Monumental London: From Roman Colony to Global City 9783031384035, 3031384032

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN ECONOMIC HISTORY

Monumental London From Roman Colony to Global City Richard Barras

Palgrave Studies in Economic History Series Editor

Kent Deng London School of Economics London, UK

Palgrave Studies in Economic History is designed to illuminate and enrich our understanding of economies and economic phenomena of the past. The series covers a vast range of topics including financial history, labour history, development economics, commercialisation, urbanisation, industrialisation, modernisation, globalisation, and changes in world economic orders.

Richard Barras

Monumental London From Roman Colony to Global City

Richard Barras The Bartlett School of Planning University College London London, UK

ISSN 2662-6497     ISSN 2662-6500 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Economic History ISBN 978-3-031-38402-8    ISBN 978-3-031-38403-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38403-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

For Nathaniel and Josephine Theirs is the future

Preface

The purpose of this book is to illustrate a single idea, that throughout history monumental buildings have been employed for hegemonic purposes. Through their prominent location, imposing scale, striking style and opulent finish, such buildings are designed to symbolise the authority of the prevailing social order and its ruling class. The idea is explored using London as a case study, exploring successive ages of monumental buildings in the metropolis from the Roman period to the present day. Hegemonic building is framed as part of the broader social process of cultural hegemony first described by the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci. He sought to explain how the ruling class maintains its ascendancy over the subordinate classes in society by influencing their values and beliefs so that the status quo becomes accepted as inevitable, legitimate and even beneficial. The dominant ideology of the ruling class becomes the cultural norm for the whole of society, enabling power to be exercised through consent rather than coercion. Through their physical presence and historical resonance, monumental buildings are particularly effective instruments for the propagation of cultural hegemony. They feed that enduring sense of collective identity that animates the whole of society. To experience a great city like London, with its extraordinary panoply of monumental buildings, engenders pride in its residents and envy in its visitors. We are in thrall to iconic buildings such as St Paul’s Cathedral, the Palace of Westminster or Canary Wharf, because they invoke in us feelings such as reverence, respect or deference. vii

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No original historical research has been undertaken in writing this book. The argument relies upon a synthesis of facts and opinions drawn from sources covering each era of building. In adopting this approach, I have drawn upon some original material presented in my previous two-­ volume study The Wealth of Buildings published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. Some of the arguments in Chaps. 1 and 10 were previously developed in a paper entitled ‘Hegemonic building and the paradox of over-­ accumulation in the Central London office market’, published in the journal City in 2019. To attempt such a historical synthesis spanning two millennia entirely from secondary sources can with some justification be described as hubristic. But I hope and believe that the strength of the argument relies less on the supporting material than on the validity of the central idea—that the monumental buildings of every age have a hegemonic purpose. If that argument is persuasive, the endeavour will have been worthwhile. London, UK

Richard Barras

Contents

1 Hegemonic Building  1 1.1 The Heart of the City  1 1.2 A Cultural Universal  3 1.3 The Hegemonic Imperative  6 1.4 From Ideology to Mythology 10 1.5 Signifiers of Power 14 1.6 Conspicuous Investment 19 1.7 Hubristic Building 21 1.8 Urban Landscapes of Power 23 1.9 From Provincial Capital to Global City 27 References 32 2 Roman Colony 37 2.1 First Incarnation 37 2.2 Ideology of Honour 41 2.3 Edge of Empire 47 2.4 The Archetypal City 53 2.5 Provincial Capital 58 2.6 From Public to Private Domain 66 2.7 Roman Legacy 73 References 75 3 Feudal Fiefdom 81 3.1 Settlement and Reoccupation 81 3.2 Anglo-Norman Kingdom 87 ix

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3.3 Faith and Obligation 93 3.4 Seat of Power 99 3.5 Between Heaven and Earth108 3.6 A Christian Landscape115 References120 4 Royal Domain125 4.1 Great Halls125 4.2 Absolutist Monarchy130 4.3 English Reformation136 4.4 Age of Renaissance139 4.5 A New Architecture142 4.6 An Abundance of Palaces147 4.7 Prodigy Houses153 References159 5 Aristocratic Playground165 5.1 English Revolution165 5.2 Oligarchy of Virtue169 5.3 Landscape of Leisure176 5.4 Palladian Revival179 5.5 Georgian Elegance184 5.6 Regency Extravagance191 5.7 Rural Retreat196 References199 6 Commercial Powerhouse205 6.1 Medieval City205 6.2 Commerce Rising210 6.3 Mercantile City213 6.4 Commerce and Colonisation220 6.5 City of Enterprise227 6.6 City of Conquest235 References242 7 Imperial Capital249 7.1 Industrial Revolution249 7.2 Capitalism Triumphant254

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7.3 City of Capital260 7.4 Cultural Reaction265 7.5 Imperial Hegemony274 7.6 City of Empire280 7.7 The Expanding State288 7.8 Grand Finale296 References299 8 Modern Metropolis307 8.1 Supreme No More307 8.2 Deindustrialisation311 8.3 Redistribution of Power316 8.4 Redistribution of Wealth319 8.5 Age of Modernism326 8.6 Post-war Collectivism331 8.7 Offices Rising339 References342 9 Global City349 9.1 Capitalism Unbound349 9.2 City Resurgent354 9.3 The Postmodern Condition361 9.4 Postmodern City366 9.5 Beyond Finance371 9.6 City of Towers377 9.7 From Offices to Apartments383 References391 10 The Hegemonic Premium397 10.1 Hegemonic Investment397 10.2 Boom and Bust400 10.3 A Global Investment Market402 10.4 Accelerated Obsolescence405 10.5 Hegemonic Places408 References412 Index415

List of Photographs

Photograph 1.1 Landscape of power: City of London 2019 (Source: Joas Souza/Alamy Stock Photo) 29 Photograph 1.2 Landscape of power: City of Westminster 2013 (Source: Songquan Deng/Alamy Stock Photo) 30 Photograph 2.1 Roman London c125 AD (Source: Museum of London/Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo) 61 Photograph 2.2 Palace of the Roman Governor c100 AD (Source: Museum of London/Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo)65 Photograph 3.1 Tower of London 1077–1285 (Source: Stills Press Stock Images/Alamy Stock Photo) 103 Photograph 3.2 Westminster Hall 1097–1401 (Source: Adam Woolfitt/ Alamy Stock Photo) 107 Photograph 3.3 Westminster Abbey 1245–1534 (Source: parkerphotography/Alamy Stock photo) 114 Photograph 3.4 Old St Paul’s 1087–1312 (Source: Hilary Morgan/ Alamy Stock Photo) 118 Photograph 4.1 Hampton Court 1515-45 (Source: Skyscan/Alamy Stock Photo) 150 Photograph 4.2 Old Somerset House 1547-52 (Source: FALKENSTEINFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo) 155 Photograph 4.3 Banqueting House Whitehall 1619-22 (Source: Angelo Hornak/Alamy Stock Photo) 158

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Photograph 5.1 St James’s Square 1665-77 (Source: FALKENSTEINFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 5.2 Spencer House 1756-8 (Source: The Print Collector/ Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 5.3 Lansdowne House 1762-77 (Source: The Print Collector/Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 5.4 Belgrave Square 1826-37 (Source: Bailey-Cooper Photography/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 6.1 Mansion House, Egyptian Hall 1739-52 (Source: Matt Crossick/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 6.2 Bank of England, Consols Office 1792-1823 (Source: London Metropolitan Archives/Heritage Images/ Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 6.3 Horse Guards 1750-9 (Source: David South/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 6.4 Greenwich Hospital 1699-1752 (Source: Michael Wald/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 7.1 Midland Grand Hotel, St Pancras Station 1868-74 (Source: Infrequent Flyer/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 7.2 Royal Exchange 1841-4 (Source: Ida Pap/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 7.3 Prudential Building 1879-1906 (Source: vincent abbey/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 7.4 Foreign Office 1862-75 and Treasury 1899-1915 (Source: A. P. S. (UK)/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 7.5 Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey 1900-7 (Source: PAUL GROVER/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 7.6 British Museum 1823-52 (Source: eye35.pix/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 8.1 County Hall 1912–74 (Source: riou jean-christophe/ Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 8.2 Royal Festival Hall 1948–51 (Source: GRANT ROONEY PREMIUM/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 8.3 Alton Estate Roehampton 1951–8 (Source: Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 8.4 Barbican Estate 1956–81 (Source: John Eveson/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 9.1 Lloyd’s Building 1978–86 (Source: DBURKE/Alamy Stock Photo) Photograph 9.2 SIS Building 1990–4 (Source: Mark Beton/London/ Alamy Stock Photo)

181 189 190 194 231 233 238 240 268 269 273 286 291 293 319 333 336 338 370 373

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Photograph 9.3 British Library 1978–97 (Source: Charles Bowman/ Alamy Stock Photo) 375 Photograph 9.4 Nine Elms 2022 (Source: Richard Barnes/Alamy Stock Photo)386 Photograph 9.5 Canary Wharf 2018 (Source: Stefano Ravera/Alamy Stock Photo) 387 Photograph 9.6 Bloomberg Building 2010–17 (Source: Nick Moore/ Alamy Stock Photo) 390

CHAPTER 1

Hegemonic Building

1.1   The Heart of the City In 1977 a team of Post Office engineers were cutting a tunnel some three metres beneath Gracechurch Street in the City of London when they came upon the foundations of a monumental Roman building. They were the remains of the basilica and forum built nearly two thousand years previously as the administrative and judicial heart of second-century Londinium (Marsden, 1980, 99). If today one could continue north along the line of that tunnel, as Gracechurch Street passes into Bishopsgate, one would almost immediately be confronted by the foundations of another monumental building. This is 22 Bishopsgate, one of the latest in a sequence of office towers that have sprung up in the core of the City’s financial district during the last forty years. It is not just their proximity that these two monumental buildings have in common. Both are of exceptional size: the basilica was almost certainly the largest building constructed in Roman Britain; 22 Bishopsgate is, temporarily at least, the tallest tower within the City. More importantly, both structures were designed to signify the status and power of those who built them. The former proclaimed the control that Imperial Rome exercised over its new colony of Britannia; the latter celebrates the dominance of financial capital in the modern British economy. Both are examples of what can be called a ‘hegemonic building’; each provides a medium

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Barras, Monumental London, Palgrave Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38403-5_1

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through which the ruling class of its time could assert its collective and individual authority (Barras, 2019). In the two millennia that separate the Bishopsgate office tower from the Roman basilica, Monumental London has been rebuilt many times. Within two hundred years of its construction, the basilica and forum had been demolished as Roman power began to wane. The site lay abandoned until the Saxon reoccupation of the city in the late ninth century began the slow process of urban renewal. Over the following centuries, three monumental buildings were constructed over or adjacent to the foundations of the basilica, each embodying one of the three most potent forces to have driven the development of the City over the last thousand years—religion, trade and finance. In the centre of the basilica site is located the church of St Peter upon Cornhill, which tradition suggests may have been established as early as the Roman era, but is more likely to have been a Saxon foundation. Like most other churches in the City, medieval St Peter was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and subsequently rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren in his trademark English Baroque style (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 256–8). Immediately to the east of the church lies Leadenhall Market, first recorded in the early fourteenth century as a place where ‘foreigners’, meaning non-Londoners, might sell poultry. Initially held in the courtyard of a mansion owned by the aristocratic Neville family, the structure was reconstructed in the fifteenth century as a large market hall and granary, and again in 1880 as a grand covered food hall in the form of intersecting glass-roofed galleries (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 309–11). To the east of Leadenhall Market stands Lloyd’s of London, the world’s leading market for specialist insurance. Established in 1688  in a nearby coffee house, the market moved first into the Royal Exchange and then into a sequence of purpose-built offices, culminating in the High-Tech headquarters designed by Richard Rogers and opened in 1986. The Lloyd’s building is so startling in design that it has achieved iconic status, comparable to that of other City landmarks such as the Tower and St Paul’s (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 313–15). Each of these three buildings is imbued with its own hegemonic purpose. However, each also functions as a component of what has been termed the broader ‘landscape of power’, a visible expression of the prevailing social system in which the hegemonic force of the whole exceeds that of the sum of its individual buildings (Zukin, 1993, 3–54). St Peter was one of over a hundred parish churches dotted throughout medieval

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London, a collective declaration of the dominion of the Catholic Church. Leadenhall Market was part of a network of markets, warehouses and wharves that enabled London to function as a great trading port at the heart of the nation’s mercantile economy. Lloyd’s is one of the unique institutions that coalesce to elevate the City to be one of the three most important nodes in the global financial economy. Of themselves, a single parish church or office tower may not readily be recognised as monumental buildings, even though they help to shape the overall urban landscape in which they are situated. Their individual or institutional builders created them not for the collective but for themselves. But at any particular moment of time, members of the ruling class have the same construction technologies at their disposal and are influenced by the same fashions in structural specification and architectural style. Furthermore, each is influenced by the works of their peers, seeking either to emulate or surpass them. Consequently, the combined production of buildings by the whole class offers an appearance of culturally determined homogeneity, reinforcing the impact of their hegemonic message. Whether it be broadcast by a medieval landscape dotted with church spires or a modern landscape framed by office towers, the message of wealth and power that is projected through the built environment helps to explain why a great city such as London looks the way it does (Williams, 2019, 27–76).

1.2  A Cultural Universal Let us move some three miles east from the heart of the City to Canary Wharf, developed since the 1980s on the Isle of Dogs in London Docklands. What is this office complex really for? Of course, there is a functional imperative to its existence. It houses the shock troops of global finance capital, the investment bankers and their entourages. It also acts as a store of wealth, its very fabric the stuff of investor dreams. But it has another, higher purpose. Above functional utility, above investment value, Canary Wharf is the quintessential hegemonic building. Piercing the London skyline this cluster of shining towers is visible for more than twenty miles on the approaches to the metropolis. It proclaims the wealth, the power and the status of its inhabitants as they gaze out over the city, masters of all they survey. Stretching back into prehistory, monumental buildings have provided a particularly potent expression of ruling class hegemony (Trigger, 2003,

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564–583). Consider Stonehenge, the most imposing of the many henge monuments built in Britain around the middle of the third millennium BC. Collectively these monuments constitute a late Neolithic landscape of power. The massive size of Stonehenge, its astronomical alignment and the far-flung origins of the stones all speak of a technically accomplished, hierarchically organised society able to command and deploy a considerable surplus of labour. Current archaeological research suggests that the structure may have functioned as a memorial to ancestors of the ruling elite, designed according to cosmological principles, and built as a symbol of unification by tribes drawn from across the British Isles (Parker Pearson, 2012, 314–340). That this visible statement of dynastic power can still fill us with wonder today is testament to the hold it must have exerted upon the minds of simple Neolithic farmers. Canary Wharf and Stonehenge occupy the extremities of a temporal continuum. Across all societies and modes of production, monumental buildings have been employed as hegemonic symbols by the dominant social class. They constitute what some anthropologists have, controversially, termed a cultural universal (Brown, 1991, 39–40; Geertz, 2017, 42–48). Stonehenge and Canary Wharf are the products of completely different societies and differ utterly in their form and function, but they both exude a powerful symbolic authority. That is their ultimate purpose. When confronted by either work, the populace is intended to experience similar feelings—deference to superior status, respect for greater wealth and submission to a higher power. The overwhelming presence of such buildings raises them above the mundane and the transitory. As Lefebvre (1991, 227) has remarked, whilst buildings en masse are ‘the prose of the world’, individual monuments are its poetry. The hegemonic buildings of every age can be said to be invested with symbolic capital, at least as valuable as the real resources of labour and materials invested in their construction (Bourdieu, 1998, 47–52; Harvey, 1989, 269–270). Their symbolic value is proportional to the influence that they exercise over the collective consciousness of their societies. It is through the practice of architecture that monumental buildings are invested with symbolic value. Architectural practice can be identified as a particular field of cultural production (Bourdieu, 1993, 29–73), which means that its products are conditioned by the social milieu in which architects operate (Stevens, 1998). It is a practice that functions through its own visual language, deployed to project a social identity for the

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institutions that inhabit their buildings (Jones, 2011). The sleek office towers in Canary Wharf signify the potency of the investment banks that built them. More than that, they capture the essence of our age: the global reach of finance capital, the limitless power of information technology and the coexistence of extreme wealth and poverty within a great city (Massey, 2007). Throughout history, the imperatives of hegemonic building have remained broadly the same. To achieve its hegemonic purpose, a building must be constructed in a prominent location, on an imposing scale, in a striking style and to an opulent finish that sets it apart, its high visibility broadcasting its message to as large an audience as possible. To achieve this purpose, architects still respect the three fundamental principles of building first identified by the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius: durability, utility and beauty (Vitruvius, 1960, 17). For classical architects, beauty was expressed in terms of proportion and symmetry; for contemporary architects, it can take more eccentric forms (Haldane, 1999). The structural form of a hegemonic building is in part determined by the functions for which it has been designed, both practical and symbolic, and in part by the technologies and architectural styles prevalent at the time of its construction. Like all buildings, hegemonic buildings are subject to structural innovation. The changing functional requirements of buildings create new demands which can lead to innovations in technology and style. Conversely, autonomous changes in technology and style can create new opportunities that feed back to influence functionality. Innovations in both building technology and architectural style reflect broader economic and cultural forces at work in society. However, it is important to distinguish between technological improvements in construction methods, which tend to be cumulative and unidirectional, and cultural shifts in architectural style, which can refer backwards as well as forwards. In each historical era, the buildings endowed with hegemonic status are those that best symbolise the nature of the prevailing economic, social and political order. Just as today’s office towers display the supremacy of finance capital, so the march of history can be encapsulated in a succession of such building types (Barras, 2016a, 2016b). Castles were the abiding symbol of royal and baronial rule; cathedrals glorified the spiritual authority of the church; country houses displayed the privileged status of the landed aristocracy; civic buildings paid homage to the wealth of industrial

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capitalism. Each of these building types has acquired iconic status because it embodies the spirit of its age. It is important to recognise that a monumental building is more than just a physical presence; it is a symbolic space in which people can engage in activities with a hegemonic purpose (Etlin, 1996, xviii–xx). Cathedrals accommodate religious services, while banks house the operations of finance. To enter such a building is to undergo a sensory and cerebral experience. Visitors to a cathedral ‘become aware of their own footsteps, and listen to the noises, the singing; they must breathe the incense-laden air, and plunge into a particular world, that of sin and redemption; they will partake of an ideology; they will contemplate and decipher the symbols around them’ (Lefebvre, 1991, 221). Furthermore, monumental buildings provide a stage on which can be performed spectacular rituals devised to deliver an explicit hegemonic message (Lukes, 1977, 52–73). The use of monumental buildings as theatres of spectacle is as universal a phenomenon as monumental building itself. ‘The spectacle is the ruling order’s nonstop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise’ (Debord, 2014, 7). This is not just a phenomenon of modern societies. The cultural and religious ceremonies performed at Stonehenge will have overawed Neolithic people just as much as the stones themselves. London’s landscape of power has always comprised more than just an assemblage of hegemonic buildings. It is a great theatre of spectacle, a stage set on which are enacted the ceremonies of state so vital to the maintenance of ruling class power. Westminster Abbey is the theatre of royal display; St Paul’s is the setting for services of national mourning and celebration; the Palace of Westminster houses the elaborate procedures of parliamentary democracy; the Mansion House acts as the start and finish of the Lord Mayor’s Show, affirming the power and wealth of the City.

1.3   The Hegemonic Imperative Hegemonic building should be seen as one particular manifestation of the general phenomenon of cultural hegemony, first theorised by Antonio Gramsci (Hoare & Nowell Smith, 1971, 206–276). He sought to explain how the dominant class maintains its ascendancy over the subordinate classes in society by influencing their values and beliefs so that they accept the status quo as inevitable, legitimate and even beneficial. The world view of the ruling class becomes the cultural norm for the whole of society,

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enabling power to be exercised through consent rather than coercion. As Gramsci puts it, the essence of hegemony is ‘the “spontaneous” consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group’ (Hoare & Nowell Smith, 1971, 12). Crucially, the exercise of hegemony requires a dominant ideology, a prevailing system of ideas which articulates the world view of the ruling class and permeates throughout the fabric of society (Femia, 1987: 23–60). As Marx and Engels famously remark in The German Ideology, ‘The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas’ (Marx & Engels, 1970, 64). Althusser takes the argument further, proposing that ideology is more than just a system of ideas or beliefs, it is the means by which people relate to the world they inhabit. ‘Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence’ (Althusser, 2014, 256). The nation state is a condition of existence; nationalism is the ideological belief that leads people to embrace its existence (Giddens, 1995, 182–202). In pre-capitalist societies, stretching from the ancient world through feudalism to the agrarian capitalism of the eighteenth century, the dominant class was the landowning aristocracy in varying forms. Its hegemonic power was based upon what has been termed the ‘ideology of honour’ (Lendon, 2001). In addition to their wealth and breeding, aristocrats sought esteem through their achievements in military command or high public office. Building an elegant country mansion or townhouse was considered an honourable way of spending one’s wealth. With the transition to capitalism, there was a fundamental shift in the underlying basis of hegemony, from the aristocratic ideology of honour to the bourgeois ideology of progress. Productivity and profit became the overriding cultural norms, relegating breeding, military prowess and distinguished public service to little more than historical curiosities. Monumental buildings became a tradeable commodity like any other, their symbolic value monetised as a ‘hegemonic premium’. The exercise of hegemony is seen by Gramsci as operating within what Marx termed the legal, political and ideological superstructure of society, in contrast to the infrastructure of the economic base (Thomas, 2010, 95–102). It should, however, be recognised that base and superstructure interpenetrate one another (Hoare & Sperber, 2016, 106). Whilst the dominant ideology may develop within the superstructure, it is shaped by the material forces of production within the base. Conversely, the

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dominant ideology can act reciprocally upon the economic base, modifying the social relations of production. In other words, the particular ruling class in each mode of production exercises a distinct form of hegemony through its own unique ideology. Gramsci’s theory can be deconstructed into a set of oppositions concerning the nature of power in any historical era: consent versus coercion; hegemony versus domination; civil society versus the state or political society (Anderson, 2017, 54–74). The most basic articulation of the theory is that the ruling class exercises hegemony through the consensual institutions of civil society, leaving the exercise of domination to the coercive apparatus of the state, which enjoys a monopoly in the use of legitimate force (Weber, 2019, 136). Here civil society is taken to mean private institutions such as religious movements, political parties, the educational system and communications media, while the state includes legislative and government bodies, courts, the police and armed forces. The dichotomy between consensual civil society and coercive state is too simplistic a formulation, however. Hegemony is not a static, ahistorical system; it is a dynamic process that responds to the changing requirements of the ruling class. It is a process that ‘has continually to be renewed, recreated, defended and modified’ (Williams, 1977, 112). As societies have developed, the state has increasingly employed consent, as well as coercion, to achieve its objectives. Indeed, over time the balance has tended to shift from coercion to consent. The apparatus of the state has become more sophisticated, encouraging consent where possible and only threatening coercion when necessary. The state has become the ‘engineer of consent’ (Miliband, 1983, 60). While the threat of state violence was more apparent in feudal societies, the maintenance of consent through parliamentary democracy has become the primary strategy of the capitalist state (Eagleton, 2007, 112–123). It is a mistake to treat the ruling class as a monolith. The concept of hegemony does not solely refer to the exercise of power by the ruling class over the masses; it also applies to the division of power within the ruling elite, for example, between aristocracy and gentry or between bankers and industrialists. Under each mode of production there exist separate groups or fractions within the ruling class, each operating as a distinct entity within the overall social formation (Poulantzas, 1973, 77–85). Each pursues its own hegemonic purpose and competes for supremacy with other groups, while at the same time maintaining an alliance in support of the broader interests

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of the ruling class as a whole. The state may play a mediating role in this alliance. Under feudalism, church and crown acted in this manner, as have industrial and finance capital under capitalism. Such ruling class alliances are founded on a shared dominant ideology, and it has been argued that binding together different fractions within the ruling class may be at least as important a function of dominant ideologies as engineering the consent of subordinate classes (Abercrombie et al., 1980). The manner in which ruling class hegemony has developed through successive modes of production can be characterised as an evolutionary process. Adopting the methodological approach of historical materialism, Marx conceived of the succession from one mode of production to the next as being driven by the dialectical opposition between the material forces and social relations of production. ‘At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production…From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure’ (Marx, 1971, 21). Far from progressing through gradual changes, this evolutionary schema proceeds through distinct stages of revolutionary transformation. Modern evolutionary theory has captured a similar dynamic in the concept of punctuated equilibrium. The idea originated in the field of biology to describe evolution not as a uniform process of gradual and steady change, but rather one of long periods of relative stasis punctuated by shorter periods of radical change (Gould, 2007). Evolutionary approaches are now becoming widely adopted in the social sciences, applied to many aspects of human culture (Mesoudi, 2011). In particular, the evolutionary paradigm is helping to reintroduce history back into economic theory, after its expulsion by the neoclassicists (Arthur, 2015; Dopfer, 2005). In a process we shall call ‘punctuated hegemony’, the nature of ruling class control over the economic and social system can remain relatively unchanged for those extended periods of time characterised by Braudel (1980) as the longue durée. The dominant or prevailing mode of production is operating effectively, the surplus product is plentiful and the accumulation of wealth by the dominant class proceeds unchecked. The ruling elite faces no serious threat to its hegemony or challenge to its ideology, and so is able to consolidate its position while adapting to changing economic conditions. Power concentrates further in the hands of the few,

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pressures for social change are contained, and inequalities of income and wealth widen. However, these extended periods of consolidation are punctuated by shorter periods of disruption and transformation, corresponding to the transition from one mode of production to the next. A new set of class relations displace the old through a process of class struggle, and a new set of productive forces replace the old through processes of technological and institutional change. Transformative events, such as a technological revolution or outbreak of war, unleash latent class tensions, thereby providing the catalyst for social and political upheaval. The hegemony of the established ruling class is undermined by what Gramsci calls a ‘crisis of authority’ (Hoare & Nowell Smith, 1971, 276). An ascendant class with a distinctly different ideology challenges the dominant class, weakening its hold on power and forcing a downward redistribution of wealth and income. In response, the ruling class renews itself, absorbing elements of the ascendant class and adapting its ideology accordingly. As the revolutionary impetus subsides, the reformed ruling class regains control of the transformed means of production, resumes its accumulation of wealth, and re-establishes hegemony in a new form. The idea of punctuated hegemony recognises that the discontinuities of history are as important as the continuities (Foucault, 2002, 3–19). The longue durée of history does not proceed smoothly along the arrow of time but rather exhibits a dynamic in which extended phases of relative stability are interrupted by short but intense phases of upheaval. Transformation and consolidation, challenge and absorption, revolution and counter-­ revolution; such is the dynamic that generates the rhythm of history.

1.4  From Ideology to Mythology Any given social order reproduces itself through stereotyped acts of discourse that imagine the status quo as ‘natural, necessary, traditional, normal, and/or divinely ordained’ (Lincoln, 2014, xv). These acts of discourse communicate the dominant ideology by which the ruling class seeks to legitimise its hegemony (Eagleton, 2007, 54–61). In the ancient and medieval world, such discourse was communicated through ceremony, spectacle and the visual arts; in the modern world, it is communicated through a variety of mass media, whether it be written texts, broadcast speech or social media.

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Acceptance of the status quo as the natural order of things is sustained by two interrelated aspects of social behaviour which Bourdieu (1977, 72–95; 164–171) has termed ‘habitus’ and ‘doxa’. Habitus refers to the tendency for ingrained habits of behaviour to be passed on from one generation to the next through what amounts to a process of social conditioning, such that individuals and social groups are predisposed to perceive and react to the world around them in long-established ways. Doxa denotes the truths which society takes to be self-evident and unarguable within the ‘universe of the undisputed’, in contrast to opinions which may be questioned and contested within the ‘universe of discourse’. The combination of habitus and doxa enables people to maintain an enduring sense of identity consistent with their social status over long periods of time. They should not be treated as static phenomena, however. As social and political attitudes change over time, undisputed truths may morph into disputed opinions. A current example is whether the British Empire was indisputably beneficial to the well-being and progress of its conquered peoples (Elkins, 2022). Various ideological strategies can be adopted to legitimise hegemony (Thompson, 1990, 60–67). One is rationalisation, aimed at gaining explicit consent to the exercise of power through the exercise of reason. Another is dissimulation, intended to conceal the true nature of the power structure by mystification or displacement. A third is denigration, designed to undermine competing ideologies that threaten the status quo by differentiating and fragmenting them. A fourth is universalisation or naturalisation, representing a historical power structure as if it were permanent, natural and outside of time. It should be stressed that legitimation of the social order extends beyond the sphere of ideology to encompass the economic and the political (Habermas, 1988, 36–37). Improving living standards and strengthening civil rights are powerful engineers of consent. Our model of punctuated hegemony suggests that contradictory ideologies can coexist in society at different stages of development. After each transformation, the ruling class emerges in a new form, exercising its hegemony through a new dominant ideology. Both the new form of the ruling class and the new dominant ideology absorb elements of the old order. However, the new is not perfectly aligned with the old. Society thus incorporates conflicting interests within the ruling class, and contradictory strands within its collective world view. Since each class interest and ideological strand originated during a particular stage of economic development, each is superimposed upon its predecessors, partly preserving and

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partly obliterating them. The residual class interests and ideologies from earlier modes of production survive as a historical record of the trajectory along which a society has progressed. Through the process of universalisation, the ideology of a displaced ruling class can survive by mutating into mythology. Ritual discourse plays a crucial role in the process, creating a timeless narrative of the ancestral past which conjures up ‘the presence of the past in the present’ (Bloch, 1977). Time is dissolved and individuals depersonalised. A particularly potent example of the process is the creation of foundation myths to describe the origins of a society or a nation in a past age of heroes (Sweeney, 2015). Ideology and myth are distinct cultural processes: the function of ideology is to serve the special interests of a particular social group; the function of myth is to bind social groups together into a natural whole (Halpern, 1961, 137). The system of ideas that legitimises a ruling class during a particular stage of social development becomes a utopian vision of an enduring common identity for the whole of society. Contingent ideas are stripped of their original historical context and transformed into necessary beliefs; myth ‘transforms history into nature’ (Barthes, 2012, 240). Whereas promotion of an ideology can be viewed as a rational process of persuasion, the formation of myth is an essentially irrational process, evoking sentiments of attachment to a shared natural belief system (Lincoln, 2014, 7). If that belief system possesses sufficient credibility and authority, it becomes embedded deep within the collective memory of society (Connerton, 1989). The evolution of ruling class hegemony in England over the past millennium provides a good illustration of how ideology can mutate into myth. In the medieval world, the peasantry paid homage to their temporal and spiritual lords through feudal service and religious observance. These were the foundations upon which long centuries of aristocratic hegemony were built. During that time, the ruling class was extraordinarily successful in gaining the consent of the middle and labouring classes for its cultural model of Englishness (Colls, 2002). It is a model based on ideals of tradition, continuity and deference, with archetypes that hark back to a mythic past of the benevolent lord in his castle, the sturdy yeoman on his farm and the patient craftsman in his workshop. Yet, paradoxically, at its centre stands a different idealised character, the free-born Englishman, descendant of Anglo-Saxon settlers, child of Magna Carta and hero of the English Revolution. This composite cultural model still survives today, finding

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particular expression in a deep-rooted reverence for the institution of constitutional monarchy as the ultimate expression of national identity. With the Industrial Revolution, there emerged a new form of capitalist hegemony, supported by the new dominant bourgeois ideology of progress. The triumph of the entrepreneurial ideal seemingly ensured that the dedicated enterprise of the industrial capitalist replaced the leisured indulgence of the landed aristocrat as the cultural norm. But did it? It is one of the singularities of English history that the hegemonic leadership of England’s capitalist class was seized not by her industrialists, but by the financial elite in the City of London (Anderson, 1987). Ideologically closer to the landed than the manufacturing interest, they ensured that the ancient spirit of aristocratic hauteur was kept alive in a modern spirit of gentlemanly capitalism (Cain & Hopkins, 2002). Money may have replaced land as the measure of wealth, but to this day the aristocratic tradition still provides powerful signifiers of social rank. Family pedigree can still trump family income; the rewards of the honours system are still eagerly sought. The cultural hegemony of the old landed elite has been preserved beneath the surface of modern bourgeois society. In order to preserve this aristocratic tradition, the Victorians superimposed upon their bourgeois ideology the myth of a pastoral, pre-industrial, ‘English way of life’ (Wiener, 2004: 41–80). Traditions were invented where none existed before in order to establish continuity with the historic past (Hobsbawm, 1992). Even the Arthurian legend was employed to burnish the ideals of Englishness (Girouard, 1981). As the nation became more industrialised and urbanised, and the agricultural economy went into decline, so the myth was defiantly embellished. Rupert Brooke’s Grantchester spoke for England more than Arnold Bennet’s Potteries. And more recently, as deindustrialisation has taken hold, so the yearning for a prelapsarian past has intensified. For the City trader, a country house is a desirable retreat from the strains of financial speculation; for the middle classes, the haven of a vernacular house with garden front and back supplies a miniature version of England’s green and pleasant land. The dream of ‘escaping to the country’ still exerts a seductive fascination across the social classes. The mutation of ideology into myth can be observed through the lifetime of hegemonic buildings. As each ruling class passes into history, their works and monuments tend to survive them, preserved or reused long after their original purpose has been lost. These survivors acquire a mythological status as reminders of a vanished world.

