the public.

There is an art gallery wing added on one side of the building that holds the City's art collection. The collection is heavily Victorian with heroic figures from history and simpering children. After our day at Kelmscott Manor, we decided to drop in for a look at some of the Pre-Raphaelites including Rossetti's portrait of Janey Morris, flanked by angels modeled by May Morris, that was painted at Kelmscott while he was cuckholding Morris.

La Ghirlandata

Then it was off to the Museum of London which has grown very large by adding all sorts of interesting galleries. The newest addition on Modern London just opened a few months ago. The pre-historic and the Roman galleries have always been the best because the Museum's archaeology unit is top notch and they are working with their own finds.

The Roman Living Room I have always wanted to live in

The middle years — medieval through Restoration — has always been the least interesting. Mostly because the collection they have to work with is random and erratic, a bit like relying on the old stuff in the attic to furnish a house. I am not pleased to report, everyone's favourite display in this area of the museum — at least among our family — the Diorama of the Great Fire of 1666 with Pepys's description and flashing lights is not what it once was. It has been ginned up into a 6 minute narrated film, and when I left half way through, there were not yet any flashing fiery lights moving through the diorama.

The newest gallery was really quite fun once you got used to the chaos. A mix of artifacts and film takes you from the Pleasure Gardens of the 18th century with actors projected on a blue screen conversing with each other as they stroll through the garden — through the Blitz told in the voices of survivors documented with poignant photos — into the late 20th century collapse of the Docklands and the traditional industrial base — and into the 21st century of multiethnic, globalised London. My head was spinning a bit by the end, but hey that's what the 20th century did to most people at one time or the other.

Exploring the growth and progress of London across the millennia was in the context of following our friends Frank and Deborah, a planner and a geographer, as they wend their way across the Rust Belt of America in what is being called The Shrinking Cities Tour. Currently they are profoundly distressed by what they are seeing in Detroit. The purpose of the tour is to determine some guidelines for managing decline in cities that no one wants any more. Many of these cities are undertaking schemes to tear down abandoned housing and to shut off utility services in whole neighbourhoods to force any remaining residents to move into localised areas where services can be concentrated to meet limited budgets.

To close with an optimistic thought, when the Romans left England, London disappeared for 400 years because no one wanted it. So maybe Detroit just has to bide its time, and in 300 years it too will have a true renaissance.