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However, in acquiring such a status, their ideological power transmutes into a mythic power. So Manchester’s surviving cotton mills are being preserved as national treasures to remind us of an age when British industry led the world, rather than to recall the hellish factory conditions chronicled by Engels or the slave economies that grew the cotton. Looking further back in time, the castles built by the conquering Normans now provide a backdrop for fantasies of medieval chivalry, far removed from their pivotal role in the brutal suppression of the Saxon peasantry. And stretching further back still, the stone circle at Stonehenge is now the stage for ‘druidic’ ceremonies devoid of any historical authenticity. Who knows what mystic rites will be performed amongst the blasted ruins of Canary Wharf, a thousand years from now?

1.5  Signifiers of Power Hegemonic buildings, together with the ceremonies performed within them, are a potent example of the materialisation of ideology—its transformation into a physical form so as better to achieve its cultural purpose (DeMarrais et al., 1996). Such buildings are visual metaphors that can speak more vividly, and to a wider audience, than any written or spoken text. They are cultural artefacts, products of the dominant ideology in society, and their value as symbols of power and authority depends upon the extent to which that dominant ideology is accepted throughout the social order. For Gramsci, ‘societies are not just structures of economic domination or political force, but possess a certain cultural cohesion even when riven by class antagonisms’ (Anderson, 2017, 17). It is this cultural cohesion that provides the essential context for hegemonic building to succeed in its purpose. While all hegemonic buildings can be said to have the social purpose of engineering consent, some are designed to do so by reminding the populace that coercion can be employed as an instrument of social control if consent is not forthcoming. Buildings such as a fortress or a courthouse act as instruments of power (Lasswell, 1979) and their design is an expression of the ‘architecture of domination’ (Bentmann & Müller, 1992, 102–9). Here a distinction should be made between the hegemonic purpose of private and public buildings. Private buildings constructed by persons or corporations are designed to advertise their individual wealth and status within civil society; public buildings are designed to house the agencies of

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the state, performing both their consensual and coercive functions. Agencies of the state engage in hegemonic building as a matter of course, ‘to seduce, to impress, and to intimidate’ the population (Sudjic, 2006: 3). The historical tendency for the exercise of power to shift from coercion to consent is reflected in the ideological symbolism embodied in hegemonic buildings and in the psychological reactions they are designed to evoke amongst the masses. Thus the castles of the Norman barons carried an explicit threat of violence that was meant to instil fear into the subject Saxons. The cathedrals of the Gothic age transfixed their congregations with hope of Heaven and fear of Hell in equal measure. The palaces of the Tudor monarchs and their courtiers were built on a scale sufficient to elicit awe and wonder amongst all classes of society. In their elegance and sophistication, the country houses of the Georgian aristocracy evoked due deference among tenantry and visitors alike. The town halls promoted by Victorian industrialists were designed to instil a spirit of civic pride in communities enduring lives of punishing labour. Hegemonic buildings such as castles, cathedrals, country houses and town halls function within the social and political superstructure of society. However, there is no intrinsic reason why buildings that act as means of production within the economic base, such as factories, railway stations or office blocks, cannot also be imbued with a hegemonic purpose. Victorian industrialists projected their wealth and power in a variety of ways—through the factories they built for their businesses as well as the country houses they provided for their families and the town halls they sponsored for their communities. If hegemonic buildings are a medium through which the ruling class enables their ideology to materialise, how do such buildings broadcast their message? One way in which the visual language of architecture communicates its messages is by association of ideas: ‘architecture is not simply a mechanical contrivance but an essay in the art of communication, a complex web of memories and messages’ (Mordaunt Crook, 1987, 116). Through the medium of architectural language, powerful associations are created between the dominant class and their hegemonic buildings. Through these associations, hegemonic buildings, both individually and collectively, can be interpreted as a discourse on the authority of those who built them and the legitimacy of the social system they control. These associations long outlive their builders, or even the society that created them. Castles and cathedrals evoke a romantic medieval world of chivalry

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and piety; palaces and country houses resonate with the luxury and intrigue of aristocratic life; factories and mills proclaim the virtues of industry and enterprise. Through the ages, the language of architecture has employed a mixture of historical, contemporary and futuristic associations of ideas. ‘It recounts the past, records the present, and holds up ideals for the future’ according to John Belcher in his presidential address to the Royal Institute of British Architects 1904 (Olsen, 1986, 283). This is because architectural styles progress in what can be characterised as a dialectical process (Arnold, 2003, 6). Each aesthetic movement reacts against its immediate predecessor, rejecting some of its elements and retaining others, while reaching further back to earlier movements for historical elements conducive to a new synthesis. Architects of the Renaissance wished to signal their rejection of medieval forms by creating a new language based on classical forms; Gothic revivalists rejected classicism in favour of a new medievalist synthesis; Modernism emerged as the functionalist antithesis of Victorian revivalism, in all its eclectic forms; Postmodernism has in turn emerged as the capricious antithesis of Modernism, opening the door to eclecticism once more (Jencks, 2011). Sculpture and inscriptions provide more explicit, complementary means of conveying the hegemonic message of monumental buildings. Statues of gods, monarchs, statesmen or military leaders signify the nature of the power being celebrated; inscriptions can further clarify the message for a literate audience. More ephemeral, but more immediate, are the messages conveyed by spectacles staged within, or outside, hegemonic buildings. These manifestations of power are expressed in their own particular language. Visual images are the signs, the whole performance is the discourse, and the discourse is a social process designed to promote the ideology of the ruling class. ‘The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relation between people that is mediated by images’ (Debord, 2014, 2). The establishment of that relationship is very apparent amongst the crowds that attend a ceremonial procession, whether it be a religious pageant, a royal coronation, a civic parade or a celebration of military victory. The language of architecture can be thought of as a sign system or code that enables us to read the symbolic messages embodied in hegemonic buildings as if they were a text (Lefebvre, 1991, 140–164). It is a language with its own vocabulary, semantics and syntax (Jencks, 1991, 39–62). Each sign has two dimensions: the signifier is its expression while the

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signified is its content or meaning (Lukken & Searle, 1993, 21). A group of signs constitute a message or statement, and a group of statements constitute a discourse (Foucault, 2002, 120–132). To comprehend the messages that are being signified, we must be aware of the referential meanings of different architectural signifiers. Crenellated towers suggest feudal force; soaring spires invoke medieval piety; pedimented porticos imply aristocratic luxury; glass skyscrapers mean modernist efficiency. For these signifiers to be widely understood, their ideological meanings must be deeply implanted within the collective memory (Broadbent, 1980). The more widespread the social agreement about the meanings associated with different signifiers, the more effective is the message being transmitted. For any built form such as an office tower, each of its architectural signifiers incorporates two aspects of meaning (Eco, 1980). Its denotation refers to its function (accommodating business), while its connotation refers to its associated idea (economic efficiency). It is important to recognise that both denotation and connotation can change through time—the function of a built form can change, and so can the idea it signifies. For example, one of the most consistent imperatives of hegemonic building throughout history has been to build high. The higher the structure, the greater the distance over which it is visible, and the more imposing its impact close to. Beyond their visual impact, tall buildings are imbued with the symbolic power of the sublime (Parker, 2015). Over the centuries, much of the structural innovation that has occurred in built forms has been directed at achieving greater height while retaining structural stability, through a fusion of technological improvements and shifts in architectural style. But height has signified different things at different times. In the medieval age the tallest buildings were cathedrals, and their height signified devotion to God. Today’s tallest buildings are office towers, and their height signifies a very different devotion, not to God but to Mammon. The semiotics of built forms is both complex and hierarchical (Krampen, 1979). The signifiers used to express the symbolic meaning of a building range from individual parts of its design, such as a facade, a room or a doorway, up to its overall form, setting and location. The setting and location of a monumental building can have as powerful a hegemonic impact as the built form itself, whether derived from its elevation and prominence or the historical associations attached to the site (Harvey, 1979).

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Through their very complexity, monumental buildings embody multiple layers of meaning which combine into a unified discourse. However, reading the meaning of a monumental building is a subjective process: some buildings may seem devoid of hegemonic meaning, others overburdened with it. Furthermore, there is always a danger of attributing too abstruse a meaning to a building; the most obvious symbols of hegemonic power are the ones most likely to be understood by the widest audience (Anglo, 1992, 130). The subjectivity of the process means that the meaning of a building can be interpreted in different ways by different people at different times, according to their social status, their belief system and the collective interpretation prevailing at the time (Bonta, 1979). For a banker, Canary Wharf means the triumph of finance capital; for many of the populace, it means speculative greed and financial distress. There is a symbiotic relationship between the evolution of a built form, the changing architectural language through which it is expressed, and the particular ideological message it is intended to convey. For illustration, consider the historical development of the office building, as it can be traced in a central business district such as the City of London over the past two centuries (Hitchcock, 1987, 327–352, 455–591). The first generation of early Victorian office buildings were designed in a restrained Neoclassical style, bestowing upon their occupiers the aura of dignity and reliability so prized in the new world of commercial capitalism. There was then a switch to a different classical style, Italian Renaissance, prized for its association with the famed bankers of the Italian city states. As classicism gave way to Gothic Revival, the emphasis shifted to the virtues of longevity and tradition, vital anchors in a society convulsed by industrial revolution. In turn, as the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian, a more bombastic neo-Baroque style offered an unashamed celebration of imperial grandeur and plutocratic excess. With the advent of Modernism in the early twentieth century, office buildings shed their revivalist trappings to embrace the brave new world. Masonry structures embellished with classical pediments or medieval towers were replaced by stark rectilinear forms in steel and glass that spoke of innovation and progress. Most recently, as Postmodernism has supplanted Modernism, the fashion for startling forms and outrageous ornament has again captured the spirit of the age, replacing seriousness with irony and collectivism with individualism.

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1.6   Conspicuous Investment The multifunctionality of buildings affords them a unique status within the economic system. At their most utilitarian, they function as means of production; they form part of the physical capital that is employed in the processes of production. Conversely, they can function as means of consumption, both individual and collective; they house activities that are consumed as personal and social services. Domestic buildings can function as means of both production and consumption. Medieval craftsmen worked at home, as did cotton weavers in the early nineteenth century, as do internet workers today. In parallel with their utilitarian functions, land and buildings have acted as a principal store of wealth at every stage of history. Consequently, holdings of land and buildings are a key indicator of how the wealth of a society is distributed amongst its population. The wealth of the landed aristocracy was defined by the size of their estates, while the wealth of today’s financial elite is advertised by the number of properties they own across countries and continents. Ownership of the family dwelling has become the most effective means by which the accumulation of wealth has filtered down through the social hierarchy. What we are arguing here is that buildings constructed by the dominant social class have a further purpose, beyond their use value and exchange value. As signifiers of status and power, they are invested with the symbolic value that characterises hegemonic buildings. In so doing, they provide a medium through which the ruling class can express its collective authority, and individuals or groups within that class can compete for supremacy. The construction of a hegemonic building thus produces an object with use value, a commodity with exchange value and a sign with symbolic value (Baudrillard, 2019, 119–69). Hence the triple role of a building complex such as Canary Wharf, acting as accommodation for office activities, store of wealth for investment funds and symbol of dominion for finance capital. It is through the appropriation of an economic surplus that the dominant class can indulge their taste for hegemonic building. The means by which this is achieved depends upon the prevailing mode of production (Dobb, 1963). In the ancient economy slave labour produced an agricultural surplus in return for a bare subsistence. Under feudalism, the surplus extracted from the peasantry by the landowning aristocracy took the form of labour services, produce and cash rents. Under mercantilism, merchants

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could siphon off part of the surplus that was generated in agriculture and manufacturing by buying cheap and selling dear. Under industrial capitalism, profits were accumulated by the owners of capital through the difference between the value of the goods produced by their workers and the costs of the labour and capital employed in their production. Under financial capitalism, surpluses are accumulated by financiers from the charges they levy on monetary transactions and the profits they generate through market trading. The ruling elite direct the surplus product into the spheres of both production and consumption. Part they consume and part they assign to capital formation, investing in capital goods which expand the means of production. Spatial concentration of the surplus product in the form of fixed capital, such as buildings and infrastructure, is a fundamental driver of city formation (Harvey, 2009, 216–240). Prior to the Industrial Revolution, rates of capital formation were typically low. Elites were content to maintain rather than grow the economy, and the surplus product was primarily directed into luxury consumption. As industrial capitalism became established, so the dynamic shifted towards the accumulation of capital. A greater proportion of the surplus was reinvested in production, the volume of productive capital expanded and the economy grew in scale. However, since the expansion of productive capital generated a growing surplus, the funds which could be expended on luxury goods increased rather than diminished. Writing at the end of the nineteenth century, Thorstein Veblen developed the concept of conspicuous consumption to describe how the ostentatious enjoyment of luxury goods and leisure activities by the wealthy elite provides a competitive display of their economic power and social status (Veblen, 2007). From the perspective of the anthropologist rather than the economist, the consumption of luxury goods does not merely reflect the personal tastes of individual members of the elite. Rather, it should be seen as a culturally determined activity, an aspect of social behaviour in which the goods of choice communicate messages about the identity and status of their consumers (Douglas & Isherwood, 1996). From this perspective, hegemonic building by members of the dominant class can also be seen as a social process. Extraordinary buildings provide the most visible and impressive manifestation of elite status, while simultaneously functioning as means of production and consumption and stores of wealth. The wealthy love to build in order to enhance their fortunes, supply their domestic comforts, indulge their taste for luxury and

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proclaim their superior rank. In Veblen’s terminology, they love to engage in ‘conspicuous investment’. Within contemporary urban discourse, ‘iconic’ is a term much in vogue to describe buildings that are the product of conspicuous investment (Jencks, 2011, 203–245). It is a term that recognises the symbolic value of such buildings and, in some cases, their hegemonic nature. However, its use is predominantly confined to the Postmodernist extravaganzas of globalised capitalism, individualistic buildings designed by ‘starchitects’ to serve the interests of the transnational capitalist class (Sklair, 2017). What this usage fails to emphasise is the universality of the phenomenon across time as well as space and the essential hegemonic purpose of such buildings throughout history. A great city such as London offers plentiful instances of conspicuous investment at every stage of its development. It can be argued that the activity reached a peak of personal display during the reign of Henry VIII. At the end of his life, he owned over 50 houses and palaces, more than any other English monarch before or since (Colvin et al., 1982, 2). This portfolio far exceeded the domestic needs of the royal household; its function was to celebrate the absolute power of the Tudor dynasty, but in so doing it exposed the limits of crown resources. The costs of the king’s building programme consistently outstripped his regular income, triggering a ruthless search for additional sources of revenue. Principal among these were the proceeds from the dissolution of the monasteries, without which Henry could not have funded his taste for conspicuous investment on such a scale. The impossibility of maintaining such a portfolio led to a rapid disposal of superfluous royal palaces after the king’s death, such that only seven remained in regular occupation under Elizabeth and the Stuarts, all located in and around the capital.

1.7  Hubristic Building In many cases, the hegemonic imperative is so strong it produces what can be termed a ‘trophy building’, with a symbolic value that outweighs its use value. Many Norman barons occupied castles that were never attacked or besieged, yet they were impelled to maintain them as a statement of their position within the feudal hierarchy (Coulson, 2003). Many great landed families in the eighteenth century felt it necessary to own an imposing country seat, as a signifier of their territorial control, even though they preferred to live the majority of their lives in a rented London townhouse

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(Mitchell, 2005). Many of today’s investment banks occupy expensive city centre office towers as an expression of their corporate might, even though much of their operations could be outsourced to cheaper and probably more productive buildings in less prestigious locations (Harrison et al., 2004). Competition between members of the dominant class within society, whether individuals or institutions, provides a vital spur to hegemonic building. The visibility and durability of built forms make them uniquely suited to act as monuments to their creators. In the quest for fame and immortality individuals strive to construct more striking buildings than their peers, inspired by the belief that ‘monumentality transcends death’ (Lefebvre, 1991, 221). This form of ‘competitive emulation’ through monument building has provided a crucial outlet for the competitive instincts of the ruling elite throughout history (Renfrew & Cherry, 1986). It should be considered an intrinsic component of the cultural universal that is hegemonic building. Taken to extremes, the hegemonic imperative can lead individual members of the elite to disaster. The competitive spur to produce the most prominent, the most imposing, the most striking, the most opulent building encourages hubristic ambitions that can end in the nemesis of severe financial distress or even ruin. History furnishes us with many such cases of hubristic building. A recent London example is provided by the NatWest Tower, the tallest office building in the capital between 1981, when it was completed, and 1991, when it was overtaken by the first of the Canary Wharf towers. It had taken the National Provincial Bank over 130 years to acquire the 18 parcels of land required to assemble the site for their new headquarters (Dunning & Morgan, 1971, 196). After their merger with the Westminster Bank in 1968 they were determined to make the most of the opportunity. What they built was the first true skyscraper in the American tradition to be erected in the City of London. Construction took twelve years and cost £72 million, which, in price-adjusted terms, makes the office space the most expensive to have been built in the City during the post-war period (Barras, 2016b, 347). The exceptional cost resulted from the impractical design of the office floors, which take the form of three overlapping hexagons, mimicking the logo of the newly merged bank. This layout severely limited the quantity of usable floor space while making extreme demands upon the construction technologies of the day.

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In the search for a unique built form that would distinguish it from its competitors, the bank had overreached itself, sacrificing use value for symbolic value. It only occupied the tower for thirteen years before it was badly damaged by the bomb which the IRA exploded in Bishopsgate in 1993. Despite extensive refurbishment, the bank decided that the tower was no longer economically viable and sold it to an investor who renamed it Tower 42 (after the number of its cantilevered floors) and let it on a multi-occupancy basis. Meanwhile, the ailing bank became the object of a fierce takeover battle, culminating in its absorption into the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2000.

1.8  Urban Landscapes of Power Throughout recorded history, ruling class power has been exercised primarily in towns and cities (Therborn, 2017, 7–69). Cities are ‘the main locus of the state…a crucible for the generation of power upon a scale unknown to non-urbanised communities’ (Giddens, 1995, 6). This is particularly true for pre-industrial modes of production in which the agrarian economy was the basis of wealth accumulation, and the defining relations of production were those between the city and the countryside. The ruling class in such societies may well have lived their lives on their country estates, exercising individual control over their rural workforce, but they had to assemble in towns and cities in order to maintain their collective authority over the urban masses by a mixture of coercion and consent. Hegemonic building has therefore always been predominantly an urban phenomenon, and increasingly so as urban society has become the global norm. The concentration of ruling class power in towns and cities has meant that urban societies have evolved their own distinctive cultures, ideologies and myths (Lefebvre, 2003). Towns and cities are where commercial wealth is accumulated, religion celebrated, government exercised and laws enforced. They are the stage on which the spectacles of power are performed, the forum in which new philosophies are tested, and the battleground on which class conflicts are fought. The dominant ideology of urban societies embraces such seemingly disparate ideas as the efficacy of markets, the redemptive power of religion, the majesty of government, the rule of law and the benefits of citizenship. The totality of such ideas reflects the complexity of urban society and provides the essential foundation for the exercise of hegemonic power within it.

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Drawing upon contemporary urban theory, we can conceptualise the city as a space in which the social relations of production are articulated, and the ruling class accumulates wealth and exercises power. Urban development can then be conceptualised as a social production process, the production of space (Lefebvre, 1991; Gottdiener, 1994). An important component of this production process is hegemonic building. Each mode of production creates its own distinctive spatial order, its own ensemble of buildings designed to accommodate ruling class power in its multiplicity of forms. Thus, for example, industrial towns contained buildings which embodied power that was economic (factory), ideological (church), political (town hall) and military (barracks). Individually, each building type is imbued with a distinct hegemonic purpose, while collectively they create an urban landscape of power in which use value, exchange value and symbolic value commingle. If individual buildings can be conceptualised as symbolic as well as physical structures, so can the cities which contain them. ‘The city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language’ (Barthes, 1997, 168). The language of the city is expressed through the assemblage of its buildings, their spatial arrangement and the functional and symbolic relationships between them. The urban landscape of power is a collective discourse that amalgamates the symbolic statements of its constituent hegemonic buildings. Hegemonic buildings comprise only a small fraction of the total building stock in each era of a city’s history. However, their impact is intensified when they are clustered in a ceremonial central place comprised of impressive religious, governmental and commercial buildings. Furthermore, they exert a disproportionate influence on the processes of urbanisation, acting as catalysts for much more extensive swathes of building investment. Many medieval towns grew up in the shadow of a Norman castle or Gothic cathedral; many industrial towns were established to provide labour and services for a great mill or factory. As a town develops and grows, it is the hegemonic buildings of previous eras that are most likely to be preserved as monuments to the past, their fabric restored and remodelled even as their functions change. Buildings are the most durable of human artefacts, and monumental buildings are the most durable of buildings. The history of a building can be written in terms of the transformations in both form and function that it has undergone over the longue durée (Camerlenghi, 2011). A castle or cathedral may still dominate the urban skyline, even if their primary

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function is no longer as places of defence or worship but rather to act as tourist attractions. Similarly, many obsolete mills and factories still survive as reminders of former industrial might, even though most by now have been converted into offices or apartments. Cities are not only crucibles of power, they are also engines of innovation and growth (Bairoch, 1988). One way of analysing the formation of an urban landscape is through the interaction between processes of innovation and accumulation. Urban innovation operates on the activities undertaken within the town, altering and supplementing the functions performed by its buildings. Urban accumulation operates on the fabric of the town, modifying and developing the form of its buildings in response to the changing needs of their occupying activities. Thus, for example, the Industrial Revolution transformed the manner in which manufacturing and transport functions were conducted within the urban economy. The result was a massive wave of investment in mills and factories to house the new manufacturing processes, and in railways to transport raw materials and finished products in and out of the new industrial towns. At this point, it is important to recognise that the processes of urban innovation and accumulation are not deterministic. Rather they are subject to historical influences which are social and cultural as well as scientific and economic, and they involve human inspiration and creativity as well as physical and financial investment (Mokyr, 1990). In particular, we must avoid the pitfalls of a crude technological determinism which in essence assumes that ‘technology drives history’. Instead, it is more fruitful to characterise technology as a mediating factor within a historical process of urbanisation which links the economic, social, political and cultural spheres of human activity (Smith & Marx, 1994). Today’s urban landscape is the product of historical processes of innovation and accumulation that have operated over a long period of time. The appearance of its buildings expresses the changing aesthetic norms of society, their materials and mode of construction reflect different stages of technological development, and their disposition indicates the spatial pattern of urban growth. At the same time, the urban landscape can be interpreted as a manifestation of the changing functions performed within the town by its stock of buildings. The physical form of the town is a record of its past history and its present functions. London today presents just such an urban landscape, the product of a building history spanning two millennia. Embedded within it are the hegemonic buildings that have survived from each of the city’s previous

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incarnations. In its latest incarnation, the metropolis is becoming a city of towers (Gassner, 2020), with the pursuit of verticality now gripping the residential sector as strongly as the office sector. After the rise and fall of social housing towers during the last century, the elite are now taking over the ‘luxified’ urban skies (Graham, 2016, 174–219). The recent surge in the development of residential towers in London illustrates the manner in which urban innovation and accumulation interact to create a self-reinforcing dynamic of urban growth. As the financialisation of the global economy proceeds, and income inequalities widen, so the number of the city’s wealthy residents is multiplying, creating a burgeoning demand for luxury apartments of ever more lavish specification. At the same time, the innovations in building technology pioneered in the office sector are being transferred to the residential sector. Towers are rising, land prices inflating and plot ratios increasing. In response, the circulation of building capital is accelerating, fuelling the accumulation of the development funds necessary to build the towers. Beyond their functions as means of consumption and stores of wealth, luxury apartment towers have a hegemonic purpose. They advertise the wealth and power of the global funds that own them and the international super-rich who occasionally occupy them. They are the ultimate symbols of both conspicuous consumption and conspicuous investment. Such processes of urban innovation and accumulation do not proceed smoothly through time but rather follow their own distinctive cyclical rhythms (Barras, 2009). Periodic technological revolutions lead to surges in innovation, each spawning new urban activities and rendering old-­ established activities redundant. The resultant transformation of occupier requirements accelerates the obsolescence of existing buildings while generating demands for wholly new types of buildings. Successive long waves of development generate distinctive vintages of buildings distinguished by the technologies, tastes and functional demands that shaped them (Mandel, 1995). Prominent within each new vintage are the hegemonic buildings which signify where power and authority currently reside. Hegemonic building follows its own historical rhythm, driven by the dynamic of punctuated hegemony. The evolution of successive modes of production determines how the dominant class in each epoch accumulates its wealth and invests that wealth in monumental buildings. The conjunction of circumstances most favourable to hegemonic building arises in periods of consolidation when the prevailing mode of production is operating most effectively, the surplus product is most plentiful and the

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dominant class rules supreme. Under these conditions, accumulated wealth is abundant, the hegemonic imperative is strong, structural innovations are eagerly embraced, the authority of the ruling class is unchallenged, yet there is fierce competition between its individual members. Then investment in monumental buildings tends to reach a climax, producing a unique vintage of built forms which thereafter act as symbols of their golden age. With each long wave of development, a Schumpeterian gale of creative destruction is unleashed, demolishing the old urban landscape to make way for the new. And as one generation of hegemonic buildings is succeeded by another, so the old landscape of power is supplanted by the new. The history of any long-established city such as London can be written as a sequence of such landscapes, with successive vintages of buildings laid one upon another, each partly obliterating its predecessors (Waller, 2000). In so doing, we are describing the city as a palimpsest (Lucas, 2005, 37–43). The concept can apply both to the changing material form of the built environment and to its altered symbolic existence. The city evolves as one landscape of power morphs into the next, through the changing functional requirements and hegemonic imperatives of its monumental buildings. The rhythm of history is written into the physical fabric of the city, and as time goes by the visible traces of its past become concentrated in its surviving corpus of hegemonic buildings.

1.9  From Provincial Capital to Global City There is a distinguished tradition in urban studies, initiated by Max Weber at the beginning of the last century, which views cities as products of their history (Weber, 1958). This approach has encouraged urban historians to employ typologies of cities that relate their stage of development to the prevailing mode of production. They talk of the ancient city, the classical city, the medieval city, the mercantile city, the industrial city and the global city (Mumford, 1966; Girouard, 1985; Bairoch, 1988; Hohenberg & Hollen Lees, 1995; Hall, 1998). Each individual city follows a unique development trajectory that is driven in part by the systemic forces of urbanisation, such as population growth, expansion of trade and industrialisation, and in part by events unique to that city, such as a governmental edict or a popular revolt. Each era in that city’s history is shaped by the cumulative legacy of past systemic forces and unique events. This means that its development trajectory is

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self-reinforcing and increasingly difficult to reverse. Using an economic concept now being applied across the social sciences, each city’s history is ‘path dependent’; in other words, a process of positive feedback ensures that its past inevitably shapes its future (Arthur, 1994; Garud & Karnøe, 2012). Consequently, as we proceed to unfold the story of Monumental London, we must refer both backwards and forwards along the city’s unique development trajectory, in order to reveal how past, present and future are intertwined. What is unique about the development trajectory of London is not just the city’s exceptional rate of growth, but also the enormous concentrations of wealth and power that have accumulated within it. This trajectory has created a classic metropolis of the type first recognised by the sociologist Georg Simmel at the start of the last century. The metropolis of London is the seat of the nation’s economy, and its extreme size and wealth set it apart from all other cities in Britain, and almost all others in Europe. The separateness of London is reflected in its cosmopolitan character; the zone of influence defined by its economic and cultural connections is global, not local. Looking outward rather than inward, London has always been global city, semi-detached from the rest of the country. Furthermore, the speed, complexity and intensity of metropolitan life also set its citizens apart, causing them to exist in a state of heightened awareness and calculating impersonality (Simmel, 1997, 174–185). For Simmel, the metropolis plays a unique role in the formation of national identity: ‘throughout the whole course of English history, London has never acted as England’s heart, but often as England’s intellect and always as her moneybag!’ The building of the city spans two millennia, starting with the Roman invasion of AD 43. It was the Romans who launched London on its unique trajectory, establishing it first as the commercial hub of the new colony and then as the provincial capital. This combination of commercial wealth and state power propelled the city to become one of the largest in the European part of the Empire. Ever since its foundation, London has retained this dual function as capital city and commercial entrepôt. Despite being largely abandoned for four hundred years after the Roman withdrawal, the city soon regained its special status in the early medieval period and continued to reinforce it thereafter. The apogee of London’s existence as a city of wealth and power was reached during the Victorian era when it became the largest city in the world, the commercial centre of the world’s most advanced industrial economy, and the political

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centre of a global empire. Despite more than a century of relative economic and political decline from this exalted status, London still functions as a world city, its wealth and power more and more concentrated in its role as one of the three main nodes in the global financial economy. To follow the trajectory of hegemonic building in the city through two millennia, the systemic forces of most direct interest to us in each era are the formation of a dominant ideology by the ruling class, the application of that ideology in the exercise of hegemonic power, and the expression of that power through monumental building. It is also important to identify the unique events that have helped to shape London’s building history. Thus, for example, the decision by Edward the Confessor to establish a royal palace at Westminster in the eleventh century has meant that the subsequent development of the city has incorporated two distinct landscapes of power: one based on trade and finance in the City, the other based on government in Westminster (Photographs 1.1 and 1.2). London has been a city of monuments through every era of its existence, perhaps more so than any other global city. Its landscape of power

Photograph 1.1  Landscape of power: City of London 2019 (Source: Joas Souza/Alamy Stock Photo)

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Photograph 1.2  Landscape of power: City of Westminster 2013 (Source: Songquan Deng/Alamy Stock Photo)

is a palimpsest built up from successive generations of hegemonic buildings, and dominated by the most iconic and monumental amongst them. The development trajectory of Monumental London exhibits a clear cyclical rhythm, deriving from the dynamic of punctuated hegemony. We have argued that during each era of consolidation, there arises a combination of circumstances most favourable to unleashing a golden age of hegemonic building. The following chapters develop a history of hegemonic building in London through a sequence of such golden ages that mark its progression from provincial capital within the Roman Empire to its current incarnation as a global city within the international financial economy. We start with the lost landscape of Roman London, which was formed of temples, baths, patrician houses, amphitheatre and fort, and was dominated by its great forum and basilica. After reoccupation, the medieval city presented an utterly different appearance, of churches and fortified palaces, dominated by the Tower, Old St Paul’s and the Guildhall to the east, and Westminster Abbey and Palace to the west. The Tudor city added to this ensemble royal palaces, magnate mansions and commercial exchanges,

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with Whitehall Palace the locus of absolutist power in the west and the Royal Exchange the locus of commercial power in the east. The post-­ revolutionary Georgian city added further temples of commerce to the east, most notably the Bank of England and Mansion House, together with aristocratic squares of elegant housing to the west. The Victorian city introduced factories, docks and railway termini as engines of industrialisation, museums and universities as beacons of culture, grand Whitehall offices as the home of imperial government, and a rebuilt Palace of Westminster as the seat of state power. And finally, the modern city has paid homage to collectivism with its great post-war housing schemes, while the postmodern city has celebrated globalisation and financialisation with its rising forest of office and residential towers. Each of these waves of hegemonic building has been unleashed by a new ruling class, controlling the accumulation of wealth in a transformed mode of production. Each era of consolidation will be analysed in terms of the political economy of the city, focusing on its prevailing mode of production, dominant social class, distribution of wealth and structure of civil and state power. Thus, the Roman consolidation was marked by civic building funded from the wealth of the colonial economy. The Norman and Plantagenet consolidation was marked by castle and church building funded from the expropriated wealth of the subject Saxons and the profits of feudal farming. The Tudor consolidation was marked by palace and mansion building funded from the dissolution of the monasteries and the profits of mercantilist trade. The Georgian consolidation was marked by residential and commercial building funded from the profits of agrarian and commercial capitalism. The Victorian consolidation was marked by industrial and civic building funded from the profits of industrial capitalism and imperial expansion. The current neoliberal consolidation is marked by office and apartment building funded from the profits of global financial capitalism. The physical record of London’s hegemonic buildings inevitably becomes more fragmented as we travel back through the layers of history. But, as was discovered beneath Gracechurch Street, in the heart of the City, the evidence for each stage of the city’s former existence is still there to be found. Furthermore, contemporary documents and literary works provide invaluable written evidence as to what the city looked and felt like to live and work in at each stage of its development. From these various sources, we can construct a cultural profile of the buildings that defined the landscape of Monumental London in each of its golden ages. More

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than that, the evidence can tell us about the hegemonic purpose of those buildings, which in turn allows us to construct a narrative about the economic and social conditions that produced them. Peter Ackroyd, the city’s most imaginative contemporary chronicler, has remarked upon the ‘historical density’ of London (Ackroyd, 2000, 778). The ancient city and the modern city exist side by side, and the relics of the past now form part of the present. As we peel back the layers of history, the city’s monumental buildings, ancient and modern, past and present, reveal to us how power and wealth have been deployed to create the most richly diverse, the most historically dense city in Europe, if not the world.

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CHAPTER 2

Roman Colony

2.1   First Incarnation Short-lived indeed was London’s first incarnation. Less than twenty years after the Roman invaders established their new settlement of Londinium, it was razed to the ground and its inhabitants slaughtered by a British resistance force led by Boudica, queen of the Iceni. In the archaeological record, a thick layer of blackened deposits offers an evocative memorial to the burnt-out town (Wallace, 2014, 22–6). It can be argued that the very existence of the Roman town was a quirk of history, a unique event of the highest magnitude. After his unlikely rise to power, the Emperor Claudius sought to cast off his reputation as the buffoon of the Julio-Claudian dynasty that had ruled Rome since the fall of the Republic. There was no better way of doing this than through the glory of conquest, and there was no more heroic target than the mythic isles of Britannia which had been invaded by his illustrious predecessor Julius Caesar over a century before (Stewart, 1995). Though Caesar’s invasion in 55–54 BC had not led to permanent Roman settlement, it had drawn two of the main tribal kingdoms of Britain into a client relationship with Rome, providing the springboard for permanent annexation (Creighton, 2006, 19–34).

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The official view in Rome was that the costs of annexing the territory probably outweighed the economic benefits already derived from trade (Mattingly, 2006, 491). However, it was the political benefits that were uppermost in Claudius’s mind (Millett, 1990, 40–42). The formidable invasion force dispatched in AD 43 won a series of victories as they advanced upon the British capital at Colchester (Camulodunum). So keen was Claudius to share in the military triumph that he travelled to Britain with a detachment of elephants in order to lead his army in the final stage of the campaign (Salway, 1981, 65–92). To gain the consent of the conquered British population, the Romans adopted the tried and tested strategies which had succeeded during previous phases of their imperial expansion. The new province was made subject to Roman law, a governor was appointed to head the imperial administration, further client kingdoms were recognised, their kings were financially rewarded for their loyalty, native aristocrats were co-opted into local administrations and received substantial loans to facilitate their consumption of luxury Roman goods. Despite these measures, insurgencies erupted periodically, requiring the maintenance of an expensive standing army. Claudius’s successor, his adopted son Nero, was reportedly inclined towards abandoning the troublesome province but was persuaded that such a course of action would be too damaging to the prestige of the ruling dynasty (Salway, 1981, 100–13). Most of the towns founded during the first phase of the Roman occupation were either positioned on the sites of native British settlements or developed from military bases built after the invasion. While there is no evidence of a previous British settlement on the site of London, it remains a matter of controversy as to whether it housed a fort built to accommodate the Claudian invasion force (Perring, 2022, 49–62). Whatever its origins, the subsequent development of London was predicated on its strategic location, at the lowest practicable crossing point of the Thames and as a natural hub of communication networks on both land and water (Perring, 1991, 4). These locational advantages encouraged the growth of the settlement as a port and commercial centre involved in trading, storing and manufacturing a wide range of domestic and imported goods (Creighton, 2006, 93–95). By AD 60, London was already the most extensive and highly populated urban centre in Britain, with a population approaching 10,000 (Hingley, 2018, 25–35). The Roman historian Tacitus describes it as ‘an

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important centre for businessmen and merchandise’ (Tacitus, 1989, 329). That description is applicable to the city in any subsequent stage of its development, up to the present day. London’s early growth as an entrepôt for the whole province was facilitated by its liminal riverside location away from established tribal centres, close to the junction of four tribal territories (Brigham et al., 1992, 127). The business community was probably established by Roman citizens from elsewhere in the Empire, who were seeking to exploit the trading and money-lending opportunities presented by the new province (Wallace, 2014, 18–20). Their presence in the mid-first century town is attested by a variety of luxury goods imported from Italy, Greece, Spain, Gaul and even Syria (Marsden, 1980, 25). From the outset, London enjoyed a cosmopolitan existence as a global city semi-detached from the rest of the country, an identity that it has cherished ever since. The physical development of the first town reflected its commercial function and may well have been funded and organised by its trading community, perhaps in collaboration with the army (Perring, 2022, 72–86). The town stretched across two low hills on the north bank of the Thames, separated by the Walbrook River: Cornhill to the east and Ludgate Hill to the west. To the south was the suburb of Southwark. As well as a possible first timber bridge across the Thames, there were timber wharves for handling goods, two intersecting main roads oriented north-south and east-­ west, and a central grid of secondary roads. The first baths and temples appeared, while an early civic centre was created on the high ground at Cornhill, close to the junction of the two main roads (Marsden, 1987, 19–21). This gravelled ‘proto-forum’ probably acted both as a marketplace and as an administrative centre. Most of the early buildings were modest structures of earth and timber, though remains of a few larger buildings have been found, one or two of masonry construction (Wallace, 2014, 88–93). It was this thriving but utilitarian settlement that was destroyed in the Boudican revolt of AD 60/61, the most widespread and ferocious of the uprisings against Roman rule. According to Tacitus, several factors contributed to the revolt (Tacitus, 1989, 328–331). On the death of Prasutagus, client king of the Iceni, his will made the emperor co-heir with his two daughters. However, the Roman administration decided to annex the whole Norfolk-based

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kingdom and incorporate it into the wider province. Local officials began plundering the territory, evicting and enslaving aristocratic families and looting the royal household. The king’s widow Boudica was believed to have been flogged and her daughters raped. These outrages against the Iceni were compounded by abuses of their allies, the Trinovantes, conducted by legionary veterans settled in the conquered native capital of Colchester (Mattingly, 2006, 106–113). More generally, great resentment had been stoked by wealthy Romans suddenly calling in loans they had made to the British aristocracy in the aftermath of the invasion. One such was the philosopher and dramatist Seneca, tutor to Emperor Nero, who, according to the Roman historian Cassius Dio, called in 40 million sestertii of loans ‘all at once and in a heavy-handed manner’ (Mattingly, 2006, 293). The explosion of British anger was terrible, as was the subsequent Roman retribution. The undefended towns of Colchester, St Albans (Verulamium) and London were all sacked, and their populations massacred. The rebel force was then confronted by a Roman army, which in turn overwhelmed and annihilated them. Tacitus claims that some 70,000 inhabitants were killed by the British force, while some 80,000 of the rebels were subsequently killed by the Roman army. The numbers may seem implausibly high, but the savagery of events seems incontestable. During the sack of Colchester, the Britons stormed the first truly hegemonic building that the Romans had erected in their new province. It was a classic example of the architecture of domination—an enormous stone temple, raised high on a podium, dedicated to the Emperor Claudius (Wacher, 1995, 116–119). Tacitus remarks that this hubristic symbol of conquest ‘was a blatant stronghold of alien rule, and its observances were a pretext to make the natives appointed as its priests drain the whole country dry’ (Tacitus, 1989, 328). The temple was an early demonstration to the conquered people of how Roman hegemony was going to work: they were to be employed in organising and executing their own colonial exploitation. The carnage caused by the Boudican revolt sent a severe shock through the economy and society of early Roman Britain. Towns were destroyed, agriculture and trade disrupted, and the security of the population undermined. It took more than twenty years to complete the pacification of the whole territory. Meanwhile, the Romans had learnt their lesson; consent, not coercion, was to be the guiding principle of their future rule. A vital task was to win back the allegiance of the alienated native aristocracy; they had to be reminded of the benefits of prosperity and security that flowed

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from accepting Roman hegemony (Salway, 1981, 124–7). To understand how that hegemony was restored in Britain, we must start by identifying the dominant ideology that underlay its exercise across the Empire.

2.2  Ideology of Honour Stripped of its political and cultural trappings, the Roman Empire was a ruthless militaristic despotism. Economically, it was dependent upon slave labour, a defining characteristic of the ancient mode of production (Scheidel, 2012). The main instrument of domination was the army. Substantial garrisons were based at strategic locations to maintain civil order through the permanent threat and occasional exercise of overwhelming force. Fear of retribution by the army was a potent instrument of social control (Mattingly, 2011, 22–26). However, there was more to the exercise of Roman power than coercion. As summarised by the poet Virgil, the philosophy of imperial rule was ‘to pardon the defeated and war down the proud’ (Virgil, 2003, 138). This helps to explain the widespread acceptance of Roman hegemony amongst the peoples of the conquered provinces. The dominant ideology that underpinned imperial hegemony laid great stress on the unifying power of the Empire, in particular the provinces’ shared history with Rome, their common system of law and government, and above all the omnipotent rule of the emperor (Ando, 2000, 23–48). The imperial cult elevated him to the status of a demigod on earth, worshipped in temples dedicated to his name, such as the Temple of Claudius at Colchester (Rüpke, 2018, 272–289). He was accredited with superhuman powers that demanded total obedience to his ‘charismatic rule’ (Weber, 2019, 374–389). Through the principle of dynastic succession, Rome succeeded in legitimising and routinising charismatic rule as power passed from one emperor to the next. Hereditary rule by the emperor built upon the institutions of hereditary aristocracy which had developed during the Republic, when an oligarchy of patrician families had ruled through the Senate. Republican rule was based upon the ideal of libertas, which signified the freedoms enjoyed by the civitas, the body of Roman citizens, that were guaranteed under civil law (Wirszubski, 1950, 1–5). In reality, it meant the freedom of the aristocratic elite to govern and the freedom of the citizenry to pass laws and elect magistrates as recommended by their senatorial superiors.

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In the view of Cicero, the voice of the Late Republic, Rome benefitted from being an aristocratic republic that was hostile to absolutism and democracy alike: ‘the aristocrats have taken over the middle ground between the inadequate autocrat and the reckless mob’ (Cicero, 1998, 24). The political power of the aristocracy rested upon their great wealth, deriving from their ownership of vast landed estates. The wealthiest owned estates right across the Empire; one middle-ranking family of the senatorial class at the end of the fourth century owned estates in Italy, Sicily, North Africa, Spain and Britain (Finley, 1992, 101–102). Under the Empire, the senatorial order lost its political authority but retained its wealth and social status. It thereby remained the ruling class and continued to operate the machinery of state. Furthermore, it extended the benefits and privileges of aristocratic status to provincial elites as a means of gaining their consent to imperial rule. The capacity of the senatorial class for the ‘cultural and ideological assimilation of newcomers to its ranks’ was remarkable (Anderson, 1996, 73). By integrating provincial elites into its ruling class, Rome could claim to rule the whole world, its all-embracing hegemony symbolised by the image of the globe. It was the world’s first ‘global empire’ (Pitts & Versluys, 2015). The hegemonic authority of the provincial elites was bolstered by acceptance of Roman imperium, however reluctant, amongst broader swathes of society. Three particular influences were at play in a process of social change that has traditionally been termed Romanisation (Millett, 1990; MacMullen, 2000). First, the advantages of stable government under the rule of law were recognised, however harshly it was applied. Second, the comforts of a more advanced material culture were enjoyed as mass consumption spread down the social hierarchy. Third, the imperial government devoted enormous resources to communicating its dominant ideology to all of its subjects (Ando, 2000, 6). Roman cultural hegemony ‘created the context for the development of a degree of cultural and political unity, symbolized in law, literature, politics, architecture and city planning’ (Hingley, 2005, 46). Imperial culture helped to legitimise Roman rule. Traditional models of Romanisation have stressed the inclusive nature of Roman identity, with citizenship a defining expression of that Romanitas. Ruling elites throughout the Empire were united in their use of the Latin language, pursuit of a classical education and absorption of classical culture. Shared forms of political organisation and religious practice also had a unifying influence.

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However, Roman imperialism was a more complex and heterogeneous phenomenon than these top-down models have often allowed (Mattingly, 2011, 38–41). There was great variation in the economic base of different provinces, power was distributed and exercised across the territories in a variety of ways, and its subject peoples adopted multiple identities that spanned the spectrum from the imperial through the provincial to the local (Revell, 2009, 150–154). It is more helpful to think of Romanisation as a dialectical process in which Roman culture interacted with native cultures to produce unique and differing local syntheses (Millett, 1990, 1–2). It has been persuasively argued that Rome engineered the consent of provincial elites by means of an aristocratic ‘ideology of honour’ shared by rulers and ruled alike. ‘The abiding psychological strength of honour derives at least in part from the universal human desire for the esteem of those around one’ (Lendon, 2001, 33). The ideology of honour can thus be identified as another cultural universal, one that can be traced back at least as far as the world of Homer. Having evolved in Ancient Greek society, it was adopted by Rome when it became the dominant power in the classical world. It supported a system of imperial rule that worked consistently for over four centuries, from the founding of the Empire in 27 BC to the barbarian sack of Rome in 410 AD. In essence, Roman aristocrats conceived of their status in terms of dignitas, the public esteem or honour bestowed upon them according to their social status and personal reputation (Wirszubski, 1950, 33–40). Power and influence accrued to those who had honour. The qualities perceived as honourable for an individual man included high birth, landed wealth, superior legal status, a famous home town, a great house and a grand retinue of clients and slaves. Thus the aristocratic or patrician class was not defined by its wealth alone; it was distinguished more precisely by the honour code. Aristocrats were a subset of the rich, members of a self-­ selecting club founded upon shared values and behaviour. To be an aristocrat, it was necessary to be respected by other aristocrats (Lendon, 2001, 30–73). Individual aristocrats competed for honour through their achievements in the different spheres of public life. Since state and civil society were closely intertwined in the Roman world, the power of the aristocratic elite combined the coercive and the consensual; it derived both from their official position within political society and their wealth and status within civil society (Mann, 2012, 267–272). A distinguished military career, cultural

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distinction, high government or ecclesiastical office—all conferred honour. In such a militaristic society as Rome, military success was the most prized path to glory (Harris, 1979, 10–41). Literary accomplishment, in the fields of rhetoric, poetry or philosophy, brought a different form of prestige. Religious office provided great opportunities for personal promotion (Rüpke, 2018, 156). Emperors and provincial governors exploited aristocratic rivalries through patronage, granting honours to gain the consent of local magnates. At the apex of the honours system was the emperor himself. He dispensed honours to the leading aristocrats, who rewarded him with gratitude deference and support. They in turn dispensed honours to their clients. By this means, the patronage system multiplied into a hierarchical network of reciprocal favours between elite individuals right across the Empire. Though their wealth was derived principally from the countryside, Roman aristocrats preferred to live their lives in cities (Erdkamp, 2012, 257). Their identity was bound up with the identity of the cities in which they lived. Roman culture reproduced itself principally in the urban realm, and so a city was more than just a physical reality, it had a metaphysical existence as the distillation of Roman civilisation, the embodiment of the virtues of humanitas. As Marx observed, ‘Ancient classical history is the history of cities, but cities based on landownership and agriculture’ (Marx, 1965, 77). The ideology of urbanism was thus an essential component of the ideology of imperial hegemony (Revell, 2009, 40–57). The ideal way of life was the urban way of life, and this is what separated the civilised Roman from the barbarian native (Tacitus, 2009, 42). Even in the countryside, the villas of the great landowners combined the utility of a productive estate with the elegance of elite urban culture; the villa rustica and the villa urbana were commingled (Purcell, 1995). Roman cities produced Roman citizens. Consequently, the founding of towns and cities was crucial to the imperial strategy for assimilating conquered territories. In provinces such as Britain, with no prior tradition of urban life, tribal territories were converted into civitates or city states, organised around an administrative capital and governed by the native aristocracy (Millett, 1990, 65–69). Imperial power was devolved as far as possible to the city level, so that the day-to-day business of government became the responsibility of city

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councils and the local elites who ran them. These local elites played a particularly important role in collecting the taxes, which funded the whole imperial enterprise, enabling it to reproduce itself through the extraction of an economic surplus from its subject territories. In the early Empire, only native people who held civic office could be elevated to citizen status (Laurence et al., 2011, 4–6). Slowly but steadily, this produced local oligarchies invested in the running and development of their cities, interacting with representatives of the Roman state as legal if not social equals. However, citizenship became far more widely available in the third century, after the Emperor Caracalla issued an edict in 212 declaring nearly all free inhabitants of the Empire to be Roman citizens (Hekster, 2008, 45–55). It is likely that in a province such as Britain the effect of the edict would have been to enhance the status of its towns and cities by spreading the process of Romanisation down the social hierarchy (Frere, 1987, 305). The ideology of honour applied to cities as well as individuals. The competition for prestige and status that was conducted between individual members of the elite was also conducted between the cities of which they were loyal citizens. Cities acted as nodes in the patronage network, seeking imperial favour or financial support by vying for permission to build a temple to the emperor, erect his statue or hold games in his honour (Zanker, 1988, 302–323). Cities were perceived as honourable according to qualities that paralleled those of honourable men (Lendon, 2001, 73–89). These included great age, a famous history, revered founders, good location, impressive size, exceptional wealth, a beautiful aspect, fine public buildings, and notable festivals and games. The honour of cities and men were commensurable because cities were anthropomorphised. They were imbued with human qualities, allowing relations of reciprocity to be created between men and cities. Cities should act well; they had a moral character just like men. The collective behaviour of its citizens could bring honour to a city, as could the accomplishments of illustrious individuals. The more prestigious the city, the greater was the honour of being remembered there by a statue, an inscription or a public funeral. Conversely, the praise or gift from a great man boosted the honour of a city. An important manifestation of the ideology of civic honour was munera, the provision by wealthy citizens of amenities and entertainments for the benefit of the common people in their city. By voluntarily funding

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these services to the community, the benefactors sought to burnish their reputation. In particular, since fine buildings brought honour to a city, the competitive instincts of the urban elite were channelled into the construction of public buildings such as temples and baths. It was through the scale and quality of the hegemonic buildings they sponsored that the leading citizens of a city would seek to outshine their rivals (Laurence et al., 2011, 122–123). This process of competitive emulation created a dynamic in which successive generations of monumental buildings became ever more striking in size and sumptuous in finish. Hubristic competition between aristocrats to fund the finest buildings or stage the most spectacular games could become ruinously expensive. The problem became so acute that sumptuary laws were introduced in an attempt to prevent the aristocracy from bankrupting itself, but they were largely ignored (Parkins, 1997, 90–91). One consequence of the competition within provincial oligarchies was that the costs of developing and running a city were only met in part by taxation and other municipal revenues. A portion was met by the munificence of wealthy individuals (Duncan-Jones, 1990, 174–184). Dedicating a temple was a particularly honourable way of expressing personal and civic status. ‘Any individual with the necessary wherewithal saw to it that buildings dedicated to the gods would stand as witnesses in stone to his own importance’ (Rüpke, 2018, 130). Roman fascination with the Greek world, and the Homeric legends in particular, meant that the ideology of civic honour was easily transmuted into a foundation myth involving gods and heroes. Such a myth located the origins of Rome in the fall of Troy (Erskine, 2001). The Trojan prince Aeneas, son of the goddess Venus, escaped the burning city, wandered the Mediterranean for many years and finally settled in the hills of Latium with his band of followers. Here he founded a family line that descended to the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, who were fathered by the god Mars, and through them to the imperial line established by Julius Caesar and embodied in the first emperor, Augustus. ‘Those who promoted such narratives about the founders of the city…were at the same time composing a self-portrait of that city’ (Rüpke, 2018, 167). History and legend, ideology and myth were different versions of the same story in the ancient world (Hawes, 2014).

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Rome’s foundation myth was retailed in Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid, one of the most celebrated works in the whole of Latin literature. This body of literature constitutes what has been called a ‘discourse of dominance’, created by Roman aristocrats to promote the virtues of honourable behaviour and interpret the lessons of history from a patrician viewpoint. ‘Those with access to power shaped the literary tradition about their world’ (Potter, 1999, 152–153). So effective was this promotion of the patrician world view that it sustained different versions of aristocratic hegemony long after the Roman Empire had collapsed, surviving right up to the nineteenth century. The classical discourse of dominance has been recycled several times to legitimise the ‘civilising’ impact of European imperial expansion and colonial conquest (Habinek, 1998, 164–169).

2.3  Edge of Empire London was a city on the edge of the Roman Empire. Yet it grew to be one of the largest provincial cities in Europe, measured in terms of the land area within its walls (Wilkes, 1996, 27). To understand what elevated it to such a position, we must not only recognise the importance of cities to Roman identity and ideology but also appreciate the role they played in the imperial economy. A global empire such as that of Rome requires a global economy to sustain it. Globalisation has been viewed primarily as a modern capitalist phenomenon, drawing upon a conceptual model of an interdependent world economy in which a wealthy core exploits a dependent periphery for its resources (Wallerstein, 1979). However, the idea of a core-periphery world system can also be applied to ancient imperial economies such as that of Rome (Frank & Gills, 1993). In so doing it is important to recognise a crucial difference between pre-capitalist and capitalist empires. In the former, economic power was subordinate to political power, whereas in the latter the reverse is true. The expansion of the Roman Empire was driven principally by the political and military interests of the aristocratic class, acting as agents of the state. The generals who captured new provinces and the governors who administered them were drawn from the ranks of the senatorial aristocrats who occupied the high offices of state. The ideology of honour motivated the ruling elite to compete for fame through military glory, as we have seen with the Claudian invasion of Britain. However, economic

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gain was an expected, not incidental, corollary of conquest. Those who controlled the state could gather the fruits of empire for their own enrichment as well as glorification. The economic incentive for conquest was the opportunity to seize land, slaves and booty through predation, rather than to open up new territories for trade (Harris, 1979, 74–93). Imperial expansion had two interrelated consequences for the private economy. The first was a widening gap between rich and poor, as the aristocracy further enriched themselves through conquest and plunder. To reinforce their status, they invested much of their new wealth in the extension of their landed estates. The second consequence was a substantial growth in slavery, as captured slaves augmented the supply, while the growth of vast aristocratic estates boosted demand (Harper, 2011, 9). Slave labour proved more efficient at working these plantations than peasant labour because it could be exploited more intensively throughout the year. The displaced peasantry was forced to enter the army, migrate to the cities or settle in the newly conquered provinces (Hopkins, 1978, 102–115). Estimates of the number of slaves in Italy by the end of the first century BC range from one million (Scheidel, 2012, 92) to two million (Hopkins, 1978, 101). On the higher estimate, they would have accounted for as much as one-third of the total population, a proportion comparable to that in other slave societies such as Athens in the fifth century BC and the southern states of America in the nineteenth century. Provinces such as Britain were not as totally dependent on slave labour as Italy. They were ‘slave-using societies’ rather than full ‘slave societies’. Nevertheless, slaves were a valuable export commodity, as well as labour source, and slave markets were an important component of the urban economy. There is documentary evidence of a slave market operating in Roman London (Mattingly, 2006, 294–295). Once conquered, there was the expectation that newly acquired provinces would be exploited by the Roman state for economic gain (Mattingly, 2011, 128–131). The Empire took on the character of what has been termed a tributary mode of production, with an agrarian economy at its heart (Bang, 2008). The land, natural resources and labour of its subject peoples were all mobilised to generate an economic surplus that could be extracted through tribute and taxation. As the Empire grew, a swelling stream of revenues flowed from the provinces back to Rome, funding its development as a resplendent metropolis. There is one crucial respect in which the Roman Empire deviated from the dominant core-dependent periphery model. The flow of provincial

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resources was not only directed towards the Italian core, but was also used to fund the armies that guarded the imperial frontiers (Woolf, 1990, 48). This required the state to redistribute taxation away from the inner ring of wealthy Mediterranean provinces, such as Spain and North Africa, to the outer ring of poorer frontier provinces such as Britain. It was these inter-­ regional flows of tribute and taxation that bound together the disparate parts of the imperial economy (Bang, 2008, 114). Britain was a typical example of a backward frontier province supported by the redistribution of imperial revenues. It was an overwhelmingly rural economy with a very strong military presence and a small but economically important urban community. Once peace was established, its population grew strongly to reach a peak in the first half of the fourth century that may have been as high as 3.7 million (Millett, 1990, 181–186). This would have been more than double the size of the population in eleventhcentury England, as estimated from the Domesday survey (Broadberry et  al., 2015, 20). Of this overall total, the army and its dependents are estimated to have accounted for around 125,000 people, another 240,000 were urban dwellers, and the remaining 90 per cent lived in rural communities. Supplying both the army and the towns would have made considerable demands upon this rural economy. There is a view that the inter-regional flows of taxation required to support a frontier province such as Britain acted as a stimulus to long-distance trade within the Empire (Hopkins, 1980). The extent to which the imperial economy was integrated by inter-regional trade flows is a matter of dispute. Slow and expensive transport was a major constraint. Nevertheless, there was undoubtedly some long-distance trade: slaves and raw materials were transported from the provinces to the core, whilst luxury goods flowed out from the core to meet the demands of provincial elites. London’s very existence depended on such trade flows. However, the evidence indicates that the majority of trade was confined to the regional level (Woolf, 1992). To the extent that the Empire did function as a market economy, it can perhaps best be described as a conglomeration of interdependent regional markets (Temin, 2001). Britain offered lucrative trading opportunities to Rome. The much-­ travelled Greek geographer Strabo, writing in the time of Augustus, remarks on the profitability of Rome’s trade with Britain even before the conquest (Braund, 1996, 81–84). He noted that British exports included grain, livestock, metals and slaves, while it imported luxury goods such as

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artefacts made of ivory, amber and glass. Other luxury imports to Britain included wine, olive oil and fine pottery (Frere, 1987, 281–282). Strabo was of the view that the costs of direct rule could exceed the return which Rome already enjoyed from the taxes and dues levied on its trade with Britain. We have seen that this evaluation did not stop Claudius from launching his invasion, because his motivation was primarily political rather than economic. Writing almost a century after the invasion, the historian Appian observed that Britain was ‘not very profitable’, implying that it was still not paying its way. The costs of maintaining a large army of occupation and a sizeable provincial administration almost certainly outweighed the income that could be derived from tribute, taxation and the state-controlled exploitation of mineral resources (Mattingly, 2006, 491–496). Taxation and trade require a monetised economy, operating through the circulation of a common coinage. Monetisation was a powerful unifying force, helping to tie the more primitive subsistence economies of the conquered provinces into the wider imperial economy. In newly conquered provinces such as Britain, monetisation was a strong catalyst for the growth of towns and cities. While an agricultural surplus could be extracted from native farmers within the rural economy, urban markets were required to realise the value of that surplus through monetary exchange (Pitts & Versluys, 2015, 9). It has been argued that the relationship between urban and rural economies within the Empire was to a considerable degree one of exploitation: the consumer city extracted its wealth from the producer countryside (Finley, 1992, 123–149). Agricultural production was certainly the bedrock of the Roman economy, and thanks to the employment of slave labour, it yielded a substantial surplus product. Landowners and the state were able to monetise this surplus through the imposition of rents and taxes on peasant farmers. Part of the financial surplus was recycled back to the countryside to pay for the food and raw materials consumed in the cities; part was spent in the cities by the aristocratic elite on the consumption of imported luxury goods and the provision of civic amenities such as public buildings. However, to describe the urban–rural relationship as parasitic underplays the surpluses that were generated within the urban economy itself, through manufacturing, construction and services (Erdkamp, 2012, 247–262). Wealth was produced as well as consumed within the Roman city. London, in particular, had a thriving productive economy based on trade and construction (Perring, 2022, 203–218).

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Craft production was an integral component of the urban economy of British towns and cities. There is evidence for the manufacture of a wide range of goods such as metalwork, woodwork, leatherwork, glasswork, pottery, textiles and clothing (Mattingly, 2006, 321). Urban development generated considerable economic activity through the multiplier effects of payments for labour and materials (Laurence  et  al., 2011, 290–291). Monumental building, in particular, created a sustained economic stimulus because it was a slow and expensive business. It would typically take several years to build a temple and decades to build a theatre or public baths. To provide a medium-sized town with a full ensemble of public buildings would have been a task stretching over a century or more (Duncan-Jones, 1990, 177–178). In fact, the rural and urban economies of the Roman Empire were closely intertwined, controlled in tandem by an aristocracy that enjoyed the dual roles of landowning elite in the countryside and political elite in the towns. They could derive rents and profits from their ownership of urban land and businesses as well as from their rural estates. They were able to organise the urban economy to suit their demands for conspicuous consumption and investment. They maintained tight control over the flows of taxation and trade, ensuring that there was little room for the emergence of an independent urban elite deriving its wealth exclusively from commerce and manufacture (Parkins, 1997). This dual strategy of urban power/rural wealth has been the foundation of aristocratic hegemony through the ages. The native British aristocracy were slow to assume these dual roles. With no previous experience of city life, they initially preferred to remain on their country estates and were only gradually persuaded to move into the new towns and cities (Frere, 1987, 231). This explains the policies promoted by Julius Agricola, governor of the province some two decades after the Boudican revolt. As recorded for posterity by his son-in-law, the historian Tacitus, Agricola exhorted the local elite to embrace the Roman way of life, to speak Latin and to gain a classical education. Most importantly, he urged them to build their towns and cities on the Roman model, complete with temples, public squares and fine houses. Tacitus is frank about the hegemonic purpose of these policies, commenting that among the local aristocracy ‘competition for honour worked as well as compulsion…And so they strayed into the enticements of vice—porticoes, baths, and sumptuous banquets. In their innocence they called this “civilization”, when in fact it was part of their enslavement’ (Tacitus, 2009, 15).

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Like all Roman provinces, Britain was provided with a clear hierarchy of towns related to the legal privileges enjoyed by their citizens (Mattingly, 2006, 260–269). Coloniae were chartered towns of Roman citizens with a constitution modelled on that of Rome itself. Many were founded for the settlement of discharged veterans. Three such towns were initially founded in Britain, at Colchester, Gloucester (Glevum) and Lincoln (Lindum). Municipia were also chartered towns in which civic officials had the right to acquire Roman citizenship. Like coloniae, they were obliged to adopt Roman law. St Albans is the only British town known to have acquired the status of a municipium. The third tier in the urban hierarchy was that of the civitates, the capitals of the tribal territories, which were governed by the native aristocracy according to local customary law. At least 16 British towns were accorded this status. Despite being by far the largest city in Britain, and one of the largest outside Italy, the legal status of London at different stages of its development remains uncertain. It may have started out as a conventus civium Romanorum, a commercial settlement of Roman citizens with no defined legal status (Wilkes, 1996). However, it seems that soon after the Boudican revolt the provincial administration was transferred to London from the tribal capital at Colchester. There is evidence that a growing number of government officials, including the governor and procurator (chief financial officer), were based in the city. London was adding an administrative function to its commercial function, reinforcing its position as the premier urban centre in the province. At some point in the second century, it was probably promoted to the rank of colonia in recognition of its premier status (Mattingly, 2006, 273–276). London’s unique status and location helps to explain why it grew to be such an important city, not only within Britain but within the north-­ western provinces of the Empire as a whole. It was not a tribal capital ruled by aristocrats concerned primarily with the affairs of their own territory; its ruling elite were probably drawn from landowners in the several surrounding civitates (Merrifield, 1983, 135). Rather, it was the main hub for long-­ distance trade (Perring, 2022, 195–198) and the administrative capital for the whole province, which meant that its identity was national and international, not local. Its future was, to a remarkable degree, already determined.

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2.4  The Archetypal City We have seen that provincial cities played a crucial role in the process of acculturation by which conquered peoples were persuaded into accepting Roman hegemony. Consequently, in the aftermath of the Boudican revolt, the ravaged towns and cities of Britain had to be rebuilt as showcases of the Roman way of life, in all its civic, commercial and cultural manifestations. This meant that they had to be conceived on a far more imposing and monumental scale than that of their predecessors, according to precepts of urban design which had evolved in Rome over the previous three centuries. Nowhere was the task more pressing than in London, the province’s premier urban centre. London was to become an archetypal Roman city, displaying a recognisable ensemble of hegemonic buildings. It is to developments in the mother city in the early second century BC that we can trace the emergence of characteristically Roman urban forms and architectural styles (Laurence et  al., 2011, 12–17). These developments were the product of contacts between Rome and the Greek world. Through their exposure to great Hellenistic cities such as Athens, Pergamon and Alexandria, the Roman elite were persuaded of the superiority of Greek architecture and the power of formal city planning, as manifested in a body of monumental buildings grouped around an open agora. However, the Romans did not just copy these Greek forms, they forged them into a unique urban culture of their own. At the start of the second century BC, the population of Republican Rome had already reached some 250,000, yet the city was severely lacking in urban amenities (Zanker, 1988, 18–25). To rectify the situation, the state initiated a major public works programme. The infrastructure of roads, sewers and harbour facilities was improved and expanded; large public buildings for administration and commerce were erected; greater attention was paid to architectural style and decor. By 170  BC, the city had been remade. At its centre was the Forum Romanum, a vast rectilinear space surrounded by temples, assembly halls and commercial premises, its skyline dominated by the overpowering Temple of Jupiter, sited on the Capitoline Hill. Rome had created a monumental urban form that would be reproduced across the Italian colonies and then the overseas provinces, as the state pursued its remorseless expansion.

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By the time Augustus took power in 27 BC, the population of the capital city is thought to have been approaching one million, a size unprecedented in the ancient world (Chandler & Fox, 1974, 79–81). Under the new emperor, the transition from Republic to Empire was the catalyst for a ‘cultural revolution’ that redefined the identity of Rome and conferred legitimacy on its imperial ambitions (Wallace-Hadrill, 2008). This revolution drew heavily upon the cultural legacy of Greece. One important strand was a building boom that transformed the layout and appearance of the city’s public buildings. The emperor himself reportedly boasted ‘I found Rome built of bricks; I leave it clothed in marble’ (Suetonius, 2007, 59). In his famous treatise De Architectura, probably written during the reign of Augustus, Vitruvius praises the emperor for not only providing public buildings for utilitarian purposes but also for glorifying the Roman state by ensuring that ‘the greatness of its power might likewise be attended with distinguished authority in its public buildings’ (Vitruvius, 1960, 3). In other words, the emperor was commissioning hegemonic buildings, invested with symbolic value as well as use value, as statements of imperial power. Under Augustus, the visual imagery of art and architecture was explicitly deployed to proclaim the omnipotence of the new ruling order and the dawning of a new golden age (Zanker, 1988, 167–263). To celebrate his assumption of absolute power, the emperor commissioned new temples and victory monuments, luxuriously decorated and beautifully designed according to the Vitruvian principles of proportion and symmetry. Through the medium of monumental buildings, the harsh ideology of imperial hegemony was clothed in an alluring mythology about the foundation of a new Rome. Sculpted images of Venus and Mars and Aeneas and Romulus were prominently displayed to remind the populace of the emperor’s mythical family line, as popularised in Virgil’s epic poem. Public spaces in the Augustan city acquired an explicit ideological function (Neudecker, 2015). The public realm staged spectacular ceremonies and festivals celebrating imperial culture, displayed victory columns and triumphal arches honouring imperial conquest, and was adorned with inscriptions, statues and monuments glorifying imperial power. The Roman city was indeed a landscape of power, constructed to celebrate the virtues of Romanitas (Lefebvre, 1991, 245). As they moved through the city, the populace could read the ideological messages embedded within its fabric (Favro, 1996, 217–280).

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Ideological messaging took two forms. Whilst the visual language of art and architecture was employed to awe the urban masses (Ando, 2000, 212), the written language of inscriptions spoke principally to the literate elite (Bowman & Woolf, 1994, 8). The wider communicative power of inscriptions should not, however, be underestimated. Recent archaeological evidence from Britain suggests that literacy may have been more widespread than previously thought; furthermore, repeated titles and phrases could have been recognised as symbols even if their full meaning was not understood (Revell, 2009, 22). The great fire that destroyed much of Rome in AD 64 was the catalyst for a further radical transformation of the urban landscape (Laurence et al., 2011, 115–18). Prior to the fire, the city streets had remained narrow and winding, lined with towering and overcrowded buildings. The subsequent rebuilding introduced a more regular layout of broader thoroughfares, more open spaces and lower buildings fronted by colonnades. These innovations crystallised into the orthogonal street grid that became one of the hallmarks of Roman towns and cities. The resulting network of interconnecting roads and piazzas, providing views of landmark public buildings at key intersections, has been termed the armature of the city (MacDonald, 1986, 5–31). By means of this urban aesthetic, the visual impact of the whole city became greater than that of the sum of its parts. Through the successive waves of urban innovation that transformed Rome between the second century BC and the first century AD, there emerged an idealised urban form which could be used as a template for the creation of new cities in the conquered provinces (Zanker, 2000). This imperial archetype was invested with great symbolic value, legitimising each new provincial city through its connection to Rome and thereby promoting the unification of the Empire as a whole. By acting as a node on the imperial road network, the archetypal city was provided with a physical and symbolic connection to the capital. The approach to the city was signified by a circuit of walls pierced by imposing gateways. At its heart lay the forum, a large colonnaded space sited on the intersection of the decumanus and cardo, the main east-west and north-­ south routes through the city. The forum was enclosed by porticoes and surrounded by public buildings that signified the political and commercial dimensions of imperial power. These included the curia (council chamber), treasury, trading halls and bankers’ offices (Vitruvius, 1960: 131–7). And at the centre of the forum stood the capitolium, a temple dedicated

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to the immortal triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, under whose spiritual protection the Roman state was believed to shelter (Laurence et al., 2011, 170–202). The capitolium was an imposing building, set within a paved court, elevated upon a podium and approached by a broad staircase. An altar was typically set at the foot of the staircase, which ascended to a colonnaded porch leading into the cella, the main chamber housing the cult statue. The whole ensemble denoted religious ceremony, whilst its dominant setting in the centre of the forum connoted two ideological messages (Zanker, 2000, 33–35). The first was that the highest civic virtue for a Roman was pietas, dutiful respect for the gods, motherland and family. The second was that in Roman society sacred and secular life were interrelated. The intertwining of civil and political society meant that both priesthoods and offices of state could be held by the same aristocratic families, while the ideology of honour ensured that political decision-­ making could be tied closely to religious tradition and ritual. If the capitolium was the religious locus of the forum, its political locus was the basilica, a multi-purpose assembly hall in which administration was conducted, taxation organised and justice dispensed. Situated opposite the capitolium, it acted as a physical and symbolic counterweight to the principal temple. Its secular message was reinforced by statues of the imperial family and local dignitaries distributed around the piazza. The whole forum complex can be thought of as a ‘hegemonic ensemble’, an arena of ruling class display in which the power of Rome was distilled into its purest essence (Creighton, 2006, 82). Unlike the temple, the basilica was a built form created by the Romans, although it drew upon antecedents that stretched back to Hellenistic royal halls and even to the Bronze Age megarons described in Homer (Welch, 2003). Rectangular in plan, the archetypal basilica comprised a high and wide central nave, separated from lower and narrower flanking aisles by colonnades, and terminating in a raised tribunal often set within a semi-­ circular apse (Boëthius, 1978: 149–56). The tribunal denoted the seat of power for a senior government officer or presiding magistrate and was often adorned with statues of the imperial family to reinforce its authority. One mark of the sophistication of the Roman state is that it adopted several complementary strategies to achieve its hegemonic purpose, and each strategy was embodied in a distinctive type of hegemonic building. In addition to the feelings of piety induced by the many temples across the city, and the deference and awe demanded by the public buildings

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around the forum, pleasure was also used to induce popular consent. To this end, different types of building were employed as agents of seduction: theatres stimulated the intellect; public baths catered for physical well-­ being; amphitheatres aroused more primitive emotions. All gave rise to imposing monumental structures, and all housed activities integral to the sense of Romanitas. Starting under Augustus, these new forms of monumental building appeared in a variety of locations across the Roman city (Zanker, 1988, 139–153; Laurence et al., 2011, 203–284). They created alternative foci of civic activity that competed with the forum since they catered for the social life of the whole populace rather than just the religious and political life of the aristocratic elite. Access to these leisure facilities was organised to reflect the social hierarchy, with the seating at theatres and arenas segregated by social rank (Creighton, 2006, 80). The audience in the amphitheatre was a microcosm of society at large, with women, foreigners and slaves all allowed to attend. Rather than the sense of pietas pervading the forum, the arena celebrated the quality of virtus as exhibited by the fortitude of those who suffered in the mayhem and carnage on display (Zanker, 2000, 37–40). It was not only the distribution and layout of their monumental buildings that connected provincial cities to Rome. Their adoption of specifically Roman built forms and architectural styles ensured that they looked like smaller-scale versions of the imperial capital (Zanker, 1988, 323–333). Because the building boom unleashed by Augustus was so intense, it restricted the scope for architectural innovation and variation. Tried and tested designs gave the Augustan city a standardised, if grandiose, appearance, creating a distinctive ‘urban image’ that could be copied in the provinces (Favro, 1996, 143–216). Reproduction of this urban image was subsequently facilitated by the development of industrialised construction techniques based on the use of concrete (Ward-Perkins, 1981, 97–120). This technological revolution ensured that standardised built forms could easily be replicated across the Empire (MacMullen, 2000, 124–137). The urban image created in Augustan Rome is a textbook example of the symbolism of hegemonic building. It was an image founded on strongly geometrical built forms and lavish applied decoration. The denoted function of each building type was instantly recognisable from its shape and mass; the connoted message was equally well recognised, whether it be the pietas associated with a temple or the virtus associated with the amphitheatre. The ideological meaning of the archetypal city was deeply embedded within the collective memory of the Roman people.

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Despite a tendency to standardisation, it should be stressed that the urban archetype was flexibly applied according to local circumstances. Each community created its own landscape of power, combining the elements of the archetype in a variety of ways that reflected local social, cultural and building traditions (Creighton, 2006, 70–92). Physical constraints such as natural topography, the circuit of defensive walls and the location of long-established shrines and temples had to be respected, and the street grid adapted to accommodate them (Laurence et al., 2011: 135–41). However, while no two Roman cities would have looked the same, both would have been easily identifiable as Roman in terms of their monumental buildings and urban layout. Urban form was just as much a symbol of Roman power and colonial expansion as was the Latin language. The image of the archetypal Roman city can all too easily be characterised as a vision of utopia. Needless to say, the reality of life in Rome itself, source of the archetype, was far from utopian. Writing around the end of the first century AD, the satirist Juvenal painted a lurid picture of Roman as a dystopian nightmare. In his third satire, he imagines a city of collapsing houses, frequent fires and squalid streets, a world of corruption and debauchery peopled by a cast of dishonest officials, crooked traders, sycophantic hangers-on and violent criminals (Juvenal, 1974, 87–98). It is a portrait that could be drawn for any great city through the ages. What it does not capture is the dynamism, creativity and excitement of life in the metropolis, nor the awesome power of its monumental buildings.

2.5  Provincial Capital In the immediate aftermath of the Boudican revolt, the restoration effort started with London’s port (Perring, 2022, 99–102). Protection of its commercial function had always been the city’s first priority. It was a decade later, around the year 70, that the rebuilding of London as an archetypal Roman city took off. By this time the suicide of the Emperor Nero had brought the Julio-Claudian dynasty to an ignominious end, and triggered the rise of a new ruling dynasty in Rome, that of the Flavian emperors (AD 69–96). The Flavians deployed monumental architecture as a propaganda weapon in the drive to acculturate conquered territories (Salway, 1981: 156–8). A surge of urban building began in Britain during the governorship of Julius Frontinus (73–77) and gathered strength under his successor Agricola (77–85).

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It was under the subsequent Nerva-Antonine dynasty that there arose the conjunction of circumstances most conducive to hegemonic building. The early decades of the second century, under the emperors Trajan (AD 98–117), Hadrian (AD 117–138) and Antoninus Pius (AD 138–161), are generally recognised as a golden age of political stability and economic prosperity in the Empire. This was when monumental building in London reached its climax (Faulkner, 2000, 31). A major fire seems to have destroyed much of the city during the 120s, which would have been a catalyst for rebuilding with stone rather than timber (Perring, 2022, 235–247). Furthermore, this fire occurred during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, who actively encouraged urban development throughout the Empire, providing many cities with benefactions of public buildings and infrastructure (Boatwright, 2000, 108–143). His visit to Britain in 122 almost certainly provided a stimulus to the rebuilding of the city. London’s long building boom was accompanied by strong population growth. While the population of the province as a whole continued to grow during the third and early fourth centuries, the population of London and other cities seems to have peaked less than a hundred years after the start of rebuilding. One recent set of estimates suggest that the population of London rose from close to 10,000 at the time of the Boudican revolt to a peak of between 25,000 and 30,000 in the middle of the second century (Swain & Williams, 2008). Outbreaks of plague may have been one reason why population started to decline in the latter half of the century, a view that is supported by the abandonment of some public buildings and residential areas at this time (Perring, 1991, 76–89). By the middle of the second century, London was able to boast many of the monumental buildings characteristic of the archetypal Roman city. However, the relatively piecemeal arrangement of these buildings suggests that there was no strategic plan to incorporate them within an overall urban armature. It would seem, therefore, that the rebuilding of London was not the product of a state-sponsored building programme, but rather was primarily achieved through the collective munificence of individual citizens and corporate bodies (Creighton, 2006, 105–107). Furthermore, the lack of evidence for extremely wealthy private citizens of the type found elsewhere in the Empire further suggests that the provision of major public buildings in London, as elsewhere in Britain, ‘relied on public subscription, rather than spectacular one-off individual donations’ (Mattingly, 2006, 301).

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This supposition is supported by surviving inscriptions recording architectural benefactions in Britain (Millett, 1990, 81–83). Compared to provinces in the Mediterranean core, a greater proportion of such gifts in Britain were made for the construction of sacred rather than secular public buildings, and a greater proportion were donated by corporate bodies rather than by individuals. This is consistent with the Roman policy of allowing power to remain in the hands of established ruling dynasties after the conquest (Creighton, 2006, 19–34). For these ruling families, religious traditions would have been of paramount importance in maintaining their elite status. They were under less compulsion to compete for individual status within their own communities, and so their collective displays of munificence were designed more to compete for honour with neighbouring communities. A less competitive milieu, combined with the more modest surpluses obtainable in a backward frontier economy, helps to explain why British towns in general had fewer monumental public buildings than the towns and cities of the Mediterranean core. While nearly all major towns in Britain were centred on a forum and its associated basilica, what was generally lacking from the urban archetype was a principal temple within the forum. Indeed, large classical temples were generally absent from British towns, including London; the temple dedicated to the divine Claudius in Colchester proved the exception, not the rule (Mattingly, 2006, 281–282). In contrast, there are many examples of more modest Romano-Celtic temples of simpler design, comprising a square or polygonal cella enclosed within a colonnade. Several such temples have been uncovered across London. They illustrate the continuity of traditional British religious practices after the Roman takeover; the British people held fast to their old gods, even if they re-imagined them in a new guise (Aldhouse-Green, 2018). Theatres, also associated with classical religious practices, were similarly rare, whereas baths were provided in nearly every town and amphitheatres were also a regular feature of the urban landscape (Millett, 1990, 104–107). It is significant that while Vitruvius talks of the forum as a space for business and government in De Architectura, he makes no mention of a temple dominating the central piazza. Furthermore, none of the early fora constructed in the Latin colonies of Italy included such a temple. It was only during the time of Augustus that the capitolium was added to the ensemble, and the forum converted to a sacred as well as secular space (Laurence et  al., 2011, 170–178). The absence of classical temples,

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Photograph 2.1  Roman London c125 AD (Source: Museum of London/ Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

contrasting with the presence of baths and amphitheatres, is a good illustration of the dialectical nature of the Romanisation process. Britain retained its more archaic religious practices while embracing the pleasurable novelties of Roman civilisation. In combination, London’s hegemonic ensemble of public buildings created a distinctive urban landscape of power (Photograph 2.1). There was a massive forum with basilica, a possible governor’s palace, an amphitheatre, at least two public baths, several large market halls and warehouses, a garrison fort, a river bridge and an extensive circuit of walls. In addition, excavations are uncovering a growing number of imposing private townhouses that advertised the wealth and status of their elite occupiers. Apart from the city walls, little has survived of these buildings above ground. However, the fragments that have been found confirm that they were adorned with classical sculpture and that the public spaces around them housed imperial statues (Frere, 1987, 307–315). Some official involvement in their construction is indicated by tiles stamped with the insignia of the procurator (Hingley, 2018, 73). Amongst the fragments that have been found are parts of several bronze statues, including a head

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of Hadrian from a statue that may well have been commissioned to celebrate his visit to Britain (Hingley, 2018, 126). The urban image created in Augustan Rome had been transported to the frontier of the Empire. London had become a showpiece provincial capital, and its citizens could bask in the honour of their achievement. The ceremonial heart of the city, as in almost every city in the Empire, was the forum-basilica complex. Construction of the first version probably occurred in the mid-70s, on the site of the earlier proto-forum on Cornhill (Marsden, 1987, 22–38). The structure comprised four colonnaded ranges around a courtyard, with the basilica forming the northern range, and the main entrance in the south range. Though there was no axial temple within the forum, a small classical temple was offset to the west side. The whole complex measured some 100 metres long by 50 metres wide and was designed to dominate the landscape by being elevated on a split-level terrace that faced south to look over the Thames (Perring, 2022, 132–135). During a thirty-year period between 100 and 130, the complex was rebuilt on a far more impressive scale (Marsden, 1987, 38–70; Brigham, 1990; Perring, 2022, 159–165). With an almost square plan, measuring nearly 170 metres on each side, it had an area more than five times larger than its predecessor. The complex was approached by the main north-­ south road leading up from the Thames port and bridge, and entered via a monumental gateway in the south range. In front stood the enormous basilica, comparable in scale to St Paul’s Cathedral. It measured 167 metres long by 52.5 metres wide and rose to a height of at least 25 metres. In its final form, it contained a grand arcaded nave, perhaps split into two halls, flanked by aisles, with a row of offices to the north. At its east end, the nave terminated in a richly decorated antechamber, which led into a marble-lined apse framed by a triumphal arch. The interior walls of the basilica were covered with paintings, including floral and possibly figurative motifs, and were lit by clerestory windows set high in the facade (Brigham & Crowley, 1992). Here was the seat of civic and indeed imperial power in the provincial capital. The most richly furnished rooms would have been reserved for the highest functions of the state and the most eminent members of the ruling elite. The apse would have housed the tribunal for the city magistrates, accessed through the antechamber, acting as an audience chamber. There was probably also a curia where the city council met, accessed like the tribunal through an antechamber. It was through the organisation of its internal space that the basilica broadcast its hegemonic message about the

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exercise of state power: ‘power was written into the very fabric of the basilica’ (Revell, 2009, 161). While we can assume that the basilica housed the city administration, and probably parts of the provincial administration as well, much of the complex is likely to have been given over to business activities, signifying the city’s equally vital function as a commercial centre. Vitruvius was in no doubt about the commercial importance of the forum-basilica complex. He urged architects to site their basilicas ‘in the warmest possible quarter, so that in winter business men may gather in them without being troubled by the weather’ (Vitruvius, 1960, 132). Shops and offices would have lined the forum, while bankers and merchants would have mingled with government officials within the basilica. The direct link between the forum and the port, with its great wharves and warehouses, would have reinforced the ideological message that state power was married to commercial wealth. The London Forum was the size of modern Trafalgar Square. It was by far the largest in Britain and second only to that of Trier in the north-west provinces of the Empire (Perring, 1991, 58). Even more remarkably, the London basilica was longer than all but one of the great basilicas of Rome, the Basilica Ulpia (Merrifield, 1983, 68). The structure would have dominated the urban skyline, providing the clearest possible symbol of the pre-­ eminent status of the city as both national capital and international entrepôt. Some have questioned whether a city on the edge of the Empire needed a basilica of such a size. Was it ‘an over-ambitious scheme, planned at a time of confidence and high expectation’ (Brigham, 1990, 94)? If it was a product of the hubristic ambitions of the city’s leading citizens, it is worth remembering that the basilica stayed in use for nearly two centuries, passing through several phases of repair and reconstruction. To the west of the forum was the amphitheatre, built on a site now occupied by the Guildhall (Bateman et al., 2008). The first version, built in the mid-70s, was an oval timber structure with a capacity of close to 7000 (Perring, 2022, 117–120). This was dismantled and completely rebuilt during the 120s as a larger masonry and timber structure measuring 100 by 87 metres, with a seating capacity estimated at between 7000 and 10,500. Since the total population of the city is estimated to have been under 30,000  in the early second century, the amphitheatre must have been a major attraction for the population of both the city and its hinterland (Hingley, 2018, 80). Two temples and a bathhouse were built to the south of the amphitheatre, on present-day Gresham Street and Cheapside respectively. Together

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with the amphitheatre, they appear to have formed an ensemble with religious as well as secular functions. The amphitheatre ensemble was connected to the forum-basilica complex by means of the main east-west road, which may have acted as a route for ceremonial processions (Hingley, 2018, 79–81). A processional way linking the two most monumental buildings in the city would have provided a splendid stage for the theatre of spectacle so important to Roman urban life. An illustrious precedent for such a processional way was to be found in the heart of Rome itself. The Sacra Via, running from the Capitoline Hill with its Temple of Jupiter through the Roman Forum to the Colosseum, staged some of the city’s most spectacular ceremonies, both religious and secular. To the south of the Cheapside bathhouse, at Huggin Hill, was a far more monumental public bathing complex, the largest so far uncovered in London (Marsden, 1976). It occupied a prominent riverside position, set upon a series of terraces cut into the hillside. The first phase, dating to the 70s, comprised a suite of five rooms, and a second suite of similar size was added in the 120s, perhaps to segregate the sexes. Mosaic floors and marble panelling were used as decoration (Revell, 2009, 70–71). The provision of such a lavish complex in London is a testament to the importance of bathing to the Roman way of life (Laurence et al., 2011, 203–206). To invest in a grand bathhouse, together with its associated infrastructure of water supply and sewerage, was a major undertaking. Beyond its functional utility, it had great symbolic value as a cultural expression of what it meant to be civilised. To enter a bathhouse was to enter a space that was quintessentially Roman (Revell, 2009, 172–179). Just to the west of the Huggin Hill baths, at Peter’s Hill, a palatial waterside complex was constructed in the later second century (Bradley & Butler, 2008, 65–72). In its scale and layout, with two apses facing the river, it is reminiscent of the governor’s palace uncovered in Cologne. Nearby have been found fragments of a monumental arch, a decorative screen carrying figures of gods and mythological creatures, and altars to the gods Jupiter and Isis (Merrifield, 1983, 167–171). If these belonged to the Peter’s Hill complex, they indicate that it may have combined religious and administrative functions. It may well also have contained a bathhouse, which would help to explain the surprisingly early demolition of the Huggin Hill baths around the time that the Peter’s Hill complex is thought to have been under construction. To the east of the Huggin Hill baths was another palatial structure, constructed between 80 and 100, close to the mouth of the Walbrook

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Photograph 2.2  Palace of the Roman Governor c100 AD (Source: Museum of London/Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

River. It comprised a large reception hall, hundreds of square metres of mosaic flooring, and a great courtyard with ornamental pools surrounded by ranges of rooms (Marsden, 1975). Because of its imposing scale, it was this building that was initially identified as the palace of the provincial governor (Photograph 2.2). Adjacent to the palace, on Suffolk Lane, was another large residential building that perhaps housed the procurator and his staff (Brigham & Woodger, 2001). However, doubts have been raised as to whether these remains do represent the headquarters of the provincial administration, or indeed whether they relate to a single building complex at all (Perring, 2022, 136–139). Similar uncertainty surrounds the function of two other high-status residences uncovered in Southwark that have been dated to the late first and early second centuries. One was a mid-70s courtyard house with

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painted walls in Southwark Street, originally identified as a mansio, an official residence for important visitors (Perring, 2022, 120–122). The other was a palace complex on the site of the medieval Winchester Palace, situated to face north across the Thames. Inscriptions reveal that it was built by the military, suggesting that it was for the use of the provincial administration. The complex may have included government offices, an official residence and bathhouse. Opulent finishes, including wall paintings and marble veneers, were of Italian quality (Yule, 2005). One reason why these residences were originally assigned an official status was that until recently, the private houses dated to the first wave of rebuilding in London were almost exclusively utilitarian timber and clay dwellings. They often functioned as a combined house, shop and workshop for artisans, reflecting the predominantly commercial nature of the London economy at this time. We have already noted that for a considerable period, the British aristocracy resisted Agricola’s exhortation that they should shift towards a more urban lifestyle and build themselves fine townhouses. Following the Boudican revolt, they seem to have been content to confine their conspicuous investment to their country villas. However, recent excavations are starting to uncover more substantial stone-built houses in London dating to the late first and early second centuries (Perring, 2022, 142–145). Mediterranean styles of living were already permeating through the city. Rather than houses for a first wave of aristocratic in-movers, it is possible that these were built for wealthy merchants profiting from the booming commercial economy. It remains a matter of conjecture as to whether residences as grand as the two palace complexes on the north bank of the Thames, and the two in Southwark, were in public or private ownership. What seems certain is that marked differentials in wealth and status were starting to appear in London’s housing stock soon after rebuilding began.

2.6   From Public to Private Domain Moving from the second century into the third, peace and prosperity gave way to political and economic instability across the Empire (Hekster, 2008). Two centuries of pax Romana came to an end. Imperial expansion had reached its limit, forcing the Empire to turn in on itself. The military ambitions of the aristocratic elite could no longer be satisfied by territorial conquest, and so their search for glory switched to an internal struggle for power. Rival factions sought the support of the army;

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civil strife became the norm; one emperor succeeded another with confusing rapidity. It became increasingly difficult for a single emperor to rule the whole Empire, causing a growing division between the western and eastern provinces. From 286 the two halves of the Empire were ruled by separate emperors. Once imperial expansion ceased, the supply of captured slaves dried up, which meant that maintenance of the slave economy relied on natural reproduction (Scheidel, 2012, 93–102). As long as slave labour remained profitable, there was little incentive to invest in labour-saving technological improvements, and so the economy stagnated (Anderson, 1996, 76–82). The exactions of the state became more onerous, particularly to fund the military forces which underwrote imperial power and the bureaucracy which underpinned imperial government. Inflation soared and inter-­ regional trade and taxation flows were disrupted, causing the imperial economy to fragment into more self-sufficient local economies. In summary, the forces of production within the Roman economy were no longer able to support the immense superstructure of the Empire. Across the Western Empire, the major cities went into decline, as urban populations shrank and public buildings were neglected or abandoned. The symbiotic relationship between imperial power and urban life meant that if one was weakened, so was the other. The Roman city had reached its apogee of monumentality and display under the Severan dynasty (193–235 AD). However, as political and economic disruption intensified, and the financial demands of the state increased, the costs of such municipal extravagance started to become prohibitive, threatening financial ruin to the cities and their ruling elites (Laurence et al., 2011: 124–127). The burden of munera became more and more difficult to support, causing voluntary largesse by wealthy citizens to dry up. The result was a switch in building investment from the public to the private domain. Investment in both the size and number of urban public buildings declined, while conspicuous investment in villas and townhouses increased. The golden age of hegemonic public building in the Roman West was over. Archaeological evidence points to a range of public buildings in British cities suffering disuse or demolition by the late third or early fourth centuries (Mattingly, 2006, 336–338). The most telling indication of the decline of civic life is the abandonment of the forum-basilica complexes at the heart of several cities. Most dramatically, in London itself, the huge forum and basilica were systematically demolished around 300 (Brigham, 1990,

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82). Several other public buildings, including the amphitheatre, also fell out of use. The abandonment of many of London’s monumental buildings during the fourth century speaks of a serious decline in civic life. It would seem that the disruption of long-distance trade during the third and fourth centuries had a particularly marked impact on London (Perring, 2022, 326–335). To a considerable degree, the growth and prosperity of the capital had been founded on international trade, and as that declined, so did the fortunes of the city (Perring, 1991, 84–86). Nevertheless, towns were still needed as centres of local market exchange and consumption, even if the economy was becoming more decentralised and fragmented. Indeed, small towns in Britain were prospering at the expense of large towns such as London, in response to the localisation of trade and manufacture (Millett, 1990, 143–151). A decrease in London’s commercial activity was matched by a diminution of its administrative role as provincial capital. Early in the third century, Britain was split into two provinces: Britannia Superior with its capital in London and Britannia Inferior with its capital in York (Eburacum). Early in the fourth century there was a further subdivision into four provinces, with London now only in direct control of the south-­ east of the country (Mattingly, 2006, 227–229). As the administrative power of the city waned, it seems that the agencies of the state relocated to more modest public buildings sited away from the traditional civic centre, which may help to explain why the forum-basilica complex was abandoned. One likely site for later government buildings is the administrative and religious complex at Peter’s Hill in the south-west of the city (Bradley & Butler, 2008, 72–79). This was reconstructed at the end of the third century, perhaps as the headquarters of Carausius and his successor Allectus, military commanders who had usurped power and proclaimed themselves emperors of Britain and northern Gaul (Perring, 2022, 350–353). The rebuilt complex incorporated two temples of classical design, a rarity in Britain, which may have been an attempt by the usurpers to proclaim their Roman credentials. However, their hold on power was short-lived, and it is likely that the monumental complex was never completed (Williams, 1993, 28–32). One of the few forms of public building which did flourish during the third and fourth centuries was the construction of defensive walls. Such works were undertaken in towns of all sizes across Britain (Mattingly, 2006, 326–333). There may well have been an element of civic display in

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these large-scale investment projects, particularly where the walls were augmented with imposing gates and towers. They may even have had an economic function, controlling the movement of goods and people for tax-gathering purposes (de la Bédoyère, 2001, 117). However, a shift in the focus of public building from the monumental centre to the defensive perimeter suggests that it was, at least in part, a reaction to the growing political turbulence of the times. The city was becoming a fortress as well as a market (Weber, 1958, 77–80). Within London, the first clear manifestation of a military presence is the substantial stone fort built in the 120s at Cripplegate, in the north-west corner of the city close to the amphitheatre (Shepherd, 2012). This defensive measure may have been the response to an outbreak of civic unrest associated with the Hadrianic fire that destroyed much of London at that time (Perring, 2022, 240–243). Consistent with the Roman love of strict geometrical forms, the fort, like the forum, was almost square in plan, with each side of 200 metres punctuated by a central gateway. The interior barrack buildings could have accommodated in excess of 1000 men, while the exterior walls lined with towers would have reminded the city population that imperial force could always be deployed if hegemonic power failed. It is thought that the Cripplegate fort probably housed the provincial governor’s bodyguard and military staff. It may also have been involved in controlling trade and transport to and from the continent. The classis Britannica, the Roman fleet of warships that patrolled the seas around Britain, may have used London, as well as Dover (Dubris), as its base (Hingley, 2018, 131). The fort appears to have been abandoned around the year 200 when its northern and western defences were incorporated into the circuit of walls then being built to enclose the city (Perring, 2022, 307–310). This immense engineering project took three decades to complete, between 190 and 225, and the uniformity of the construction technology suggests it was a state-authorised enterprise. The outcome was a three-kilometre stretch of stone walls, probably rising to at least six metres in height, and enclosing an area of 133 hectares, by far the largest enclosed urban area in Roman Britain and one of the largest in Europe. Towers were built at intervals along the inner wall, and there were five imposing double gateways piercing the wall where it crossed major roads. As well as the wall itself, these gates—Aldgate, Bishopsgate, Aldersgate, Newgate and Ludgate—have influenced the topography of medieval and modern London (Hingley, 2018, 173–178).

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In its initial form, the wall was confined to the landward side of the city, providing no protection along the riverside. This suggests that its initial purpose was more signifier of civic pride than means of defence. However, there was a second phase of building in the more turbulent decades of the later third century that seems to have been designed explicitly to defend the city from waterborne attack (Perring, 2022, 339–344). By the middle of the century, falling river levels had apparently made the main port inaccessible, necessitating that it be moved downstream (Milne, 1995, 78–81). This enabled a 1.7-kilometre riverside wall to be built between 255 and 275, thereby completing the enclosure of the city (Hingley, 2018, 188–189). The final act of fortification was undertaken in the middle of the fourth century when massive external bastions were added to defend the landward wall (Merrifield, 1983, 228–235). Within the cities of Britain, the most noticeable investment in the built environment from the mid-second century onwards was the increasing number of more substantial stone-built houses replacing earlier timber dwellings (Perring, 2022, 257–263). The artisans who first inhabited the rebuilt cities were moving out to smaller towns as the economy became more localised. They were replaced by a new generation of wealthier citizens, reflecting a shift in the urban economic base from trade and manufacture to finance and consumption as the British aristocracy finally became accustomed to city life. A particularly marked switch in hegemonic building from the public to the private domain is apparent in London. Remains of at least seventy substantial townhouses, dating mostly to the early third century, have so far been identified in the city, and the total could well have exceeded a hundred (Perring, 1991, 100–105). The ruling elite no longer expressed their wealth and status through public munificence, but instead through the opulence of their private houses. ‘Private houses and palaces became more important than public buildings’ (Perring, 1991, 104). The grander and more visible the house, the greater was its hegemonic power to impress the masses and outshine rival households. The elite house was an ideological statement (Perring, 2002, 3–6). As well as broadcasting their wealth and status, the townhouses of the London elite were an expression of their social identity (Hales, 2003, 1–3). Status and identity were advertised not only by the physical presence of an elite dwelling but also by the cultural references in its décor and the domestic rituals that it housed. Through murals and mosaics portraying mythological subjects, and through ritual activities such as feasting and

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worship, the household demonstrated its Romanitas, its adherence to the traditional customs and values of Roman society. What made the elite house an especially important signifier of status and identity was that it accommodated both the private and public life of the household. The Roman domus was simultaneously a domestic residence, place of entertainment, business centre and political office. This multi-functionality has been a characteristic of aristocratic dwellings in subsequent eras of history. Vitruvius stressed the need to separate the private living quarters in the domus, for the restricted use of the household, from the public rooms to be shared with outsiders. Distinguished landowners, businessmen and officials, as well as friends, associates and clients, would be granted access to the public spaces within the house. To receive such men of rank, a house had to be provided with ‘lofty entrance courts in regal style, and most spacious atriums and peristyles…appropriate to their dignity’ (Vitruvius, 1960, 182). Here was the ideology of honour expressed in architectural form. Early versions of elite townhouses were typically structured around a corridor with wings, a plan that over time evolved into the full courtyard house (Perring, 2002, 64–72). There are echoes of rural villas in the layout of winged corridor houses, supporting the view that they were built for wealthy families already used to villa living (Walthew, 1975). The villa urbana had been transported to the cities, creating a sense of rus in urbe. The signature hallmarks of the elite Roman house, such as hypocaust heating, mosaic floors, marble veneers and wall paintings, were standard features of these grand London dwellings. Illustrating the switch of investment from the public to the private domain, the more luxurious incorporated their own bath suites, at a time when public baths were in decline (Perring, 2002, 178). Lofty dining rooms and audience halls were the climax of the interior space, approached by a formal progression through the house (Perring, 2002, 160–172). These grand reception rooms signified that the display of elite power was transferring ‘from the relatively open public building to the more controlled theatre of the private residence, thus symbolizing the rise of the power of the individual at the expense of the civic’ (Esmonde Cleary, 2004, 419). By the start of the fourth century, not only were London’s public buildings being abandoned, but conspicuous investment in luxury townhouses was also in decline (Perring, 1991, 117–118). The city was dying. And yet, paradoxically, it has been argued that the province as a whole was embarking upon a new golden age (de la Bédoyère, 1999). However, it

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was a transient golden age, a final burst of rural prosperity for the vast villa estates of the Romano-British aristocracy. Economic activity and population growth became concentrated in rural areas during the early fourth century (Faulkner, 2000, 131–137). Not only were the towns in terminal decline, but the military presence in the province was also being scaled back (Mattingly, 2006, 238–247). Rural prosperity seems to have been founded on the expansion of grain production to feed a still growing civilian population, although it is also possible that manufacturing and trade, as well as agriculture, were being undertaken on the large estates (Esmonde Cleary, 2004, 414). By this time, the slave economy was also breaking down. Reduced supply meant that slaves were expensive and could only profitably be deployed for high-intensity tasks (Harper, 2011, 30). Where slave labour was no longer profitable, landowners had to employ alternative forms of labour. This led to the land being worked by peasant tenants tied to the landowners’ estates, a form of agrarian production that foreshadowed the emergence of feudalism (Anderson, 1996, 93–95). As a growing number of aristocrats abandoned urban life and withdrew back to the countryside, landed wealth was channelled into the construction of lavish villas (Faulkner, 2000, 138). A frequent analogy has been drawn between late Romano-British villas and the great country houses of the eighteenth-century English aristocracy (Esmonde Cleary, 2004, 416). Both were forms of private hegemonic building, expressing the status of their owners through conspicuous consumption and investment. Like their Georgian descendants, the most opulent of the fourth-­ century villas catered for both the intellect and the senses. They probably incorporated libraries and sculpture galleries, as well as baths and formal gardens. Mosaic floors displaying classical themes indicate the cultural pretensions of the owners and their desire to stress their Roman identity to their guests and clients. Collections of finely worked silver plate are another testament to the wealth of these late Empire aristocrats (de la Bédoyère, 1999, 111–137). Several elite fourth-century villas incorporated Christian motifs and symbols on their painted walls, mosaic floors and silver plate (Petts, 2003, 114–122). These symbols signify the profound cultural change that was occurring across the Empire—the advent of Christianity. Following the Edict of Milan issued by the emperors Constantine and Licinius in 313, Christianity became a legally recognised religion within the Empire, and

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in 380, it was elevated to become the official state religion under the Emperor Theodosius I (Petts, 2003, 36–38). Little evidence has so far been found of early Christian churches in fourth- and fifth-century Britain. Given that the territory sent three bishops plus a priest and deacon to the Council of Arles in 314, probably representing the metropolitan churches of its four provinces (London, Cirencester, Lincoln and York), there ought to have been churches in these centres from the early fourth century. A large basilica, part-excavated at Colchester House near the Tower of London, may possibly be the remains of a late fourth-century cathedral in the capital; in scale and plan, it resembles a cathedral of similar date built in Milan (Sankey, 1998). Other Romano-British churches may have been incorporated into the first wave of church-building initiated by the Anglo-Saxons three centuries later.

2.7  Roman Legacy In the second half of the fourth century, economic and social decline was underway in rural as well as urban areas of Britain (Faulkner, 2000, 142–144). The number and quality of villa buildings diminished, as did the number and quality of the mosaics they contained. The reduction of luxury building indicates that the power and wealth of the aristocratic elite was draining away. Local decline was a manifestation of much broader forces at work across the Empire. The internal contradictions of the Roman economy that were first apparent in the third century grew ever more acute. A growing shortfall between state expenditure and income gave rise to an increasingly oppressive system of taxation, extracted by an increasingly ‘coercive state’ (Wickham, 2005, 62–72). A vicious circle was created, whereby the rising costs of administering the Empire, and in particular its armies, led to over-­ taxation of agriculture, which in turn led to both tax evasion and the abandonment of marginal land by estate owners, further reducing state income. Rates of taxation on land in the late Empire may have been as much as three times those levied in the late Republic, meaning that the state could have been absorbing between a quarter and a third of gross agrarian output (Jones, 1959). By the end of the fifth century, the whole Western Empire had disintegrated, its economy had collapsed and its urban culture had dissolved (Liebeschuetz, 2001). Internal collapse was intensified by external pressures, as Germanic tribes pressed at the imperial frontiers (Millett, 1990, 212–230). Britain

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suffered its first concerted barbarian attack in 367, neighbouring Gaul was overrun in 406–7, most if not all regular army units had been withdrawn from Britain by 407, and the country came under Saxon attack in 408–9. There is a disputed record of the Western Emperor Honorius writing to the cities of Britain in 410, telling them to look to their own defences. By the 440s, the south and east of the country were effectively under Anglo-­ Saxon control. By 450, the walled city of London seems to have been abandoned (Gerrard, 2011, 191). Through this combination of internal collapse and external invasion, the socio-economic structures of Roman Britain broke down more rapidly and totally than in other parts of the Western Empire. The imperial finance and taxation system ceased to operate; the market economy and transport system fell apart; society fragmented and power was seized by local warlords (Wickham, 2010, 150–155). Consequently, of all the provinces occupied by Rome, Britain seems to have retained the least imprint of Roman civilisation in the aftermath of its collapse. Rather than attributing this meagre legacy to the destructiveness of the Anglo-Saxon invasions, it can better be explained by the argument that the Romanisation of Britain had been less complete than in other provinces. As the Western Empire disintegrated, the people of this frontier province, particularly in its western and northern parts, were more prepared than elsewhere to cast off their Roman identity and re-engage with a more localised tribal identity (Jones, 1996, 1–7). What then is the lasting legacy of Roman London? The answer is relatively little as far as its built form is concerned. Even before its final abandonment, most of its buildings were in ruins. Within two centuries, those ruins were covered by a layer of dark earth, indicating that the land had reverted to cultivation. Only the city walls and gates, and perhaps the stone foundations of the bridge, were still standing, to be incorporated into the fabric of the early medieval town (Hingley, 2018, 240). Of the urban image created in Rome and transported to London, nothing remained. It would be more than a millennium before buildings displaying a classical heritage re-appeared on the streets of London. However, it is true to say that ‘London persisted as a massive, but ruined, physical presence and as an idea in bureaucratic memory’ (Keene, 2000, 187). The lasting legacy of Londinium is not to be found in its ruined buildings, but rather in its physical and ideological presence. The Romans created the idea of a place that had not existed before in Britain, a place that combined the functions of international entrepôt and national

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capital. Because of its favourable location and remembered history, that place survived and flourished to become a great metropolis, continuing to combine the functions of commerce and government while perpetuating an urban culture that owes its origins to the Roman occupation. It was the Romans who made London.

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CHAPTER 3

Feudal Fiefdom

3.1   Settlement and Reoccupation In his famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed in 731, the Northumbrian monk Bede describes London as the capital of the East Saxons and ‘a trading centre for many nations who visit it by land and sea’ (Bede, 1990, 108). Just like Tacitus seven centuries earlier, Bede is conjuring up an image of London as a cosmopolitan trading centre. The Middle Saxon name for London was Lundenwic, derived from the Roman name with the added suffix wic, an Old English word signifying a trading centre. Lundenwic was an important node in an international network of emporia, or trading centres, situated on the coasts and estuaries of north-west Europe, linking the economies of England, northern France, the Low Countries and the Rhineland (Hodges, 1989). But where was the London emporium situated? Archaeologists naturally started by searching for its remains within the walls of the Roman city, but repeated excavations failed to find any significant evidence for Anglo-­ Saxon occupation before the late ninth century. Attention then began to shift to extramural locations to the west of the old city. There was a clue hiding in plain sight in the topography of the modern city: the street name Aldwych, meaning ‘old wic’. The mystery was finally solved in 1985 when redevelopment of the Jubilee Hall in Covent Garden uncovered evidence of dense Saxon occupation of the site dating to the seventh and eighth centuries. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Barras, Monumental London, Palgrave Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38403-5_3

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Subsequent excavations in the Covent Garden area have painted a clear picture of the rise and fall of Lundenwic (Cowie & Blackmore, 2012). Sporadic signs of Early Saxon occupation have been found, dating from the late fifth century onwards, but it was not until the later seventh century that the development of the town really took off. Rather like pre-­ Boudican Londinium, Lundenwic was a workaday settlement of simple timber-framed houses with wattle and daub walls. Occupation peaked in the first half of the eighth century when the town occupied an area of around 60 hectares (a little under half that of Roman Londinium) and supported a population of perhaps 6000–7000 (around a quarter of the Londinium peak). The rapid development of the Middle Saxon town, its well-maintained street system, and documentary evidence for the taxation of trade all suggest that the development of Lundenwic was coordinated by some form of central authority. It is possible that the trading community was involved in the initial development of the town, as they seem to have been in early Roman London (Hodges, 2012, 101). However, it appears that at some point, a royal authority became involved, and history shows that to mean the Midlands-based kingdom of Mercia (Cowie & Blackmore, 2012, 95). Mercia was one of the most powerful of the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy that crystallised out of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of England (Kirby, 2000, 1–9). Though Bede identifies London as the capital of the East Saxons based in Essex, theirs was a comparatively minor kingdom. Consequently, London tended to come within the sphere of influence of more powerful kingdoms, principally Kent during most of the seventh century and Mercia during the eighth and early ninth centuries. As during the early Roman period, the development of London was being influenced by its liminal position, surrounded by several territories, in this case the kingdoms of Essex, Kent, Sussex, Wessex and Mercia. For a landlocked kingdom such as Mercia, a riverside port in London would have been a particularly valuable asset. We may ask why the Mercians chose not to locate their emporium within the walls of the old Roman city, but rather to situate it on the banks of the Thames two-thirds of a mile upstream. From a practical point of view, the old Roman port was no longer suitable for use, with access to its ruined wharves blocked by the ancient riverside wall. Furthermore, the standing circuit of the walls was probably considered too extensive to defend. Less rational but more powerful would have been the mixture of awe and trepidation with which the Saxons viewed the abandoned city. It was a ghostly landscape of power, its

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ruins poking up like skeletons through the thick layer of dark earth that covered it (Cowie & Blackmore, 2012, 101). Nevertheless, the walled city enjoyed enduring symbolic significance because of its Roman past. In 839, Bishop Helmstan of Winchester wrote that he had recently been consecrated ‘in the illustrious place, built by the skill of the ancient Romans, called throughout the world the great city of London’ (Stenton, 1971, 56). The first clear evidence for the Saxon reoccupation of the ‘great city’ arrives with the foundation of St Paul’s Cathedral by Augustine of Canterbury in 604. The reincarnation of the city was not as a place of commerce or administration but rather as a religious centre continuing the tradition started by the fourth-century bishops of the Romano-British church. The Augustinian mission to convert the pagan Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to Christianity reintroduced some aspects of Roman civilisation to England, though in a radically different cultural form (Brown, 2013, 340–354). A new form of Christian culture had evolved in the more thoroughly Romanised societies of Italy and Gaul, which had retained much of their classical urban heritage after the collapse of the Western Empire. Despite that heritage, the new culture was very different in terms of both its ideology and its hegemonic buildings. The landscape of power was no longer dominated by secular public buildings but rather by cathedrals ringed by satellite churches (Blair, 2005, 34–39). It was Pope Gregory who had tasked Augustine with establishing the new English church, and London’s former status as a metropolitan see led him to nominate the city as one of the two primary sees in the new church, alongside York. However, at this time London was under the effective control of the kingdom of Kent, and its ruler Æthelberht seems to have persuaded Augustine to make his capital of Canterbury the primary see, rather than the ruined city of London situated on the edge of his kingdom. Augustine appointed Mellitus, one of his missionaries, as Bishop of London, and Æthelberht built the cathedral church of St Paul’s on Ludgate Hill for Mellitus and his successors (Bede, 1990, 90, 107–108). The choice of Ludgate Hill as the site of the new cathedral has led to much speculation. A romantic legend has it that the church was built over a late Roman pagan temple of Diana (Clark, 1996). No evidence for such a temple has ever been found, though there are examples from Italy and Gaul of Early Christian churches built over pagan temples or other Roman buildings (Krautheimer, 1986, 169). A more likely explanation is that the location was carefully chosen to emphasise both the past and present

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connections of the cathedral. The Romans had chosen to situate their most important hegemonic building, the forum-basilica, on Cornhill, the easterly of London’s two hills; the Anglo-Saxons shifted the dominant focus of the urban landscape to the summit of the less developed western hill. By raising their most important hegemonic building on the hill just inside the old city wall, homage was paid to the Roman past; aligning it on the main road passing west through Ludgate and on to Lundenwic acknowledged that it was part of the Saxon present. No physical remains of Saxon St Paul’s have so far been uncovered (Schofield, 2011a, 43–59). It was probably rebuilt several times in the nearly five centuries between its foundation in 604 and the Norman rebuilding that started in 1087. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports one such rebuilding in 962 when the cathedral was burnt down and had to be re-founded (Swanton, 2000, 114). While earlier versions may well have been quite modest timber structures, the tenth-century cathedral was probably a substantial stone building comparable in scale to the contemporary cathedral at Winchester, ancestral church of the kings of Wessex. The precinct surrounding the cathedral would have contained the bishop’s palace and perhaps as many as three satellite churches, creating a new landscape of power within the wasteland of the old ruined city (Blair, 2005, 199–201). The first substantial physical evidence for the Saxon reoccupation of the rest of the walled city of London dates to the late ninth century. This evidence ties in with the historical record (Blair, 2018, 270–271). Lundenwic shows clear signs of decline in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. This may be attributable, at least in part, to growing political and economic instability caused by a struggle for national supremacy between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. However, the most serious problem was undoubtedly the growing threat of Viking raids. These culminated in two attacks on London in 842 and 851, followed by the occupation of the city by the Great Heathen Army in 871–2. The slaughter and devastation caused by these incursions appear to have forced the final abandonment of undefended Lundenwic in the middle of the ninth century (Cowie & Blackmore, 2012, 110–112). By this time, Wessex was the only Saxon kingdom capable of resisting the Viking onslaught. Under the leadership of Alfred, they defeated the Vikings in 878 at the battle of Edington, and he led the English return into the walled city of London. The reoccupation is now dated to around 880, although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle assigns it to 886 when ‘King

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Alfred occupied London fort and all the English race turned to him, except what was in captivity to Danish men’ (Swanton, 2000, 80). Alfred was accepted as King of the Anglo-Saxons, uniting the former kingdoms that were free of Viking control (Abels, 1998, 169–193). Under Alfred, Late Saxon London acquired its third name, Lundenburh, the suffix burh signifying that it had become one of the network of fortified towns which the king created to defend the country from further Viking attacks. During the 880s, Alfred initiated the redevelopment of London (Haslam, 2009). His faithful biographer, the churchman Asser, says that the king ‘restored the city of London splendidly’ (Asser, 1983, 97). To promote its economic revival, the king granted trading privileges to leading members of his court (Haslam, 2009, 121). During the tenth century, it seems that the Roman walls and gates were restored, the riverside wharves rebuilt, new markets established and London Bridge reconstructed. A new, more informal, road system was laid out, bearing little relation to the regular street grid of old Londinium, and much of it remains intact today (Tatton-Brown, 1986). To organise the population on a territorial basis, the area within the walls was divided into wards and parishes, which also still survive (Haslam, 2009, 112). The site of the former Roman amphitheatre seems to have become a place of public assembly, where local courts were held (Blair, 2018, 407). Overall, this legacy supports the argument that King Alfred laid the foundations for the modern City of London. By the start of the eleventh century, great changes were underway in Anglo-Saxon society, reflecting a broader ‘urban renaissance’ that was unfolding across western Europe as a whole (Brooke & Keir, 1975, 63–82). Towns and trade were thriving; the aristocratic class was finally becoming involved in urban society; small city churches were proliferating; the citizen body was finding its voice (Blair, 2018, 385–387). Against this background, London had become by far the largest town in England. ‘It was the principal resort of foreign traders in time of peace, and the base which sustained the defence of the land in war-time. It had the resources, and it was rapidly developing the dignity and political self-consciousness appropriate to a national capital’ (Stenton, 1971, 539). One measure of London’s importance in the national economy at this time can be gleaned from a report in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that the town contributed as much as thirteen per cent of the total tax levied on the English kingdom in 1018 (Swanton, 2000, 154).

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With the restoration of its twin roles as international entrepôt and national capital, Late Saxon London had become functionally similar to Roman London. Physically, however, it was a far less imposing place. The predominant building material was timber, not stone, and apart from St Paul’s it is not clear whether there were any other hegemonic buildings within the Saxon town. In broad outline, the history of Saxon London is now understood. However, one important question remains unanswered: where was the locus of royal power? One after another the kings of Kent, Mercia and Wessex seem to have maintained tight control over the town, even if it was not their traditional capital. A law code issued by Kentish kings in the late seventh century refers to a king’s hall in London. This would have housed the king and his court during periodic visits, and his permanent staff tasked with urban administration and tax collection. But despite the documentary evidence, no conclusive physical evidence for such a building has so far been found (Cowie, 2004). Lundenwic seems too utilitarian a settlement to have housed a royal hall, and indeed no high-status finds have been made there. It is possible that a palace was sited within the walled city, most likely within or adjacent to the precinct of St Paul’s. There is a tradition that King Offa of Mercia had a palace there in the late eighth century, but again physical evidence is lacking (Haslam, 2009, 124). As with the identification of Lundenwic, however, a more radical solution presents itself. Around 1050, Edward the Confessor, the penultimate Anglo-Saxon king of England, began construction of a new abbey church, monastery and royal palace on Thorney Island, some two miles upstream from the walled city where the river Tyburn flowed into the Thames. The ‘West Minster’ was the largest and most imposing hegemonic building ever constructed by a Saxon king. The site of the abbey appears to have had a long history of occupation. Concrete flooring and a hypocaust indicate that a substantial Roman building once stood there (Cowie & Blackmore, 2012, 105). There is documentary evidence for a royal grant of land to an existing monastic community on the island in the eighth century, and the monastery was re-endowed in the later tenth century (Thomas et al., 2006, 152). Close by, on the site of the Treasury building in Whitehall, remains have been uncovered of a large timber hall, dating from the late eighth to the mid-­ ninth century, comparable in size to high-status halls that have been identified as royal palaces elsewhere in England (Cowie, 2004, 205–209).

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All this evidence suggests that the Saxon kings of successive dynasties may have found it convenient to occupy royal headquarters on a site detached from either the emporium of Lundenwic or the walled city of Lundenburh. With its hegemonic ensemble of royal palace and abbey church, Westminster became the locus of state power, separate from the commercial power residing within the City of London. It is a separation that has persisted to this day.

3.2  Anglo-Norman Kingdom Edward the Confessor lived to see his abbey at Westminster consecrated in December 1065, but just a week later he was buried there. Thus began a momentous twelve months that changed the course of English history (Barlow, 1999, 61–70). The rival claims to Edward’s crown by Earl Harold of Wessex and Duke William of Normandy were settled decisively nine months later at the Battle of Hastings, fought on 14 October. As a result of one day’s fighting ‘England received a new royal dynasty, a new aristocracy, a virtually new Church, a new art, a new architecture and a new language’ (Davis, 1976, 103). By the time William was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066, work had already started to construct defences in the south-­ east corner of the walled city of London, where the White Tower was soon to rise. These defences were erected on the foundations of a late Roman stronghold, built almost seven centuries earlier (Hingley, 2018, 220). This was a symbolic statement of the Conqueror’s control over the city. Almost overnight, Saxon London had become Norman London. The men who led the Norman army established a feudal power structure that ruled England for the next four centuries. The Old English state that they overthrew provided fertile territory for the importation of French feudal practices and the development of a feudal mode of production. In essence, feudalism can be characterised as an agrarian mode of production in which rents were extracted from a dependent class of peasants by a ruling class of aristocratic landowners (Anderson, 1996, 147–150). The forces of production were organised around the farming of manorial estates; the relations of production were expressed through the servile status of the peasant, which tied him to his lord’s land. Under feudalism, unlike slavery, the serf’s labour was partly his own and only partly the property of his feudal lord. That part which was his own was employed in providing the subsistence for himself and his family;

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the remainder yielded a surplus product which he was obliged to transfer to his lord by payments of a feudal rent in one of three forms (Hindess & Hirst, 1975, 191). The surplus could be delivered in the form of labour-­ rent when the peasant worked part of his time for the lord; it could take the form of rent-in-kind when the peasant handed over part of his crop; it could be paid as money-rent when the peasant realised some of the surplus by selling part of his crop to the market. The transition from the ancient to the feudal mode of production has been characterised as a process whereby a system in which the economic surplus was appropriated collectively by the state, in the form of taxation, was transformed into a system in which the surplus was extracted individually by landlords, in the form of rents (Wickham, 1984). The breakdown of the slave economy and the increasingly unsustainable burden of taxation in the Late Roman Empire had created the conditions for the emergence of the new feudal mode of production in Early Medieval Europe. A crucial catalyst for the transition was the contradiction in the ancient mode of production between the public interests of the aristocracy as rulers and clients of the state and their private interests as landowners. They invested the wealth they received from their public interests in land, but in so doing they acquired tax liability. The heavier became the tax burden levied by the failing Roman state, the greater was the incentive for aristocrats to evade paying their dues to Rome and instead cultivate their interests as private landlords in the Germanic successor states that were forming across Europe (Wickham, 1984, 15). European feudalism can be said to have developed as a synthesis of Roman and Germanic cultures, set in motion as the barbarian tribes overran the disintegrating Western Empire (Anderson, 1996, 128–142). The Christian Church was the one institution that ‘spanned the whole transition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages in essential continuity’ (Anderson, 1996, 131). By the seventh century, a distinctive Romano-­ Christian culture had emerged across most of western Europe. Its strength and durability derived from the seeming paradox that Christianity was a universal religion in terms of its texts, beliefs and organisational structure, yet one that successfully adapted itself to local conditions. Christendom comprised a network of diverse regional churches (Brown, 2013, 13–17). Anglo-Saxon England had been drawn into this world through its growing links with the Frankish kingdom across the Channel. The Augustinian conversion was the catalyst for these relationships to blossom, initiating a

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period of cultural transformation that led to the revival of urban life in London and other towns. As elsewhere in Europe, the transition to a fully developed feudal mode of production was inevitably a protracted process in England (Wickham, 2005, 303–326). The early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms had not assumed the character of a feudal society, but rather were peasant societies based upon independent smallholders who, rather romantically, have been described as ‘without claim to nobility, but subject to no lord below the king’ (Stenton, 1971, 277). An aristocratic class of earls and thegns did exist, and the peasantry did owe them military obligations and perhaps some tribute; however, they seem largely to have retained their economic and legal autonomy, in particular with regard to land tenure. The transformation of this tribal society into an aristocratic society was made possible because the Anglo-Saxon peasantry gradually relinquished their economic and personal independence. This enabled the aristocracy to acquire exclusive ownership of landed estates, allowing the institutions of a hierarchical state to be constructed and state power to be progressively centralised (Wickham, 2005, 339–351). Economic insecurity was the underlying reason why the peasantry drifted from freedom into servitude. Despite their independence in the early kingdoms, they struggled to live at even subsistence level. Their hardship worsened during the savage wars against the Viking invaders in the ninth century. Under these conditions, they were more inclined to accept the loss of freedom associated with serfdom in exchange for a measure of protection from the lords of their villages (Stenton, 1971: 470–472). By the time of the Norman Conquest, a network of obligations, based on the principle of tenure for service, was already in place, creating the conditions for the feudal economy of the High Middle Ages to blossom (Barlow, 1999, 5–12). In contrast to the Old English kingdom, which had been evolving over several centuries, the duchy of Normandy had by the mid-eleventh century only been in existence for a hundred and fifty years or so (Chibnall, 2000, 3–37). It was the creation of Viking adventurers who had conquered and settled the region during the ninth and tenth centuries. Having rapidly assimilated French culture and language, they ruled a territory which was independent yet at least notionally loyal to the French crown. It was their prowess as mounted warriors and castle-builders that proved decisive in the conquest and subjugation of England.

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Following his victory, William dispossessed the Old English aristocracy and allocated their lands to the Norman nobility (Green, 1997, 48–99). There seems to have been little attempt to integrate the conquered Saxon nobility into the new ruling order, in the way that the invading Romans had sought the consent of the defeated British aristocracy a thousand years earlier. The result was the most complete and sudden redistribution of wealth that has ever occurred in England. Since the newly conquered country was four or five times larger than their homeland, and considerably richer, the Norman nobility became enormously wealthy (Davis, 1976, 114). The country was now in the possession of a French-speaking aristocracy owning estates on both sides of the Channel and owing allegiance to the rulers of both realms. The new king made great efforts to claim continuity as Edward’s legitimate successor, assuming the full range of powers that had belonged to the Old English monarchy. ‘They gave him a weight and variety of authority such as was possessed by no other king in western Europe’ (Stenton, 1971, 622). William built upon the constitutional framework and judicial system of the Old English state, which fostered the creation of a unique body of English common law. The scope and efficiency of the royal treasury and taxation system which William inherited allowed him to run a state that was exceptionally centralised by the standards of the time (Chibnall, 1993, 105–110). On these foundations of popular justice and a centralised state, a new Anglo-Norman kingdom was constructed, achieving in the process a slow fusion of the previously distinct Norman and English cultures (Barlow, 1999, 79–109). As the new English kingdom was consolidated, it became locked in a perpetual power struggle with the kingdom of France. Frequent inter-­ dynastic marriages gave this struggle the character of a fractious family feud. It was a struggle partly conducted through military power, by repeated but ultimately futile English attempts to annex French territory, and partly through ideological power, exercised in particular through competitive emulation of French monumental buildings by English kings. The Anglo-Norman kingdom was a rigidly hierarchical society tied together by relationships of obligation between the king, a ruling military aristocracy and a subject peasant population. At the top of the pyramid sat the king. He transferred a large number of English estates into his direct ownership, left the church with most of its extensive possessions, and distributed the rest among his leading followers, the earls and barons who had fought under his command (Barlow,

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1999, 91–96). These men became his direct tenants, or tenants-in-chief. They were the dominant landowners in the country, endowed with holdings collectively known as fiefs, each made up of a widely scattered spread of separate estates (Bartlett, 2000, 219–229). At strategic locations on their territories, they built their castles, the monumental buildings that acted both as their chief residences and symbols of their power (Green, 1997, 172–193). In exchange for their lands, the most important obligation owed to the king by the barons was the provision of a quota of knights for military service. The more powerful was the baron, the larger his estates, the more imposing his castles, and the greater the number of knights at his command. The barons in turn granted many of their estates to tenants in exchange for feudal services, these tenants becoming their lord’s vassals. Of these baronial vassals, those with the highest status were the knights, owing military service to their lord (Green, 1997, 195–208). Over time this body of middling and lesser landlords developed into the much broader gentry class that played a crucial role in post-medieval society (Mingay, 1976, 18–30). Peasant farmers were the main tenants on manorial estates, producers of the agricultural surplus that sustained the whole system. A broad distinction can be made between peasants who were free and those who were ‘unfree’, although the disparities in status were a matter of degree not absolute difference (Miller & Hatcher, 1978, 111–133). Freemen owned their own property, enjoyed freedom of movement and could buy and sell land. Villeins or serfs were required to provide labour services on their lord’s manor, were subject solely to their lord’s jurisdiction, and could even be given away or sold by their master. However, it is important to recognise that ‘serfdom was not slavery; a villein was unfree in relation to his lord, but not with regard to other people’ (Prestwich, 2005, 448). It was through military power that the Norman aristocracy exercised their control over the subject Saxon peasantry. Each nobleman, ensconced within his fortified castle, employed a retinue of knights and other retainers to maintain order within his domain and protect it from external attack. However, whilst these groups of heavily armed men acted as instruments of ‘concentrated coercion’ to enforce the feudal order, they were at the same time a threat to the stability of the feudal state (Mann, 2012, 390–393). The fragmentation of military force within the Anglo-Norman state fuelled a recurrent struggle for power between the king and the leading

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barons. Kings sought to centralise power and resources under their control, while the barons conversely fought to maintain their independence and privileges. These conflicts reached their greatest intensity during periods when monarchical rule was weak, or when succession to the throne was disputed. The struggle played a central role in the political development of the nation (Bartlett, 2000, 4–67). In contrast to the fragmentation of military and economic power within the feudal state, the church acted as a unifying entity within civil society. ‘The church, which in Late Antiquity had always been directly integrated into the machinery of the imperial state, and subordinated to it, now became an eminently autonomous institution within the feudal polity’ (Anderson, 1996, 152). Operating through an independent bureaucracy, it exercised immense hegemonic power over the masses through its own distinct ideology. The Catholic church had established a formidable power network right across Europe by the middle of the eleventh century. Institutionally, it was organised into two parallel hierarchies, of bishoprics and monastic communities, each responsible to the Pope in Rome and operating under its own body of canon law. The economic base of the church was funded by the tithes levied on the faithful and the revenues derived from its extensive estates; its ideological superstructure was articulated by the use of Latin as a common language (Mann, 2012, 379–382). The wealth of the church in England can be measured by its share of the nation’s feudal revenues, which rose from just over a quarter at the time of the Domesday survey in 1086 to almost a third by 1300 (Dyer, 2002, 115). England had already been a Christian nation for over four and a half centuries when the Normans arrived (Blair, 2005). They took over an Anglo-Saxon church with a long-established tradition of interdependence between royal and ecclesiastical power (Brown, 2003, 24–26). Under the overall control of the king, the two power structures were intertwined, with royal officials becoming bishops and churchmen acting as royal advisors and administrators. The bishops acted as spiritual counterpart to the earls, the two elites forming the twin pillars of royal government. The Normans reformed the Old English church so as to give it a more coherent and hierarchical structure, further concentrating wealth and power in the hands of the bishops and abbots. To this end, the English episcopate was thoroughly purged. Existing bishops were deposed and replaced by Norman churchmen, so that by the time of William’s death in 1087 only one of the fifteen bishops was English. The monasteries were

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treated less severely; few abbots were deposed, but on their death, they were replaced by Norman monks (Barlow, 1979, 57). While the outcome of the Conquest was a wholesale transfer of land from the English to the Norman aristocracy, the extensive land holdings of the English church, both episcopal and monastic, were respected once submission had been made to the new king. In return for their estates, the Norman bishops and abbots were required to perform a dual role. They were prelates of the church with spiritual responsibilities for their flock, and at the same time lords of temporal baronies with feudal obligations to their king (Chibnall, 1993, 38–43). The leading bishops and abbots of Norman England were rich and powerful men (Prestwich, 2005, 370–373). In this they were following a tradition established in the earliest days of the church, that bishops were principally drawn from the aristocracy (Brown, 2013, 110). Closely interrelated with each other and with the leading baronial families, the senior members of the Norman clergy were able to accumulate great wealth and political influence. Their estates generated incomes comparable to those received by the wealthier secular peerage (Miller & Hatcher, 1978, 16). As an example, the Domesday survey records that Westminster Abbey had direct lordship over some sixty manors in the south-east and Midlands (Summerson, 2019, 27–29). However, of London’s principal foundations, neither Westminster Abbey nor St Paul’s were among the wealthiest religious houses in Norman England. As measured by the value of their endowed estates, the Abbey ranked seventh whilst St Paul’s was in the middle rank (Keene, 2004, 17). Though neither enjoyed metropolitan status, their special position derived rather from their symbolic value: the Abbey was the religious expression of state power, St Paul’s the religious expression of commercial power. They have retained their hegemonic purpose ever since.

3.3   Faith and Obligation Feudal society viewed itself as comprising a hierarchy of three orders or estates: those who prayed, those who fought and those who laboured (Duby, 1980, 56–60). This social formation was set within an ideological system imbued with a Christian belief in the coherence of heaven and earth, forming two parts of one homogenous world. Of the two orders of the powerful, bishops and priests set their face to heaven, to establish the proper rules of moral conduct, while kings and nobles looked to earth, to

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ensure those rules were obeyed. Neither of noble blood nor priestly vocation, the great majority of the population that occupied the third estate were obliged to toil and suffer in order to provide for those in the higher orders as well as for themselves. Within each of the three orders a further hierarchy of ranks was recognised, so that every individual was allotted a precise, divinely established position within the social order. That position determined the reciprocal obligations each individual owed to those above and below them in the hierarchy. To maintain social harmony in this fundamentally unequal society, it was expected that these relationships be conducted in a spirit of concord and charity. Unlike the supposedly class-neutral ideology of capitalism, the ideology of feudalism was explicit about class structure, but justified the differences between man and man as a manifestation of the sacred order (Poulantzas, 1973, 214). Applying the concept of cultural hegemony to this social formation, it can be argued that the three orders were bound together by a dominant ideology that combined religious faith and feudal obligation. In this society, power was exercised both through coercion and consent. Barons and bishops relied upon a sense of obligation amongst the lower orders, but ultimately ruled through force and fear. If this dominant ideology fashioned a velvet glove of spiritual hegemony, it served to cover the mailed fist of warrior domination. In the medieval world view, it was the ecclesiastical order that occupied the apex of the social hierarchy, through their monopoly of spiritual power. That power derived from the triple identity of Christianity as a religion, a faith and a moral system (Hamilton, 2001, 23–24). The institutions of the church engaged with every aspect of medieval life, and religion was the most powerful influence on people’s sense of social identity. In this respect, religion can be seen to be a cultural force, shaping people’s belief system in the face of the disorder, suffering and injustice in their lives (Geertz, 2017, 93–135). According to Durkheim (2001, 36), ‘The division of the world into two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane, is the hallmark of religious thought’. Such is the division between heaven and earth in Christian doctrine. Durkheim goes on to define religion as ‘a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things…that unite its adherents in a single moral community called a church’ (Durkheim, 2001, 46). Religion is in essence a social activity, and religious beliefs are a symbolic expression of the social order. This explains why the medieval church

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could function ‘as a force for social cohesion and control: participation in sacred acts and rituals was a means by which members would experience the meaning and moral power of their society’ (Brown, 2003, 5). One of the reasons why Christian ideology had such a powerful hold over the medieval mind was that its message was communicated through stereotyped acts of discourse in a great variety of media. Through a combination of written and spoken texts, ritual ceremonies, music and drama, and visual arts such as painting, sculpture and architecture, the church spoke to people of every class, literate or not. The whole Christian year was organised around formalised rituals that reiterated the church’s spiritual message (Connerton, 1989, 46–47). Church buildings were the vessel in which all these media were combined for a single hegemonic purpose; the church as a building was a physical manifestation of the church as an idea. The Christian message directly related each individual to an eternal, omniscient God through the agency of Christ, His Son. It required them to accept their ‘fixed abode’, their allotted position within the society of the living, and offered one of two routes into the afterlife, eternal salvation or eternal damnation, depending on whether they showed respect or contempt for God’s commandments (Althusser, 2014, 194–199). All human beings sinned against the moral order, but all could seek redemption through confession and penance (Turner, 1991, 151–153). Faith in this message required the humility to accept one’s lot in this life with the hope of a better life to come. It was through their faith that the labouring orders in medieval society consented for the most part to the hegemonic rule of barons and bishops, consent that was essential for maintaining the feudal order. For the warrior class, there was a rather different Christian message. ‘The life pattern of a warrior has very little affinity with the notion of a beneficial providence, or with the systematic ethical demands of a transcendental god. Concepts like sin, salvation and religious humility have not only seemed remote from all elite political classes, particularly the warrior nobles, but have indeed appeared reprehensible to its sense of honor’ (Weber, 1993, 85). Instead, the warrior aristocrat placed his faith in salvation through the prosecution of holy war against the unbeliever, whose moral depravity justifiably aroused his righteous indignation. From a modern rather than medieval perspective, it can be seen that the apex of feudal society actually encompassed both of the higher orders, each monopolising a particular form of power, rather than the

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ecclesiastical order being pre-eminent. The coercive military power wielded by the aristocratic order through the institutions of the state was complementary, not subordinate, to the consensual spiritual power exercised by the ecclesiastical order through the institutions of the church. Church and state were in fact two distinct faces of the same interpenetrated feudal power structure. Gramsci saw the separation of powers between them as an example of ‘the struggle between civil society and political society in a specific historical period’ (Hoare & Nowell Smith, 1971, 245). He believed that there was greater ‘mixedness’ between civil society and the state under feudalism than has subsequently been the case under capitalism (Poulantzas, 1973, 139). In medieval England, the intertwining of church and state tended to increase over time, as the clergy were drawn ever more deeply into affairs of state. Thus in the early thirteenth century, they were closely involved in the drafting of Magna Carta, while in the fourteenth century, during Edward III’s long war with France, the church effectively acted as the king’s ‘ministry of information and propaganda’ (Heath, 1988, 107). Despite their intertwining, the separation of powers, and in particular the existence of separate bodies of secular and religious law, was always a potential source of conflict between the two pillars of medieval society (Barlow, 1979, 268–310). In England, the most famous of such conflicts was that between Henry II and Archbishop Thomas Becket (Barlow, 1999, 241–256). The contradictions between secular and religious power were most apparent in the institution of medieval kingship. On the one hand, the king was the premier lord of the realm, sitting at the top of the feudal hierarchy but reliant for his economic, political and military power on a network of mutual obligations between him and his nobles. On the other hand, as recognised by the church, he was a theocratic ruler, anointed as God’s representative on earth, demanding obedience rather than loyalty from his subjects (Abercrombie et al., 1980, 78–79). It was this theocratic identity that was communicated through ritual ceremonies of state such as the coronation (Prestwich, 2005, 25–44). Nevertheless, secular and religious power were for the most part mutually supportive (Duby, 1974, 162–177). The typical aristocratic family had members who prayed as well as those who fought, and every aristocratic family was bound together by strong ties of kinship. Furthermore, the church was an integral component of the secular power structure through its ownership of landed estates and the privileged status of its leading clerics. It thereby provided spiritual justification for the essentially exploitative

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nature of the feudal system. In return, the secular aristocracy were major benefactors of the church, founding and supporting religious houses and parish churches (Green, 1997, 391–428). Their reward was that grateful priests and monks would pray for their souls, feeding the aristocratic sense of their own innate religious virtue. Aristocrats liked to display their power and status by surrounding themselves with an impressive body of subordinate vassals, whether in their castle or their cathedral. It has been argued that the nexus of dependent relationships between lord and vassal is the key to understanding how feudal society functioned (Bloch, 2014, 155–249). In the vocabulary of feudalism, to be the ‘man’ of another man described a relationship of submission, whether it be that of baron to king, knight to baron or peasant to knight. Though these relationships took a variety of forms, they were legitimised by a common ideology of obligation underpinned by divine sanction. Across all classes of society, dependency was formalised through an act of fealty, whereby the vassal laid hands on the Gospels to swear loyalty to his master. Fealty was a unilateral obligation; there was seldom a corresponding oath on the part of the lord. Of more solemn moment was the ceremonial act of homage, in which the vassal knelt to pledge loyalty to his lord in exchange for his protection. Homage was a mutual obligation confined to the upper strata of society, the barons and knights who ruled through the force of arms, and the bishops and priests who ruled through the power of redemption. In the feudal world aristocratic status derived from a variety of elements: high birth, land, office, royal favour, lifestyle, the respect of one’s peers’ (Wickham, 2010, 524). Aristocratic lifestyle required the display of conspicuous consumption and investment essential to the maintenance of social distinctions and the pursuit of social competition (Dyer, 1998, 89–91). Aristocratic respect was gained by adhering to an accepted mode of noble conduct, which demanded that one was courteous and hospitable to one’s peers. As in the Roman world, to be an aristocrat in the medieval world it was necessary to be respected by other aristocrats. And as in the Roman world, it was with the threat of violence, rather than the offer of respect, that the aristocracy treated the lower orders. As the Middle Ages proceeded, the combination of rising economic prosperity and increasing social stability allowed the exercise of feudal power to rely less on coercion and more on consent. It has been persuasively argued that his shift from coercion to consent caused aristocratic ideology to undergo a ‘civilizing process’ (Elias, 2000). An increasing

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premium was placed upon elite behaviour that was moderate and ‘courtly’, rather than brutish and vulgar. It is further argued that the locus of this civilising process was the royal court, and its motivating force the competition between aristocrats to display the courtliness that attracted royal favour. An alternative view is that the locus for the process was the cathedral schools established by the church, which taught the ethics and manners deemed to be the appropriate behaviour for a Christian nobleman (Jaeger, 1985). From either perspective, the civilising process could only have been successful if hegemony proved at least as effective as domination in maintaining the feudal order. One manifestation of the civilising process was the idea of chivalry, through which the feudal elite attempted to resolve the contradictions between a state founded on force and fear and a church preaching humility and forgiveness (Keen, 2005). By embracing the concept of chivalry, the church allowed itself to sanction organised violence in defence of its interests, either when suppressing a peasant revolt against the ruling order or prosecuting a crusade against the infidel. The medieval code of chivalry can be seen as a descendant of the ideology of honour that animated the Roman aristocrat. It developed into ‘a sophisticated secular ethic, with its own mythology, its own erudition, and its own rituals which gave tangible expression to its ideology of honour’ (Keen, 2005, 253). It has in turn given birth to a code of honourable behaviour espoused by successive generations of the landed aristocracy, with diminishing effect, up to the present day. The tournament became the theatre of spectacle in which warrior aristocrats could compete for honour in ritualised combat. The pious and chivalrous knight in armour, protecting the weak and vanquishing the strong, was a much-loved symbol of feudalism’s dominant ideology. Chivalry was a vital theme in the British foundation myth elaborated by the Welsh scholar Geoffrey of Monmouth in his History of the Kings of Britain, completed around 1136. The Normans had their own foundation myth, but it was a relatively puny affair that originated with the Viking warriors who first attacked France in the ninth century (Chibnall, 2000, 107–116). The British myth was so much richer and more venerable, and as the distinction between Norman and English slowly evaporated, so the Normans identified themselves with the pre-Norman history of England (Davis, 1976, 131). According to Geoffrey, this stretched back more than two thousand years to the capture of Albion from a race of giants by the Trojan Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas, founder of Rome. The story

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culminates with the heroic deeds of the legendary British king Arthur ‘who developed such a code of courtliness in his household that he inspired peoples living far away to imitate him’ (Geoffrey of Monmouth, 1966, 222). Inspiring the rest of the world with chivalrous behaviour has been an important part of English self-belief ever since. It was a mark both of London’s unique status and the powerful presence of its surviving Roman walls that Geoffrey afforded the city its own foundation myth. Brutus supposedly established the new city on the Thames as his capital, while one of his mythical successors King Lud ‘surrounded the capital with lofty walls and with towers built with extraordinary skill’ (Geoffrey of Monmouth, 1966, 74). To complete the myth, the burial site of the king is remembered in the place name Ludgate. As a one-time resident of the city, it seems to have been Geoffrey’s aim to locate the origins of London in a time before the Roman conquest, so that it ‘was no longer on the edge of an imperial history, but at the centre of its own narrative’ (Hollis, 2011, 31).

3.4   Seat of Power As elsewhere in western Europe, feudalism in England reached its zenith in the thirteenth century. The feudal dynamic which created the civilisation of the High Middle Ages was dependent upon the production of a growing agrarian surplus (Anderson, 1996, 182–190). This was achieved by increasing agricultural output, principally through expansion of the cultivated area as well as some selective improvements in farming techniques (Campbell, 2000, 411–430). The growing surplus sustained a tripling of both population and real national output in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Crucially, the distribution of real incomes became more unequal, as the aristocracy appropriated a rising share of the surplus at the expense of the peasantry, who suffered a severe decline in their living standards as rents and food prices rose (Barras, 2016, 108). It was the favourable combination of a growing agricultural surplus, rapid urban growth and burgeoning aristocratic and mercantile wealth that propelled hegemonic building in medieval towns and cities to its climax (Schofield, 1984, 37–79). The typical medieval city combined the functions of fortress, market and religious sanctuary, and its landscape of power was dominated by a distinctive ensemble of defensive walls, a castle, guild and market halls, a cathedral and a myriad of neighbourhood

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churches (Coldstream, 2002, 123–126). Just such a landscape of power was constructed on a grand scale in medieval London. The Norman Conquest triggered the start of an enormous building boom in England. In the first wave of monumental building, London was turned into a fortress city. Though under Norman control, the majority of the population, together with a significant element of the urban elite, remained English (Sawyer, 1998, 259). According to his chronicler Willian of Poitiers, the Conqueror made great efforts to fortify the city ‘to contain the restlessness of its vast and savage population’ (Chibnall, 1993, 153). The Roman city wall and gates were repaired, the White Tower was erected on the line of the eastern wall and two fortresses, Baynard’s Castle and Montfichet’s Tower, were built adjacent to the western wall, guarding the approach from Westminster. Two of the king’s followers were put in charge of the city’s defences: Geoffrey de Mandeville was responsible for the eastern defences, centred on the Tower; Ralph Bainard was given the western defences, centred on Baynard’s Castle (Green, 1997, 37–38). Control of London’s three castles had both military and symbolic value. They provided a fortified base for their occupants during the power struggles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and acted as a potent statement of royal and baronial domination of the city. Being the most formidable of the three, the Tower was kept under close royal control, with power delegated to a loyal Constable of the Tower. It is suggested that if the monarchy had lost permanent control of the Tower ‘it would have ceased to exist as an effective government’ (Clanchy, 2006, 106). As the defences around the Tower grew, it became apparent to Londoners that the most heavily fortified sections faced inwards to the city rather than looking outwards beyond the walls. This was a clear signal that the principal function of the castle was to subdue the rebellious instincts of the citizenry rather than deter foreign invasion (Vince, 1990, 39). The Tower has played a vital role in the history of the nation as well as of the city. During the struggle for the crown in the mid-twelfth century between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda, Geoffrey de Mandeville, grandson of the first Constable, initially held the Tower for Stephen, then switched allegiance to Matilda, and finally switched back again to Stephen (Brooke & Keir, 1975, 215–218). When the monarch took control of the city during moments of crisis in the thirteenth century, he delivered it into the control of the Constable (Keene, 2000a, 208). The Tower acted as a state prison and place of public execution, as well as fortress, providing the populace with a theatre of macabre spectacle (Impey & Parnell, 2011,

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91–95). Its first recorded prisoner was Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, imprisoned in 1100 for his opposition to the Conqueror’s son Henry I (Clanchy, 2006, 50); its last was Joseph Jakobs, a German spy, executed there in 1941 (Impey & Parnell, 2011, 123). Much less is known about the history of Baynard’s Castle and Montfichet’s Tower. The lords of Baynard Castle will have derived considerable status and authority from their hereditary leadership of the city’s militia. Early in the twelfth century, control of the castle passed from the Baynard family to the Clare family, who held it until the early thirteenth century. The most famous of the Clare dynasty to hold the castle was Robert fitz Walter, who became one of the leaders of the barons’ revolt against King John. As a punishment for his role in the rebellion, his castle and the associated Montfichet’s Tower were destroyed (Brooke & Keir, 1975, 53). The Norman castle is a classic example of the architecture of domination. It was an innovation associated with the rise of feudalism in tenthand eleventh-century France (Wickham, 2010, 517–519). The building had multiple functions—as military stronghold, seat of government, court of justice, command centre of the feudal economy and residence for a royal or aristocratic household. Following the Conquest, hundreds of castles were built across England to enforce the subjugation of the people, many of whom were conscripted for their construction (Pounds, 1990, 3–25). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is clear that William used these monumental buildings as a vital tool of colonisation. Its epitaph for the Conqueror was stark and simple (Swanton, 2000, 220): He had castles built and wretched men oppressed.

Castles were described more approvingly by the contemporary chronicler William of Newburgh as ‘the bones of the kingdom’, the physical embodiment of royal and magnate power in the Anglo-Norman state (Bartlett, 2000: 269). Great changes took place in the form and function of castles between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, illustrating how structural innovation interacts with the changing ideological demands of hegemonic building. This interaction can be charted through the successive stages of rebuilding and extension that transformed the Tower of London from Norman fortress to Plantagenet palace. It was a physical transformation

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that embodied the civilising process whereby the exercise of royal and aristocratic power shifted from the coercive to the consensual. The earliest form of castle consisted of a donjon, a usually wooden tower, protected by a surrounding ditch and bank surmounted by a timber palisade or stone wall, and entered through a fortified gatehouse. The whole structure would typically be erected upon an artificial mound known as a motte. The area inside the perimeter wall was known as the bailey and could contain ancillary buildings in addition to the donjon. Within the tower, a typical layout might comprise storerooms on the ground floor, living quarters, including hall, chapel and kitchen, on the first floor and sleeping chambers on the second floor (Allen Brown, 2004, 1–33). The most fundamental structural innovation in castle design was the replacement of the timber donjon by the great stone keeps that dominated the Norman landscape of power. These great towers were the most impressive secular buildings to have been constructed in Europe since Roman times (Goodall, 2011, 77–84). A typical tower keep was rectangular in plan, rising through three or four storeys to a height of 30 metres (100  feet) or more. Its defensive features included solid corner turrets and buttresses, small window openings, a protected first-floor entrance, massively thick external walls and an internal cross-wall to give structural strength. The main architectural flourishes were confined to arcades and windows in the great hall and chapel. Though it was principally a military structure, there were a few concessions to home comforts: window seats, fireplaces, latrines and even, exceptionally, a piped water supply (Allen Brown, 2004, 45–52). The White Tower in London (Photograph 3.1) was one of the largest and most imposing of the castle keeps constructed by the Normans (Fernie, 2000, 55–61). Building started in the late 1070s and was completed by the end of the 1090s. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1097 records that conscripted men from many shires were ‘badly afflicted through the wall which they constructed around the Tower’ (Swanton, 2000, 234). The finished building was a menacing presence in the city landscape. Construction of the Tower was supervised by Gundulf, Bishop of Rochester, who also built the castle and cathedral at Rochester (Brooke & Keir, 1975, 31). He had previously been involved in the construction of the Abbaye-aux-Hommes in Caen, the Conqueror’s chief building project before the White Tower. It was the quarries at Caen that provided much

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Photograph 3.1  Tower of London 1077–1285 (Source: Stills Press Stock Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

of the cut stone used to build the Tower. Set within an inner and outer bailey, the keep was roughly square in plan, with each of its three floors divided into three major apartments. The more public and ceremonial rooms were on the first floor and the more private and domestic rooms on the second floor (Impey & Parnell, 2011, 18). The massive unornamented chapel on the second floor, with its tunnel-vaulted nave and semi-circular apse, is ‘one of the most impressive pieces of Early Norman architecture in England’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 366). Although built primarily as a tool of occupation, the Tower was also designed from the outset to act as an occasional royal residence. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, there were further phases of structural innovation in castle building (Goodall, 2011, 125–195). In the twelfth century, it became normal practice to protect the keep by surrounding it with a curtain wall reinforced at intervals by projecting towers. Moving into the thirteenth century, peripheral structures such as gatehouses and wall towers became more prominent and imposing, in part to strengthen the defensive qualities of castles, but also in part to emphasise the status of their inhabitants. The typical Norman castle of the eleventh and twelfth centuries had been a forbidding and uncomfortable building, designed to function more effectively as a fortress than as a residence. However, as the threat of insurrection faded, and the political situation

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became more settled, the function of castles shifted from the military to the domestic, with greater emphasis placed on comfort and convenience. It was not until the reign of Henry III, the great Plantagenet patron of the arts and architecture, that the transformation of the Tower of London from fortress to fortified palace really got underway (Allen Brown et al., 1963b, 710–715). Between the 1220s and 1260s, he oversaw a long building programme that included improving the domestic accommodation, refortifying the inner bailey and extending the outer bailey to the north and east by a curtain wall with flanking towers. Prompted by a current European fashion, he had the Tower whitewashed in 1240 to create a dazzling vision of royal power for all the world to see. More bizarre was the establishment of a royal menagerie within the castle to house exotic beasts received by the king as diplomatic gifts; these included lions, a polar bear and an elephant. However, despite making the living quarters more comfortable and the grounds more entertaining, Henry did not use the Tower as a regular royal residence. He only retreated to it as a refuge in times of crisis, particularly during the baronial revolt led by Simon de Montfort in the 1260s (Carpenter, 1994). These works were followed by a more intensive ten-year building programme, between 1275 and 1285, under Henry’s son Edward I (Allen Brown et al., 1963b, 715–723). He surrounded his father’s curtain wall with an outer wall and moat, creating a fully concentric fortress with an elaborate western entrance that was as much an ideological as military statement. Entry to the great fortress from the city started with a causeway over the moat leading to a massive semi-circular barbican, defended by two gates and a drawbridge, in turn leading to a sequence of two twin-­ towered gatehouses, each defended by a drawbridge, gate and two portcullises. Anyone approaching the castle, whether friend or foe, was left in no doubt as to the power they were confronting, a power that derived from the ascendancy of the Plantagenet dynasty and the wealth of the feudal economy that sustained it. The traditional view of the function of medieval castles has recently come under attack (Coulson, 2003). The argument is that their military function has been overstated because they were only occasionally employed in warfare, and many were never threatened by attack at all (Liddiard, 2005, 72–78). In contrast, they were regularly used for peaceful domestic and administrative purposes. Castles should therefore be viewed as symbolic expressions of royal and aristocratic status as much as statements of martial intent. In other words, their function was hegemonic as much as

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coercive, expressing the ideology as well as the threat of feudal power: ‘whereas violence was recurrent, social emulation was constant’ (Coulson, 1979, 77). In support of this argument, it can be seen that the Tower of London functioned as an ideological symbol of state power from its inception. Even under the Normans, control of the Tower was as much a political as a military objective for different fractions of the feudal ruling class as they jockeyed for supremacy. Its symbolic value was further enhanced by its Plantagenet transformation into a lavish, if only occasionally occupied, royal palace. As the Middle Ages progressed, the ideology of the castle mutated into a nostalgic mythology embodying ‘the moeurs of chivalry, the life-style of the great, and the legends of the past’ (Coulson, 1979, 74). Within a century of its construction, the Tower had acquired its own particular mythology. In the 1170s, it was described by William fitz Stephen as ‘great and strong with encircling walls rising from a deep foundation and built with mortar tempered with the blood of beasts’. This fanciful image relates to the mortar having acquired a reddish stain through mixing in the crushed Roman bricks and tiles found on the site (Jones, 2011, 13). These Roman remains fed a mythology that the Tower was an ancient fortress originally built by Julius Caesar, a heritage symbolised by the image of wild animals being slaughtered in the arena (Schofield, 1984, 4). Three miles to the west of the Tower, there arose the Palace of Westminster, another great symbol of royal power, but one that spoke more clearly of consent rather than coercion. It was in Westminster rather than the Tower that England’s kings preferred to reside when in London. The Palace offered far more spacious and comfortable accommodation than the cramped and forbidding Tower, and was surrounded by far less noisy and threatening neighbours. Yet these two great buildings complemented one another. The Tower presented the malign face of royal power, acting as its fortress and its prison. Westminster presented the benign face; it was where kings lived in splendour, dispensed their justice and held their parliaments (Goodall, 2000). William fitz Stephen provides a bucolic description of the Thames-side setting of the Palace in the late twelfth century: ‘the royal palace rises on the bank, a building of the greatest splendour with outwork and bastions. Everywhere without their houses are the citizens’ gardens, side by side yet spacious and splendid, and set about with trees’ (Brooke & Keir, 1975, 115). However, even the benign face of royal power needed some protection in the turbulent Middle Ages. Though the previous palace erected by

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Edward the Confessor was soon swept away, the Norman kings retained his chosen location on Thorney Island as the site for their replacement. To reinforce this defensible position, they protected their palace with high stone walls and gates. In its final form, the layout comprised three courtyards, with progression through the outer and middle courts providing the means of approach to the inner court where the royal apartments were situated (Thomas et al., 2006, 157–161). Rebuilding of the complex seems to have started with the Conqueror’s third son, William Rufus, who constructed the Great Hall towards the end of the eleventh century. It is probable that early in the twelfth century his younger brother Henry I added a Lesser Hall to the south, which may have been built on the site of the Confessor’s hall. Between the two halls lay the chapel of St Stephen. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the complex was progressively expanded around the inner court, with royal apartments that included the king’s chamber, the queen’s chamber, the queen’s chapel and the prince’s palace (Thomas et al., 2006, 162–166). From the twelfth century onwards, the palace was used to accommodate the main institutions of state, while from the thirteenth century it housed the regular assemblies of Parliament. The Exchequer and Treasury were moved into palace buildings, the Lords generally met in the Lesser Hall, while the Commons met in a variety of locations, including in the refectory and chapter house of the Abbey. Rebuilding and extension of the palace continued right up to the Tudor period, when Henry VIII moved the principal royal residence to Whitehall Palace, leaving Westminster to function as the seat of Parliament (Thomas et al., 2006, 157). The buildings in the Palace of Westminster were famed throughout Europe for their lavish display. The king’s chamber became known as the Painted Chamber after Henry III had its walls richly decorated with biblical scenes to enhance its splendour (Allen Brown et al., 1963a, 494–500). St Stephen’s Chapel was rebuilt between 1292 and 1363 as a rival to Sainte Chapelle, the royal chapel of the French kings in Paris built by Henry’s brother-in-law Louis IX (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 228). St Stephen’s was designed as a double chapel, the lower of which still survives. The carved woodwork and stonework, the stained glass and the painted decoration were all of the highest quality: ‘every available surface was painted, gilded, diapered or stencilled’ (Allen Brown et  al., 1963a, 510–527). Under Edward III, the chapel was decorated with motifs of lions and fleurs-de-lis, a propaganda message in support of the king’s claim to rule over both England and France, a claim he was pursuing in the

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interminable and ultimately fruitless Hundred Years War (Prestwich, 2005, 45). Most striking of the survivals from the medieval palace is Rufus’s magnificent Great Hall (Photograph 3.2). Built between 1097 and 1099, it is ‘by far the largest Norman hall in England, and may well be the largest of its date in Europe’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 212). The enormous size of the hall suggests its purpose was symbolic as much as functional; when some of his courtiers suggested it was too large, Rufus reportedly replied that ‘it was not half large enough’ (Allen Brown et al., 1963a, 45). The Great Hall acted as the ceremonial centre of the Anglo-Norman kingdom, used for banquets attended by all the magnates in the land and for ceremonies of state designed to demonstrate the power and majesty of the ruling dynasty. It was also the cradle of the English legal system, acting as the location for the earliest courts of law (Prestwich, 2005, 60–61). Westminster Hall was laid out more like a church than a domestic hall; it was a secular cathedral for the worship of power (Collins et al., 2012). There was a processional entrance through the northern door, facing the

Photograph 3.2  Westminster Hall 1097–1401 (Source: Adam Woolfitt/Alamy Stock Photo)

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dais at the southern end on which stood a marble throne and a marble table, secular equivalents of a bishop’s throne and high altar. Henry III had the throne made in imitation of King Solomon’s throne in his Jerusalem palace, as described in the Bible. Its design also echoed that of the emperors’ throne in Byzantium and Charlemagne’s throne in Aachen. Henry was seeking to associate himself with both Solomonic wisdom and imperial power. The king’s throne and high table together acted as ‘the focus and symbol of English monarchy, serving particular roles in coronation feasts and in the development of the law courts’ (Collins et  al., 2012, 197). Three centuries after its construction, the Great Hall was remodelled for Richard II by his master mason Henry Yevele, one of those elite craftsmen who were effectively the architects of the age (Allen Brown et  al., 1963a, 527–533). Between 1394 and 1401 the hall was crowned with an extraordinary hammerbeam roof that has earned it a second superlative as ‘probably the finest timber-framed building in Europe’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 230). To rival the display in the royal Palais de la Cité in Paris, the walls were adorned with statues of former kings: ‘Richard was entering the competition of international court culture’ (Collins et  al., 2012, 206). Competitive emulation of the French monarchy was a recurrent obsession of the Plantagenet dynasty.

3.5  Between Heaven and Earth Nowhere is the influence of medieval French culture on English arts and architecture more apparent than in Westminster Abbey. Sister monument to the neighbouring Palace, this pair of buildings was the ultimate embodiment of the medieval interpenetration of state and church power. Both were physically and functionally separate from their hegemonic equivalents within the City of London, St Paul’s and the Tower. The Abbey’s separation was formalised in 1220 when it was freed from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London and directly affiliated with the papacy in Rome (Binski, 1995, 10). When the Normans overthrew the Old English kingdom, they inherited an already completed abbey church, planned by the saintly Edward the Confessor as his burial place. To create a suitably majestic mausoleum, Edward adopted the distinctive Romanesque style of architecture he had become familiar with when in exile in Normandy (Conant, 1978, 442–454). The resultant design echoed that of the near-contemporary

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abbey of Jumièges close to Rouen, probably reflecting the influence of Robert, Abbot of Jumièges, who was appointed Bishop of London in 1044 (Summerson, 2019, 31). In a classic exercise in competitive emulation, the English king built a church that exceeded in length any of its surviving equivalents in northern France (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 110–111). By the time Edward’s abbey church was under construction, church building in western Europe had already evolved through seven centuries of structural innovation. Each phase of innovation was driven by both functional and symbolic imperatives; each new built form denoted a new liturgical requirement and at the same time connoted a new version of the Christian message. The symbolism of church architecture became especially complex and hierarchical, assigning separate signifiers to different parts of the structure according to their religious meaning and liturgical purpose (Lukken & Searle, 1993). Starting in the fourth century AD, the Western church, led from Rome, had adopted the ancient Roman basilica as its basic built form (Stalley, 1999, 17–29). This flexible structure could be adapted as the Christian liturgy evolved (Doig, 2008). Functionally, it offered a clear separation between the baptised congregation occupying the central nave, those yet to be baptised confined to the flanking aisles, the clergy officiating at the high altar in the sanctuary at the end of the nave, and the bishop enthroned on the raised terminal apse. Over time, it became the norm to add projecting transepts at right angles to the nave, separating it from an eastern chancel containing the choir and presbytery where services were performed. The addition of transepts was partly for the functional purpose of accommodating additional altars, as congregations increased in size, and partly for the symbolic effect of creating a cruciform plan in the shape of the Latin cross (Stalley, 1999, 43–45). As the centuries passed, the church became motivated by the imperative to build higher, not only to symbolise its bridge between heaven and earth but also to proclaim its power and wealth at the spiritual apex of the feudal order. During the Carolingian era in the ninth century, the vertical impact of church buildings was increased by adding twin towers to their western façade and a central tower over the crossing between nave and transepts (Stalley, 1999, 45–53). Functionally, the towers allowed the ringing of bells to be heard far and wide; symbolically, they offered a signpost to St Augustine’s City of God.

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During the Romanesque era in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, flat timber roofs were replaced by semi-circular stone vaults. Romanesque churches were imbued with a monumentality that reflected the strong influence surviving Roman buildings exerted upon the masons of the Middle Ages. The stone vault was the most important structural innovation that they imported from Antiquity, but they became much more adventurous in its use than the Roman engineers, vaulting over ever larger roof spans. The imperative was again partly functional, to reduce the risk of fire and improve acoustics, and partly symbolic, to evoke a celestial vision of paradise (Stalley, 1999: 130–44). Built between c.1050 and 1065, Edward’s abbey church combined all but one of these structural innovations. The piers of the arcades delineated a short chancel of two bays ending in an apse, short transepts with side chapels, and a long twelve-bay nave. A central tower was placed over the crossing and a pair was added at the west end. However, the church was reportedly covered by a timber roof, stone vaulting not becoming commonplace until later in the eleventh century (Allen Brown et  al., 1963a, 14–17). Following the Conquest, Edward’s abbey, and especially his tomb, became an object of veneration, which intensified after his canonisation in 1161 (Mason, 1990, 201). In the mid-thirteenth century an admiring writer observed of the abbey that ‘The work rises grand and royal’ (Allen Brown et al., 1963a, 15). However, it was not grand and royal enough for that inveterate builder Henry III, whose ambitious cultural programme was to transform London into a Christian capital in the mould of Paris, Rome and Jerusalem (Keene, 2000a, 214). To this end, he decided to rebuild the Abbey as a shrine for the royal saint and a coronation church and burial place for the royal dynasty (Binski, 1995). Once more an English king turned to France for his architectural inspiration, this time employing the Gothic style that had been developed in the Île-de-France over the previous century. He drew particular inspiration from the cathedral at Reims, the coronation church of the kings of France, with which Henry’s master mason Henry of Reyns had a particular connection (Wilson, 2008, 79). The great Gothic churches of the thirteenth century represent the summit of medieval church-building. This was a golden age for hegemonic building, when the feudal economy had reached its zenith, when the church was at its wealthiest and most powerful, when building technology was enjoying rapid advance, and when a great intellectual upheaval was

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unleashed by the Scholastic school of medieval philosophers as they endeavoured to reconcile faith and reason through the teachings of Christian doctrine and Greek philosophy (McGrath, 2012, 59–70). All of these tendencies coalesced to create a sublime architecture that fashioned great churches to be a representation of supernatural reality, a symbolic vision of the kingdom of God on earth (von Simson, 1989, xvii–xxiii). Whereas Romanesque churches were sombre and crepuscular, even forbidding, Gothic churches were light, even transcendental. The transformation was made possible by a series of structural innovations, first introduced towards the end of the eleventh century, and subsequently combined to create a Gothic synthesis that was perfected in a sequence of cathedrals built in the Île-de-France from the middle of the twelfth century (Bony, 1983). These pioneering buildings created nothing less than a new visual language for architecture (Coldstream, 2002, 30–53). The Gothic transformation was a response to the problems posed by the extreme weight of Romanesque masonry vaults, which imposed a severe lateral thrust on the walls of a church. To support the vault, the walls had to be massively thick, they could only be pierced by small windows, and they had to be reinforced by attached buttresses. Three innovations were introduced to overcome these limitations (Wilson, 2000, 14–24). First, adopting a form copied from Islamic architecture, the lateral thrust on the walls was reduced by changing the shape of the vault from a semi-circular to a pointed profile. Second, the technique of rib vaulting with lighter infill was developed to reduce the overall weight of the vault. Third, it was found that the vault could more effectively be supported by flying rather than attached buttresses, with the thrust transmitted downwards through detached masonry arches. Necessary though they were, these structural innovations were the means to an end, not an end in themselves. Medieval architects were more concerned about the iconography of their churches than about their construction technology (Krautheimer, 1942). The new Gothic structures enabled the medieval mason to build higher and wider with less stonework, creating a more integrated and better-lit interior, with slender columns and vast windows (Scott, 2011, 103–120). This uninterrupted interior provided the stage for theatrical processions down the church from west to east, through liturgical spaces that were increasingly sacred, crowned by soaring vaults that raised the eyes of the congregation to heaven (Draper, 2006, 206–215). As observed by François Villeman, an eighteenth-century canon of Amiens Cathedral, the upward-lifting force

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of the Gothic church had the transcendental purpose of ‘exciting the soul and detaching it from the earth to carry it up to heaven, attaching it to God’ (Murray, 2020, 344). Aesthetics as well as symbolism motivated the medieval architect. Luminosity and proportion were the essence of the Gothic vision, in accord with the medieval ideal of beauty derived by scholastic philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas from the ideas of Plato and St Augustine (von Simson, 1989, 21–58). Light and colour permeated the interior, with stained glass windows providing a far more vivid medium for displaying biblical narratives than the frescoes that had adorned the solid walls of earlier churches. In contrast to the dimly lit mystery of those interiors, Gothic builders wanted to create the impression of a divine light penetrating their churches through walls of glass; their central idea was that God is light (Duby, 1981, 99–100). Lightness of illumination was matched by lightness of structure. Surface decoration was subordinated to the architectural skeleton, to the linear framework created by the ribs of the vaults and the shafts of the columns. The ‘geometry of aesthetics’ mattered greatly to the Gothic builder (Frankl, 2000, 50). There is a strong feeling of harmony and order in Gothic churches, which derives in part from the use of fixed geometric ratios in their design to achieve a Vitruvian sense of symmetry and proportion (Coldstream, 2002, 65–71). It is not only the major dimensions that were based on a geometric module; in order to create an organic whole, the principle was applied to subordinate structural members, such as column shafts or window tracery. By this means, the observer should be able to infer ‘the organization of the whole system from the cross section of one pier’ (Panofsky, 1957, 51). The hierarchical structure of the cathedral signified the hierarchical structure of feudal society: as its towers ‘grazed the vault of Heaven’, so those at the tip of the social pyramid ‘rubbed shoulders with divinity’ (Lefebvre, 1991, 267). When the Gothic revolution reached England towards the end of the twelfth century, it swiftly evolved into a distinctive national style known as Early English (Wilson, 2000, 160–178). This differs from French Gothic in two key respects. The first concerns the form of the chancel, determining the way that the space is lit. English church designers favoured squared-­ off chancels, allowing for a great east window to flood the choir with light. French designers adopted the chevet plan, consisting of an ambulatory around the main apse surrounded by a circuit of radiating chapels, the windows of which create the effect of a continuous band of light. The

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second difference concerns the aesthetic balance between the horizontal and the vertical. While French Gothic design emphasises the vertical, favouring tall narrow naves, Early English strives to achieve a harmonious balance between the two. The internal elevation of arcade, gallery, clerestory and vault forms strongly differentiated horizontal bands to offset the vertical thrust of the piers and the lancet windows. This distinctive form of English Gothic can be seen as one manifestation of a wider sense of emerging national identity feeding a sense of national exceptionalism (Draper, 2006, 233–249). The Norman aristocracy was coming to see itself as English not French, English was becoming the nation’s common language, a distinctive English common law was being codified, the growing authority of Parliament was starting to transform national politics, and England was developing as a military power with the capacity to challenge France (Prestwich, 2005, 554–60). However, Henry III’s Westminster Abbey was the exception to English exceptionalism. Once more in the spirit of competitive emulation, it was an English interpretation of an essentially French building for an English ideological purpose (Wilson, 2000, 178–182). Its east end is structured on a French chevet plan, while the body of the church exhibits the tall, narrow proportions favoured in France, creating an interior height greater than that in any other medieval English church (Photograph 3.3). In the French style, two tiers of flying buttresses support the nave walls, while the windows incorporate tracery copied from Reims and Sainte-Chapelle (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 111–113). At Westminster, the most striking devices of the Gothic style—the towering vaults, the blazing glass, the exquisite furnishings—were specifically deployed to identify the majesty of the Plantagenet dynasty on earth with the majesty of God in heaven. It was a quintessentially hegemonic building, created to promote an ideological tradition of sacred kingship crowning the divinely established social order. The shrine of St Edward provided the ideal focus for such a tradition, while the decorative and narrative motifs displayed within the church were chosen to reinforce the mythical sense of that tradition (Binski, 1995, 52–89). The Confessor was transformed from revered predecessor into timeless symbol of English kingship. Inside and out, the Abbey was adorned with statues of saints and carvings of heraldic shields that linked Henry to both his heavenly and worldly realms. Reflecting the Abbey’s affiliation to the papacy, Roman as well as French influences were strong. Surrounding the saint’s golden shrine, and paving the floor before it, were Cosmati mosaics of stone and glass in the

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Photograph 3.3  Westminster Abbey 1245–1534 (Source: parkerphotography/ Alamy Stock photo)

imperial tradition. Extensive decorative use of Purbeck marble also had historical resonance, evoking the physical expression of more ancient forms of power (Binski, 1995, 46–47). Henry’s son, Edward I, steered the ideological imagery away from the sacred towards the nationalistic. He furnished Edward’s shrine with trophies from his conquests in Wales and Scotland—the Cross of Neith and Crown of Arthur, insignia of Welsh kings, and the Stone of Scone, the coronation stone of Scottish kings. By incorporating these symbols of an ancient past into the Westminster coronation ceremony, Edward was signifying that the kings of England had become kings of Britain (Binski, 1995, 135). Work on rebuilding the Abbey started in 1245 and proceeded so rapidly that within fifteen years the eastern arm, transepts and crossing were all complete. By the time of Henry’s death in 1272, the first four bays of the planned twelve-bay nave were also complete (Allen Brown et  al., 1963a, 130–157). The complexity of the architecture and the sumptuousness of its finishes made the abbey the most expensive of England’s great medieval churches. Spread over the construction period of twenty-eight

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years, the average costs of this hubristic project consumed as much as 5 per cent of annual crown income (Barras, 2016, 193–195). It was ‘the most lavish act of architectural patronage by a single individual in the history of Western Europe during the central Middle Ages’ (Wilson, 2008, 59). However, once the king died, the hegemonic imperative died with him, so that the funding to finish the remainder of the project was much reduced. It took another two hundred and fifty years for the nave, west front and vaulting to be completed (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 113–114).

3.6  A Christian Landscape Across London, within the walled city, the cathedral of St Paul’s was following a broadly similar development trajectory to that of the abbey at Westminster, though one that was more constrained by the availability of resources and driven by a different hegemonic imperative. If competitive emulation of a rival royal dynasty was the imperative for the rebuilding of the abbey, assertion of the primacy of London amongst English cities was the imperative for the redevelopment of St Paul’s. When the Normans occupied London, they took over an Anglo-Saxon cathedral that probably dated back to the tenth century. Just twenty years after the Conquest, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for 1087 reports that ‘the holy minster of St Paul, the bishop’s seat in London, burned down, and many other minsters and the largest part—and the finest—of all the town…Alas! a pitiful and tearful time it was that year, which brought forth so many misfortunes’ (Swanton, 2000, 218). This calamity provided the Norman invaders with the opportunity to rebuild the holy minster in their favoured Romanesque style (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 155–157). A large part of the Norman building was completed by the 1120s, when the historian William of Malmesbury makes reference to its great size and magnificent decoration. However, progress to completion was slow, due to shortages of funds and the damage caused by another fire in the 1130s, so that the church was not finally consecrated until 1241. The completed building was impressive in size but conservative in its design, which was derived from that of the abbey of St Étienne in Caen, Normandy. It had a twelve-bay nave and a crossing tower, the same as the Confessor’s abbey at Westminster, but a longer four- or five-­ bay choir and larger five-bay transepts than the abbey, and no substantial western towers, unlike the abbey. The church was vaulted in the later

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twelfth or early thirteenth century, an innovation which had been developed too late for adoption at Westminster (Schofield, 2011a, 89). Not long after its completion, work began to rebuild the Romanesque east end of St Paul’s in the Gothic style (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 157). This Gothic ‘New Work’ was started in 1259, most likely as a competitive response to Henry III’s rebuilding of the eastern part of the abbey, which was just reaching completion. Whereas that rebuilding took only fifteen years, the work at St Paul’s proceeded much more slowly, taking over fifty years to complete. Clearly, the resources available to a diocese of middle-­ ranking wealth could not match those deployed by a monarchy motivated by dynastic ambition and sacred purpose. Nevertheless, the rebuilding of the cathedral was an ambitious project, remodelling and extending the choir to a length of twelve bays (Schofield, 2011a, 62). As at Westminster, the New Work at St Paul’s combined French and English Gothic traditions, but in a spirit of architectural rivalry St Paul’s was more firmly grounded in the Early English style. The choir was much broader and squared off at the east end, in contrast to the abbey’s chevet, and a further English feature was the tall spire that surmounted the crossing tower. However, French influences were apparent in the window tracery, and in particular in a great rose window in the east wall, inspired by the windows of Notre-Dame in Paris. As befitted the status of London in the national and European urban hierarchy, Old St Paul’s was the largest cathedral in England, longer than Winchester and taller than Salisbury, and one of the largest in Europe (Schofield, 2011a, 140). Its length was 178 metres (585 feet), compared to the 98 metres (322 feet) of the Confessor’s Westminster Abbey and the 156 metres (511 feet) of Henry III’s Abbey. To the top of the spire, it was 149 metres (489 feet) high. It is suggested that its interior space was so extensive it could have accommodated perhaps half of all the City’s parish churches (Keene, 2000b, 96). Standing on top of Ludgate Hill, this huge structure, crowned by its elegant spire, dominated the City skyline. It was the tallest building erected in London before the BT Tower was completed in 1964. Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, the precinct around the cathedral was fortified by a high stone wall, within which a great complex of auxiliary buildings grew up (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 157–158). These included a chapter house, cloister, bishop’s palace, deanery and college of canons, together with a chapel dedicated to Thomas Becket, born in the shadow of the cathedral and adopted by Londoners as their patron

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saint after his martyrdom in Canterbury. It was as if the City of God was being transplanted into the heart of the commercial city. However, this sacred world had to share the precinct with a profane world of shopkeepers, moneyers and prostitutes, and even the body of the cathedral itself became a gathering place for the city’s traders and lawyers (Keene, 2004, 20–27). Just as Westminster embodied the interpenetration of state and church power, so the City symbolised the commingling of commercial and church power. St Paul’s itself was the centre of economic as well as religious activity. Responsibility for the upkeep of the cathedral estate was shared between the bishop and an independent chapter of canons lead by the dean. In addition to their manorial estates in the counties around London, the dean and chapter were major landowners within the city itself. In 1086, their London property portfolio yielded only 9 per cent of their total rental income; by 1535, the share had increased to 32 per cent. As well as places of worship, parish churches were pieces of real estate that generated rental income and could be used as security to raise loan finance. The canons of St Paul’s had substantial interests in twenty-four parish churches across the city in the twelfth century, around a fifth of the total and far more than any other patron of London’s churches (Keene, 2004, 29–30). The cathedral was just one of several wealthy ecclesiastical landlords in London. Extensive landholdings were accumulated by the various monastic orders resident in the city (Schofield, 2011b, 177–180), in particular friaries such as the Dominicans (Blackfriars) rented out properties within their large precincts (Holder, 2017, 298–304). In its various manifestations the church was the largest landowner in the city. In 1312, the mayor and aldermen complained that religious landlords received a third of the city’s rental income but paid nothing towards the upkeep of its walls and defences. By the start of the English Reformation in 1530, it is estimated that approaching two-thirds of city land may have been owned by the church in one form or another (Inwood, 1998, 144). The conspicuous investment of ecclesiastical wealth in fine church buildings created a profound contradiction. The grander the structures and the more sumptuous their decoration, the more they spoke of the wealth and power of the church rather than its spirituality (Mumford, 1966, 364–367). The house of God looked more and more like a palace of kings. As in most medieval cities, the cathedral of St Paul’s stood out from the rest of the urban landscape of London through its sheer scale and mass

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Photograph 3.4  Old St Paul’s 1087–1312 (Source: Hilary Morgan/Alamy Stock Photo)

(Photograph 3.4). Only the Tower had a comparable presence. The constellation of far more modestly sized parish churches that surrounded the cathedral achieved their hegemonic effect through their collective rather than their individual impact (Schofield, 1984, 111–115). Right across the city, the Christian landscape of power was dominated by church towers and spires, each and every one pointing up to heaven. Narrow and twisting streets blocked horizontal vistas, reinforcing the upward gaze. Steeples rose ‘in hierarchic rank, over all the lesser symbols of earthly wealth and power…From almost any part of the city, the admonitory fingers of the spires, archangelic swords, tipped with gold, were visible: if hidden for a moment, they would suddenly appear as the roofs parted, with the force of a blast of trumpets’ (Mumford, 1966, 321). This was the claustrophobic stage on which the rituals of medieval life, both sacred and profane, were played out in the city. In the late twelfth century, the medieval City of London contained as many as 120 parish churches, serving no more than 40,000 souls (Schofield, 1994, 41). Of that total, twenty-seven were probably or certainly established by 1100, while a few will have been Anglo-Saxon

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foundations, as will a few churches located to the west of the City, clustered around the mid-Saxon settlement of Lundenwic (Vince, 1990, 62–75). The majority of London’s parish churches seem therefore to have been Norman foundations (Brooke & Keir, 1975, 129). The Conquest had unleashed a great wave of ecclesiastical building. William of Malmesbury saw ‘in every village, town and city churches and monasteries rising in a new style of architecture’, and attributed the trend to the arrival of the Normans who ‘breathed new life into religious standards’ (Brown, 2003, 92). The interpenetration of church and commercial power spread down to the local level. Parish churches were an integral part of civic life, as much community centres as places of worship. Most of London’s parish churches seem to have been proprietary churches, founded by private householders or by neighbourhood communities (Brooke & Keir, 1975, 131–136). They were used to house tombs, monuments and chapels dedicated to prominent citizens. Many guilds or fraternities were associated with a local parish church, typically using it as their meeting hall (Schofield, 1994, 77–78). Fraternities or wealthy individuals would provide a stream of income dedicated to the upkeep and beautification of their local church (Thrupp, 1962, 34–38). Wealthy oligarchs created dynastic territories within the city, with their property holdings clustered around their principal residence, and the local parish church serving as the administrative centre of their estate (Keene, 2000a, 206). In a variety of ways, these parish churches became a powerful force in the articulation of neighbourhood identity (Keene, 2000b, 95). London’s post-Conquest landscape of Christian power survived for six centuries. Then, in September 1666, catastrophe struck. The Great Fire of London destroyed or badly damaged as many as eighty-five of the city’s medieval churches; Old St Paul’s itself was totally destroyed. The Great Fire is one of those unique events that have shaped the course of London’s building history. Out of the ruins of the old medieval landscape, Christopher Wren created a new religious landscape (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 73–87). He rebuilt St Paul’s as the nation’s first great Protestant cathedral and surrounded it with fifty-one parish churches rebuilt in his trademark Baroque style (Campbell, 2007). This new Protestant landscape of power remained intact for a further three centuries before a second conflagration, the Luftwaffe blitz of London in 1940/41, destroyed twenty-three of the remaining forty-nine City churches—though this time St Paul’s survived

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(Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 125). Since then, the remainder of that religious landscape has been steadily submerged beneath a new and very different landscape created by the power of finance capital. In another cycle of creative destruction, the old landscape of power has been submerged within the new.

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CHAPTER 4

Royal Domain

4.1   Great Halls While medieval Westminster was a royal domain, the medieval City and its suburbs were an aristocratic as well as a commercial domain. But when the Tudors established their post-medieval dynasty, they transformed the whole city into a royal domain. Like the Romano-British aristocracy before them, the Anglo-Norman aristocracy had felt the need to own a townhouse or inn in London to complement their estates in the countryside. In every age, the aristocracy have used their London townhouses as a base from which to pursue their political interests, attend to their business affairs, socialise with their peers and indulge their taste for conspicuous consumption. If the countryside was the source of their wealth, the city was their playground, their theatre of display. William fitz Stephen noted in the later twelfth century that more and more of the leading magnates and churchmen of Norman England were acquiring fine houses in London, and that ‘in them they live and spend largely, when they are summoned to great councils by the king or by their metropolitan, or drawn thither by their private affairs’ (Chibnall, 1993, 154). In other words, while engaging in church and state affairs, they were living in a style that befitted their rank and status.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Barras, Monumental London, Palgrave Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38403-5_4

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As well as providing a noble household with a London residence and place for feasting and entertainment, aristocratic inns had an economic function. They served as offices in which the lord’s business was transacted, and warehouses in which his tradeable goods were stored, for example, wool produced on his manorial estates. As centres of conspicuous consumption, it was also necessary that they provide secure storage for the valuable luxury goods such as wine, tapestries, furs and plate used by the household. The typical aristocratic household would set aside a room within their house to act as a garderobe or wardrobe for storing such goods, while the wealthiest families would acquire separate buildings for the purpose. Having no permanent base within the City, apart from the Tower, the royal family established a network of elaborate wardrobes that acted not only as storage facilities but also as grand residences (Barron, 2017, 427–434). The first aristocratic townhouses in London can be dated back to the mid-twelfth century inns occupied by abbots and bishops drawn from wealthy foundations across the country. By 1300 there were over forty such ecclesiastical houses in London, but thereafter only a few more were added to the total. In contrast, the number of inns occupied by lay magnates started to increase from the mid-thirteenth century, in response to growing political demands for their presence in London, whether to attend sessions of Parliament or meetings of the king’s council (Barron, 2017, 434–435). The houses of the lay nobility were more heavily concentrated within the densely populated City, whereas the ecclesiastical nobility tended to favour more tranquil suburban locations, particularly in the western suburb along Holborn and the Strand, linking the City to Westminster. At the heart of the typical aristocratic inn of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries was a first-floor hall built over a vaulted cellar or undercroft for the storage of goods (Scofield 1984, 52–56). This was an adaptation for the urban realm of a long-established form of aristocratic dwelling. Stretching back to the Anglo-Saxon era, the great hall had acted as the public theatre of aristocratic life (Thompson, 1995). It was where the lord consulted his advisers, commanded his retainers and entertained his guests. As the form and function of the great hall evolved through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it provided the setting for the civilising process that was transforming aristocratic life from brutality to courtliness (Reeve, 2011).

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The most lavish of the first generation of medieval London townhouses were built for the higher clergy. One such was the palace built for the Archbishop of Canterbury, the nation’s leading prelate, situated in Lambeth on the other side of the Thames from the Palace of Westminster. The archbishops occupied the site from the late twelfth century and developed a complex comprising an imposing gatehouse leading to a great hall, chapel and residence grouped around ranges of cloisters. The oldest surviving part of the structure is the undercroft of the chapel, built in the early thirteenth century in the Early English style of Gothic (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 342–345). Equally grand was Ely Place, the townhouse of the Bishops of Ely, built in the late thirteenth century to the north-west of the City on Holborn. Again, the complex comprised a gatehouse, great hall, chapel and cloister, together with private gardens that included vineyards (Schofield, 1995, 191–192). Only the chapel survives, now acting as the Catholic church of St Etheldreda. In his Survey of London, published in 1598, the Tudor historian and antiquarian John Stow observes that the house was notable ‘for the large and commodious rooms’ in which ‘divers great and solemn feasts have been kept’ (Stow, 2005, 326). Nearby on Holborn were also to be found the inns of the Bishops of Lincoln and Chichester. The most popular suburban location for ecclesiastical inns was along the Strand, which allowed each to have an extensive garden stretching down to the Thames (Schofield 2011, 65). Here, on the ceremonial route between the City and Westminster, the Bishops of Exeter, Bath and Wells, Llandaff, Chester and Worcester were close neighbours, while the Bishops of Carlisle, Norwich and Durham resided a little further west at Charing Cross, as did the Archbishop of York at York Place (Lobel, 1989). During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the focus of building activity moved back into the City, where there was a surge in the building of townhouses for the lay aristocracy. This new vintage of houses was typically constructed on a courtyard plan, entered through a range of buildings fronting on to the street. Facing the main entrance, at the rear of the courtyard, were the principal buildings, including the great hall. Courtyard houses laid out around a great hall were becoming the favoured aristocratic residence in both town and country, superseding the more heavily fortified dwellings of the immediate post-Conquest era. It was a form of dwelling which offered both flexibility and order, capable of accommodating the increasing size and departmentalisation of aristocratic households (Mertes, 1988, 218).

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From the outside, these London courtyard houses were not especially imposing. The message they projected was of defence rather than display. Though they were not truly fortified buildings, the incorporation of gatehouses and towers into their structure seemingly offered a degree of protection from the depredations of the unruly populace swarming through the surrounding streets (Schofield, 1995, 36). Whilst the wealth and status of the feudal nobility was displayed through the exterior appearance of their country houses, in the city their display was confined to the richly furnished interiors of their townhouses. They were a shell ‘into which the lord emptied his treasures and then displayed them’ (Barron, 2017, 438). One of the grandest of the aristocratic townhouses within the City was Coldharbour on Upper Thames Street (Schofield, 1995, 217–218). In the later fourteenth century, it was substantially rebuilt by Alice Perrers, mistress of Edward III. Largely through her own commercial acumen, this remarkable woman had accumulated an extensive property portfolio across the country that approached the size of an earl’s estate (Bothwell, 1998). After her fall, Coldharbour remained in royal or noble occupation throughout the fifteenth century, finally succumbing to the Great Fire in 1666 (Harding, 1980, 20–23). This palatial courtyard house incorporated over twenty rooms, including a great hall, little hall, two great chambers, several other chambers and a chapel. The luxury of the accommodation is best demonstrated by its furnishings, which included the glazing of the windows with expensive glass from Normandy, the Rhineland and Venice. By the fourteenth century, wealthy London merchants were also building substantial houses for their families in the City, emulating the townhouses of the nobility. One such was the draper Sir John Pulteney, who accumulated great wealth through money lending, counting Edward III amongst his debtors, served four times as Mayor of London, and owned thirteen manors in seven counties (Miller & Hatcher, 1995, 234, 352). He owned two London mansions. One on Upper Thames Street, also confusingly named Coldharbour House, was rented out by Pulteney in his lifetime to the Earl of Hereford and Essex (Harding, 1980, 17). The other was his own residence, Pountney’s Inn, which was subsequently occupied by the Black Prince, son of Edward III (Thrupp, 1962, 133). Even grander was the surviving country mansion Pulteney built for his family at Penshurst in Kent during the 1340s (Newman, 2012, 450–456). It contains one of the most impressive medieval halls ever built in England, rivalling that of any feudal baron, and stood as a proud statement of the social ambitions of the rising merchant class.

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The grandest of London’s merchant houses were remarkable for the size of their halls, the number of their rooms and the richness of their décor. They were more than luxury residences; they were competitive statements of conspicuous investment, intended to symbolise the wealth and status of their merchant owners. And the symbols they employed were drawn directly from the hegemonic building traditions of the aristocracy: arched gates with flanking towers to create a grand entrance, crenellated facades to evoke a feudal past, a great hall to accommodate lavish entertainments, and startling heraldic themes in the bedrooms to impress the guests (Thrupp, 1962, 135–144). There is no more fitting exemplar of these grand merchant houses than Crosby Hall, a sumptuous fifteenth-century hall rescued from the City when under threat of demolition and re-erected in Chelsea in 1910 (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 568). It was built between 1466 and 1475 by Sir John Crosby, a wealthy textile merchant, as the centrepiece of a vast courtyard house known as Crosby Place situated on Bishopsgate (Schofield, 1995, 161–163). After Crosby’s death, the house was occupied in the early 1480s by the Duke of Gloucester as he plotted to seize the crown, earning it three mentions in Shakespeare’s Richard III, and was then bought by Sir Thomas More in 1523. Stow describes the house as ‘very large and beautiful’, with a hall that was ‘the highest at that time in London’ (Stow, 2005, 160). ‘More than any other recorded building, Crosby Place symbolises the political and diplomatic aspirations of prominent London merchants, who wished to build houses in which diplomacy, entertainment and display could all be politely combined’ (Schofield, 1984, 124). Though most of the lay townhouses were located within the walled city, there were exceptions—most notably the Savoy Palace on the Strand, about which Stow declared ‘there was none in the realm to be compared in beauty and stateliness’ (Stow, 2005, 372). During the fourteenth century, the Dukes of Lancaster developed a great quasi-regal palace on the site, culminating in its occupation by John of Gaunt, son of Edward III and uncle of Richard II (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 298). As well as being one of the richest men in the kingdom, Gaunt wielded great influence during the reigns of both monarchs. In the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, hostility to his arrogant exercise of dynastic power made his palace a prime target for the rebels. They chose to burn it down, not loot it, declaring that ‘they were not thieves and robbers but zealots for truth and justice’ (McKisack, 1959, 410). Their zealotry was

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directed to destroying the symbolic value of the palace as much as its use value. The ruins stood derelict for over a century before the site was redeveloped as a hospital by the new Tudor king Henry VII in 1505. However, some of the palace stone had been taken to build Eton College in 1444, a fitting recycling of the fabric from one hegemonic building to another (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 11). Around 1520 it is estimated that there were at least seventy-five aristocratic townhouses distributed across London (Barron, 2017, 421–425). Some thirty or more were in lay ownership, while forty-five or so belonged to bishops, abbots and priors. These great houses formed the landscape of aristocratic power in London at the very end of the Middle Ages, interpenetrated with the landscape of religious power centred on St Paul’s and the landscape of royal power centred on Westminster. Growing up through this feudal landscape was an emergent civic and commercial landscape comprising the Guildhall and livery halls, supplemented by the growing number of grand houses occupied by wealthy merchants. On these medieval foundations, a whole new landscape of royal and mercantile power was about to be constructed, as the ascendancy of the Tudor dynasty and the flourishing of City commerce ushered in a very different post-­ medieval world.

4.2  Absolutist Monarchy During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, an economic and social crisis gripped the whole of western Europe (Anderson, 1996, 197–204). After a long period of feudal consolidation, the fourteenth century was marked by a series of disasters and upheavals, creating the conditions for a social and economic transformation that ushered in a new post-feudal world in the fifteenth century. The underlying cause of the crisis was that the engine of the feudal mode of production began to stall (Duby, 1998, 293–357). As population grew, the rising demand for food had both intensified production on established estates, exhausting soil fertility, and forced cultivation onto ever more marginal lands, at the cost of diminishing returns. But the exploitative and inflexible nature of the feudal relations of production militated against the investment necessary to counter these trends by improving agricultural productivity (Brenner, 1985, 30–36). The combination of rising population and declining yields created the conditions for the Great Famine of 1315–17, following a succession of poor harvests

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caused by bad weather. Mortality rates rose, birth rates fell and cultivated land was abandoned. As demand fell back, declining food prices squeezed the incomes of the landed aristocracy, depressing their demand for luxury goods and disrupting long-distance trade (Dyer, 2002, 228–246). Crisis turned to catastrophe in 1348 when the Black Death swept across Europe, decimating an already weakened population. The plague killed as much as one-half of the English population between 1348 and 1350 and was followed by lesser outbreaks throughout the remainder of the century (Dyer, 2002, 271–286). The consequent contraction of the workforce unleashed a desperate class struggle on the land. In England, this struggle culminated in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (Hilton, 2003). Attempts by the landowning class to hold down rural wages, maintain rents and enforce feudal discipline were met by fierce resistance. Inevitably, given the shortages of labour, the balance of power shifted over time in favour of the peasantry, causing their living standards to improve as ‘more and more of the disposable surplus was retained within the peasant economy’ (Hilton, 1978, 27). Landlords commuted tenants’ obligations of feudal service in exchange for the payment of money rents to farm their estates, while growing numbers of the peasantry were able to acquire their own landholdings (Dyer, 2002, 330–362). By the end of the fifteenth century, the shocks generated by the crises of the fourteenth century were still reverberating through the English economy. Population levels had barely started to recover from the crash caused by the combination of famine and plague in the previous century. The consequent reduction in demand meant that the shrunken population had enjoyed a century of stable or falling prices, while the shortage of labour meant that real wages had reached a peak which would not be matched for another four hundred years (Barras, 2016, 28–29). Serfdom had virtually disappeared, land was cheap and the free peasantry was able to enjoy a greater degree of independence from aristocratic control (Britnell, 1996: 155–227). These forces of social and economic change transformed the old feudal system into what has been called ‘bastard feudalism’ (McFarlane, 1945; Hicks, 2013). This was a new form of social system in which class relationships were defined principally in terms of the cash nexus, rather than through hereditary legal rights and obligations deriving from land tenure. A weakening of the old feudal obligation to provide military service in exchange for land meant that soldiers had to be paid for their services. At the same time, the great magnates were filling their households with

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indentured retainers, who required an annual fee for their services. Most fundamentally, financial payments were replacing labour services in the agrarian economy, as peasants paid money rents for their land or were paid money wages for their labour. The feudal relationship between lord and vassal was being replaced by proto-capitalist relationships between aristocrat and retainer, landowner and tenant, and farmer and labourer. Bastard feudalism was creating the preconditions for the long and uneven transition from feudalism to capitalism (Hilton, 1978). The development of bastard feudalism in the countryside was paralleled by the growing commercialisation of the urban economy. As the circulation of money expanded and the supply of agricultural and manufacturing goods proliferated, commerce acted as an ever more powerful motor of wealth accumulation. What drove this accumulation process was the ability of the merchant class to appropriate a rising share of the surplus value they were realising through their oligopolistic control of trade (Dobb, 1963: 83–122). In the towns, a new class of urban bourgeoisie was coming to the fore, led by the merchants, while in the countryside a new class of landed gentry was also on the rise, consisting of landowners of middle rank who had previously belonged to the feudal order of knights. Under the impact of this social and economic transformation, there was a progressive breakdown of the old feudal order. This culminated in the Wars of the Roses, the internecine civil war between the Lancastrian and Yorkist branches of the Plantagenet dynasty that raged intermittently for thirty years between 1455 and 1485. There was little sign of courtliness or honour in the prosecution of this savage conflict. It was a bloodbath of the old aristocracy in which exceptionally large numbers of the nobility were killed, either targeted in battle or executed after capture (Hicks, 2010, 9). When Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, overthrew Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, more than three centuries of monarchical rule under the Plantagenet dynasty came to an end, and a new Tudor dynasty was born. The new king Henry VII sought to consolidate the power of the Tudor dynasty through the formation of a government that was more powerful and centralised than that of his predecessors (Elton, 1991, 42–69). He strengthened the executive role of the king’s council and favoured new men of proven loyalty as his closest councillors. Surviving members of the old aristocracy were forbidden to maintain bodies of armed retainers, and their loyalty was secured through a mixture of royal patronage and bonds guaranteeing good behaviour. Great emphasis was placed on sound

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finance, exploiting to the full all available sources of revenue such as the crown estates, customs dues, the profits of justice and periodic taxation. By the end of Henry’s reign, total royal revenue had nearly trebled and was exceeding the level of royal expenditure. Having constrained their powers, the king took pains to distance himself from the leading aristocrats in the realm, while providing opportunities for advancement for the rising gentry and merchant classes. He thereby endeavoured to ensure that no one class became dominant, while raising the monarchy above them all: ‘the early Tudors elevated themselves unapproachably above even the greatest of their Lords’ (Starkey, 1987, 3). The essence of Tudor kingship was distilled in the royal prerogative, a summation of the powers, rights and privileges of the monarch. To emphasise the unique power and wealth of the crown, vast sums were spent on the furnishings and ceremonies of the court, to impress both domestic elites and foreign dignitaries. The king was setting his dynasty on the path of absolutism, a path that led to the king-worship of Henry VIII and the Gloriana cult of Elizabeth I (Elton, 1991, 43). Absolutist monarchies arose across Europe during the sixteenth century and reached the height of their powers in the seventeenth century (Mann, 2012, 475–483). They occupied a transitional phase of historical development between the breakdown of the feudal mode of production and the ascendancy of the capitalist mode, when the power of the old-­ established landowning aristocracy was being challenged by that of the newly emerging urban bourgeoisie. In a seminal study of absolutism, Anderson (1979) argues that the imperative for the formation of such states was not to act as a mediator between aristocracy and bourgeoisie, but rather to preserve the power and status of the aristocracy in a post-­ medieval society that was becoming increasingly bourgeois. Absolutist states were ‘the new political carapace of a threatened nobility’ (Anderson, 1979, 18). The absolutist state functioned through seemingly modern institutions such as a permanent bureaucracy, a national taxation system, a codified body of law and a standing army (Poulantzas, 1973, 157–161). Rather than each feudal lord being responsible for maintaining social order, it became the responsibility of the centralised state, operating through consent where possible and coercion when necessary. However, despite their aspirations, the powers of absolutist states were quite circumscribed. They lacked the coherence and cohesion of modern nation states, being reliant upon the ruling dynasty as the ultimate

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embodiment of state power, handed down from one charismatic ruler to the next. ‘The State was conceived as the patrimony of the monarch’ (Anderson, 1979, 39). One way in which these absolutist states projected their hegemonic power was through epic programmes of monumental building designed to glorify the ruling dynasty. Central to the rise of absolutism was a transformation in the nature of both monarchy and aristocracy, leading to a fundamentally different relationship between the two. The dominant ideology of absolute monarchy was based upon a belief in the divine right of kings. They derived their authority from God alone, which elevated royal power far above the constrained reciprocal homage enjoyed by feudal monarchs (Poulantzas, 1973, 162). Absolute power implied the sovereign right to create new laws and impose unquestioning obedience to them. In reality, Europe’s absolutist rulers were to varying degrees constrained in what they could do by their need to respect the existing body of national law and obtain consent from assemblies of their leading subjects for the introduction of new legislation. To preserve their privileged status within this new power structure, the nobility had to abandon long-established traditions and acquire new skills. Rather than operating according to a network of feudal obligations underwritten by military force, they now had to act as loyal courtiers to an all-­ powerful monarch, able and willing to engage in the business of royal government. While legally trained officials were employed as the executive servants of the state, this body of semi-professionals was augmented by the sale of ‘offices’ to prominent men of wealth. The sale of offices provided ‘the prevalent mode of integration of the feudal nobility into the Absolutist State’ (Anderson, 1979, 33). For an aristocratic office-holder, the cost of purchasing his sinecure could be recouped several times over through the privileges attached to the post and the opportunities it presented for bribes and other corrupt payments. We have already noted that the feudal monarchy of England was the most powerful in Europe, with legal and financial systems already capable of maintaining an exceptionally centralised state. This meant that a less extreme transformation was required than elsewhere in Europe to turn the feudal Plantagenet kingdom into an absolutist Tudor state (Anderson, 1979, 113–142). On the foundations laid down by Henry VII, his son Henry VIII erected the superstructure of a new dynastic monarchy. A crucial difference between the Tudor state and the rival absolutist monarchies of continental Europe, such as France and Spain, was that

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England’s island separation meant it did not have to maintain a large standing army nor engage in major land wars. Instead, it could concentrate on building up its navy, creating a sea power that would defeat the Spanish Armada, open up global trade routes and initiate the first wave of colonisation (Williams, 1995, 28–30). Henry VIII continued his father’s policy of keeping the old aristocracy on a tight rein while promoting new men from the lower orders to positions of responsibility. This policy was facilitated by two interrelated social and economic changes occurring within Tudor society. The incomes of all the landowning classes were rising relative to those of the landless classes, while within the landowning classes there was a narrowing of income differentials as both knights and gentry strengthened their position relative to that of the peerage (Barras 2016, 237–243). These shifts in the wealth and income of the landowning classes form part of a wider story concerning the slow emergence out of feudalism of agrarian capitalism, which fundamentally restructured the distribution of land ownership, the mode of agricultural production and the balance of economic and political power within society. One reason why the gentry prospered relative to the old aristocracy during the sixteenth century was that they seem to have embraced more commercial methods of farming that were better adapted to exploiting new agricultural techniques and new market opportunities (Tawney, 1941). It was the start of an agricultural revolution which would transform the agrarian economy over the next two centuries (Kerridge, 1967). This was an age of opportunity for the gentry class (Mingay, 1976, 40–44). As their prosperity increased, so their numbers were swelled by successful yeomen farmers and by wealthy merchants, lawyers and other professionals aspiring to live as country gentlemen. In contrast, the old aristocracy underwent a crisis of identity during the Tudor period (Stone, 1965). In the new absolutist state, they suffered a loss of prestige, as their military power was curtailed and their authority undermined. Furthermore, their economic fortunes seem to have deteriorated, as their rental revenues fell in real terms due to rising inflation, forcing many to sell land or take on crippling levels of debt. As the old aristocratic families died out, new peers loyal to the crown were created, typically by elevating favoured courtiers and members of the gentry class. The new aristocracy could accumulate great personal fortunes by exploiting their privileged position at court. Under the Stuarts, the outright sale of titles became commonplace. The resultant ‘inflation of

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honours’ meant that by 1641, on the eve of the Civil War, there were seventy-three new peers (post-1603) compared to forty-eight surviving old peers (Stone, 1965, 761). Though the landed income of these new peers may have been somewhat lower than that of the old peers, the shortfall was more than made up by their other streams of income, in particular those flowing from the perks of government office. Under the Tudor monarchs, it was even possible for able men of humble origins below the gentry class to rise to positions of great power and wealth. However, serving a king as capricious and ruthless as Henry VIII brought danger as well as opportunity, as illustrated by the careers of Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, sons of an Ipswich butcher and Putney blacksmith respectively. One after another, they rose to become the king’s chief minister, but when his pleasure turned to displeasure, each suffered a precipitous and fatal fall from grace. William Cecil, who came from more elevated gentry stock, fared better as Elizabeth’s chief minister. His forty-year service to the queen brought him promotion to the peerage as Lord Burghley, the wealth to become a major landowner and the opportunity to found his own family dynasty (Alford, 2008).

4.3  English Reformation The fortunes of both Wolsey and Cromwell were determined by the roles they played in the pivotal drama of Henry’s reign, the seizure and takeover of the national church by the state (Ryrie, 2017, 101–134). This momentous action stemmed from a unique event of such consequence that it has shaped the subsequent historical trajectory of the nation and its capital. Like all absolutist rulers, the king was obsessed with ensuring his dynastic succession. His first wife Catherine of Aragon had failed to produce a surviving son, but the pope refused to sanction a divorce that would allow the king to remarry. Henry was able to translate the stalemate over his divorce into a full-blown schism with the Church of Rome by exploiting the religious turmoil that was being unleashed across Europe by the Reformation (MacCulloch, 2004). In essence, the Reformation movement rejected the doctrines and practices which had evolved over many centuries in the established church. The reformers believed in salvation of the individual through faith alone, rather than as a reward for penance, good works and the purchase of indulgences. They treated the scriptures rather than the papacy as the ultimate religious authority (McGrath, 2012, 91–139). During the early

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sixteenth century, these ideas gained traction through the teachings of theologians such as Luther and Calvin, and humanist thinkers such as Erasmus and Thomas More. The extent of anti-clericalism in England prior to the Reformation is disputed (Haigh, 1993). Nevertheless, it seems that the movement for reform was fuelled by popular resentment against the wealth of the church, the imposition of tithes, abuses of clerical powers and the punitive justice meted out by ecclesiastical courts. This social and intellectual ferment gave valuable impetus to Henry’s challenge to Rome. The English Reformation was an act of state; it was as much about dynastic politics as it was about religious reform (Rex, 2006: 135–60). In 1529, Henry launched a programme of legislation which ‘consummated a dual revolution, severing the English church from the Papacy and subjugating it to the control of the Crown in Parliament’ (Dickens, 1989, 106). It culminated in the 1534 Act of Supremacy which enshrined the monarch as head of the Church of England. The established church could no longer operate as an autonomous institution, as it had in feudal society; an absolutist monarch was now reigning supreme over both his temporal and spiritual realms. During the 1530s, the formation of the Tudor absolutist state reached its climax under Cromwell’s guidance (Elton, 1991, 160–192). A centralised bureaucracy was established, organised into separate departments of state under the control of an executive Privy Council. National sovereignty was embodied in the monarch, recognised as head of both church and state. The role of Parliament in the legislative process was formalised, with statute becoming the supreme instrument of government. Though Henry’s rule was ruthless and repressive, it was not despotic because it ultimately relied upon the rule of law, however harshly applied (Guy, 2018, 114). A crucial element of the English Reformation was the dissolution of the monasteries (Dickens, 1989, 167–191). The Dissolution can be attributed to both political and economic factors. The survival of religious houses owing allegiance to overseas institutions within the Roman church became politically impossible once an independent Church of England was established. From an economic perspective, the vast estates owned by the religious orders were an irresistible target in a society undergoing rapid population expansion and generating an insatiable demand for land. Perhaps most important of all, expropriation of monastic estates provided Henry VIII with the funds he required to undertake an enormous hegemonic building programme.

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Dissolution of the monasteries led to a wholesale transfer of landed wealth from the ecclesiastical to the secular realm through the medium of the crown (Youings, 1971, 117–131). It was the most radical transfer of landed property in England since the Norman Conquest. Prior to the Dissolution, it is estimated that the church owned at least one quarter and perhaps as much as one-third of the nation’s land (Cornwall, 1988, 123). Most of this was expropriated by the king, who in turn sold most of it on to members of the landowning classes. The main beneficiaries were the local gentry and, to a lesser extent, members of the aristocracy (Hoskins, 1976, 121–148). Following Henry’s death in 1547, England was convulsed by a decade of religious conflict and political crisis as the crown passed between the king’s three legitimate children (Williams, 1995, 31–123). Ultra-­ protestant Edward VI was succeeded by ultra-catholic Mary, who was in turn succeeded by moderate-protestant Elizabeth I.  In contrast to the dynastic struggles of the fifteenth century, however, religious conflict did not descend into civil war, although there were numerous executions on both sides. England’s new ruling class wished to act like Renaissance courtiers, not medieval barons, recognising that the Tudor monarchy had acquired the monopoly of legitimate force within society. By nature a cautious reformer, Elizabeth sought to stabilise the Tudor dynasty by restoring political order and healing the religious divisions that had been inflamed by Edward and Mary (Elton, 1991, 262–294). In 1559, Parliament approved a religious settlement that confirmed the Church of England as a moderate protestant institution headed by the monarch (Castor, 2019, 36–41). However, anti-Catholic sentiment intensified during the 1570s, in response to the excommunication of the queen by the pope and the Counter-Reformation crusade being pursued by Spain. Religious tensions came to a head once more during the crisis years of 1583–8, which saw the execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the outbreak of war with Spain (Williams, 1995, 271–324). In defiance of Catholic hostility and to strengthen the sense of a common English identity, a national mythology was constructed around the person of Elizabeth; she became ‘an incarnation of her kingdom’s God-­ given greatness’ (Castor, 2019, 82). She was Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, capable of assuming the form of a classical goddess, a biblical heroine or a global empress. When she died without an heir in 1603, the crown passed to James VI of Scotland, protestant son of catholic Mary Queen of Scots. As James I of England, the new king founded the ill-fated Stuart dynasty,

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a sequence of monarchs whose arbitrary conduct led the country into parliamentary revolt, civil war, revolution and the end of England’s excursion into absolutist monarchy.

4.4  Age of Renaissance Both the rise of absolutist monarchies and the reformation of the Christian church drew ideological support from the third great cultural movement of the age, the Renaissance. The movement originated during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in the republican city states of central and northern Italy, led by Florence (Brown 1999, 13–29). Scholars in these self-governing communes were engaged in a debate about the freedom of the individual to shape their own destiny, without allegiance to princes or bishops. This led them to revisit the cultural legacy of Classical Greece and Rome and look for ways of integrating it with the prevailing Christian culture of medieval Europe. The result was a transformation of education, literature and the arts. So powerful was this movement, it spread out to transform European civilisation as a whole during the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Hale, 1993). It was the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt who first identified the force of the Renaissance as an intellectual and cultural movement that changed the world. In his famous work The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, first published in 1860, he argued that human consciousness in the Middle Ages ‘lay dreaming or half awake beneath a common veil. The veil was woven of faith, illusion and childish prepossession’. The Renaissance caused that veil to melt into air, so that ‘all the things of this world became possible’ (Burckhardt, 2004, 98). Belief in the development of all facets of the individual created the ideal of Renaissance man, l’uomo universale, capable of engaging with and transforming every aspect of the human condition—political, religious and economic, as well as cultural. The free citizen, the free church and the free market were all ideas which sprang from the Renaissance ideal of individualism. Renaissance culture is closely associated with the rise of the humanist movement (Nauert, 2006). The humanists placed Man rather than God at the centre of the universe; in the often-quoted words of the fifth century BC Greek philosopher Protagoras ‘man is the measure of all things’ (Guthrie, 1971, 183). Humanist discourse was not based upon a coherent body of philosophical thought, but rather offered an intellectual

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framework for understanding human reality as a world made by men, rather than one subordinate to a transcendent realm (Yoran, 2010, 17–35). The humanist perspective helped theologians such as Luther to formulate their ideas about religious reform, while encouraging philosophers such as Francis Bacon to elevate the spirit of scientific enquiry above faith in religious dogma (Hill, 1997, 77–87). The spread of these ideas was accelerated by the invention of printing, which led to a rapid increase in the number of books circulating around Europe (Jardine, 1996, 135–180). London became a major hub of the printing industry and book trade, which cemented its position as the intellectual centre of the English Renaissance (Ryrie, 2017, 73). Despite its origins in the quest for individual freedom, the Renaissance was far from being a revolutionary movement. On the contrary, the new ideas helped to forge the ideology of absolutism. One strand of this process in continental Europe was the revival of Roman law. This body of law both emphasised the absolute and unconditional nature of private property, which served the economic interests of the bourgeoisie, and the absolute nature of monarchical sovereignty, which served the political interests of the absolutist state acting on behalf of the aristocracy. For absolutist monarchs, ‘Roman law was the most powerful intellectual weapon available for their typical programme of territorial integration and administrative centralism’ (Anderson, 1979, 28). While rejecting the power of the papacy, Protestantism nevertheless also affirmed the legitimacy of state power, in particular to subjugate the unruly and the ungodly (Turner, 1990, 237). Absolutist monarchs aspired to be Renaissance princes: men of action who were at the same time well educated and culturally sophisticated. Henry VIII carefully cultivated such an image (Ryrie, 2017, 76–79). He was a capable musician, a reckless athlete and a respectable scholar in his own right. To signify his status as supreme monarch, he repeatedly had full-length portraits painted in a regal pose and used his lavishly appointed court as a theatre of spectacle in which he always took centre stage (Guy, 2018, 82–97). The culture of the court drew upon the medieval tradition of chivalric tournaments, revived as a form of heroic costume drama in which exotically dressed aristocrats jousted before their admiring ladies. These tournaments were open to the general public in an overt display of hegemonic power (Guy, 1988, 423–426). Henry’s appetite for self-aggrandisement tipped into delusions of grandeur; ‘he became mesmerized by his own legend’ (Guy, 2018, 114). This

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was never more apparent than in his famous diplomatic encounter with François I of France in 1520 near Calais, on the so-called Field of Cloth of Gold. Organised by Cardinal Wolsey, the king’s chief minister, the encounter took the form of a tournament lasting a little over two weeks, with each king accompanied by an entourage of around 6000 people. The English side included virtually the entire peerage and a sizeable portion of the gentry, whereas the French side included only a fraction of their nobility, given that their kingdom had a population six times larger than that of England. To house the English royal party, and impress the French, a vast temporary palace was prefabricated in England, probably at the Palace of Westminster, and then shipped across the Channel. This extraordinary timber-framed structure was decorated with polychrome figures of classical heroes, its walls were lit by windows displaying images of English monarchs, and its interior rooms were furnished with embroidered hangings of golden silk and tapestries illustrated with classical and biblical scenes (Richardson, 2013, 54–66). Rarely, if ever, has a hegemonic building of such magnificence had such a short life. Renewed interest in Antiquity led to a renewed appreciation of the city as the primary locus of civilised life. Classical culture had reproduced itself in the urban realm, whereas medieval culture was rooted in the rural world. An active civic life was an essential attribute of Renaissance man, encapsulated in the Roman concept of civilitas, which was another way of making the ancient distinction between civilisation and barbarism (Hale, 1993, 355–419). As described in The Book of the Courtier, written by the Italian diplomat Baldesar Castiglione and published in 1528, the norms of civility included classical learning, artistic appreciation, polite behaviour and good social standing (Castiglione, 1976). The growing attractions of urban life prompted rulers and aristocrats to spend more of their time in the city, while the civilising process that had begun with the ruling elite under feudalism was widened to encompass the other classes who moved in courtly circles (Elias, 2000, 60–72). As the national centre of civilised life, for both business and pleasure, London proved an irresistible magnet for the Tudor and Stuart monarchs and their courtiers (Stone, 1965, 385–398). To celebrate their magnificence, Renaissance princes liked to stage spectacular festivals that drew upon all the arts—drama, poetry, music, painting, sculpture and architecture. These spectacles used allegorical themes to universalise the dominant ideology of absolutist monarchy,

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placing the ruling family and their courtiers within a magical universe full of occult symbols, ancient gods and mythological creatures. By transforming ideology into mythology, power was conceived as art (Strong, 1984, 40). Henry VIII revelled in the use of spectacle for political ends, as demonstrated by his welcome for Emperor Charles V in 1522, when the whole City of London was turned into a stage for the performance of a series of nine pageants glorifying the Tudor and Habsburg dynasties (Anglo, 1997, 170–206). For the Stuart kings, such spectacles took the form of court masques, performed in the Banqueting House of Whitehall Palace and presented as a series of scenes celebrating the divine right of kings to exercise harmonious rule over their fortunate people (Strong, 1984, 153–170). The civilising process had a material as well as an intellectual aspect. For the Renaissance was a ‘culture of commodities’ as well as a culture of ideas (Jardine, 1996). The expansion of international trade and the diversification of crafts and manufacture fed a growing taste for the conspicuous consumption of luxury goods as a signifier of the civilised life. Conspicuous consumption of luxury goods extended into conspicuous investment in luxury buildings and precious works of art. The ruling elites of the Italian city-states competed to acquire the rarest books and the most prized paintings and sculptures, and competed to build the most imposing palaces in which to house their collections (Brown, 1999, 70–78). During the sixteenth century, this form of competitive cultural emulation was taken up by monarchs and aristocrats right across Europe. Henry VIII was one of the most enthusiastic competitors of them all, both as collector and builder; he ‘regarded magnificence as a political weapon’ (Guy, 2018, 82).

4.5  A New Architecture Renaissance princes desired to live in Renaissance palaces within the Renaissance city. During the age of absolutism, the transition of the great house from fortified castle to luxurious palace was completed; ruling elites desired to express their power through hegemonic display rather than coercive threat. Their demand for hegemonic buildings played a key role in the transformation of architecture, which provided one of the most pervasive and visible manifestations of the new age. Of all the arts, architecture was the one most closely identified with the revival of interest in Antiquity and provided the most prestigious way of associating the elite palace owner with the classical ideal of the civilised life. Classical built

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forms spoke of Greek and Roman civilisation; Gothic forms spoke of Germanic barbarism. Renaissance architecture was born in the innovative social milieu of the fifteenth-century Italian city states. The competitive emulation to outdo each other in the splendour of their civic and domestic buildings created a flourishing nexus of wealthy patrons and charismatic architects in each city. Architecture came of age as a recognised profession, and its leading lights became as famous as the ‘starchitects’ of the modern age (Stevens, 1998, 137–142). Florence, the richest and most powerful of the cities, home to a large community of wealthy merchants and bankers, acted as the principal locus of building investment and the main crucible of architectural innovation (Goldthwaite, 1980). In the Middle Ages, Italian architecture had never entirely abandoned its classical heritage. The Italian Romanesque of the eleventh and twelfth centuries took on a more consciously classical form than elsewhere in Europe, to the extent that it has been identified as a ‘proto-Renaissance’ style (Burckhardt, 1987: 15–17). Similarly, when the Gothic reached Italy from France in the thirteenth century, it was adapted to recapture the classical spirit, replacing French walls of glass with solid walls covered in frescoes and marble inlays (Wilson, 2000: 258–76). This continuity with the classical past made for an easier and swifter transition to a fully developed Renaissance style in Italy than that which subsequently occurred in northern Europe. Furthermore, the Italian architects of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could draw direct inspiration from the abundant Roman ruins spread around the country, as well as from the surviving classical treatise on architecture, De architectura by Vitruvius. Renaissance architects set great store by Vitruvius’s maxim that ‘without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any [building]’ (Vitruvius, 1960, 72). He believed that the rules of symmetry and proportion should be drawn from nature, and in particular from ‘those of a well-shaped man’. Here was a vision that chimed with the humanist spirit of the age. Vitruvius applied these rules to the proportions, ornamentation and spacing of the different classical orders of columns and entablatures: the Tuscan, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, to which was later added the Composite (Vitruvius, 1960, 78–122). Vitruvian principles formed the basis for the classical language of architecture (Summerson, 1980). Using this language, the architects of Renaissance Italy created a wholly new type of architecture that announced a return to the cultural

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foundations of Antiquity (Frommel, 2007). Classical columns replaced Gothic piers; arches became round again, after the interlude of pointed Gothic; triangular and semi-circular pediments appeared over windows and doors; facades were given a rusticated texture and crowned with classical entablatures. Architects of the Early Renaissance in the fifteenth century, led by Brunelleschi and Alberti, applied these motifs with delicacy and restraint. Moving into the High Renaissance of the sixteenth century, the locus of innovation shifted from Florence to Rome, and a new generation of architects led by Bramante, Raphael and Michelangelo replaced delicacy and restraint with monumentality and grandeur. Buildings became more imposing in scale, the detailing heavier and more sculptural, the decorative features more flamboyant inside and out. Proceeding through the sixteenth century, the High Renaissance passed into a more capricious and self-conscious phase known as Mannerism (Shearman, 1967). Balance and harmony gave way to restless movement; surface decoration became more idiosyncratic; structural elements were introduced where they had no structural function. Mannerism acted as a bridge between the cool rationality of the Renaissance and the emotional intensity of the Baroque. Two sorts of hegemonic building typify the Italian Renaissance—the urban palace and the country villa—and both were to have a strong influence on the course of hegemonic building in England. The wealthy merchants, bankers and prelates in Florence, Rome and Venice competed to build the most imposing urban palaces (Murray, 1969: 63–98) and the most lavish country villas (Ackerman, 1990: 63–107). The bourgeois elite were taking up the style of life first developed by the patrician elite of Ancient Rome, but one that was supported by flows of income and wealth in the opposite direction. The rural estates of the Roman aristocrat funded his urban lifestyle, whereas the commercial activities of the Renaissance merchant funded his rural lifestyle. The function of a Renaissance villa was more ideological than economic; its purpose was to create an idealised rural world for the pleasure and relaxation of its owner, far removed from the harsh realities of life in an impoverished countryside (Bentmann & Müller, 1992). The most illustrious of the Italian villa architects was Andrea Palladio (Ackerman, 1966), who built a series of iconic villas in the Veneto in the mid-sixteenth century. He applied the Vitruvian principles of geometric symmetry and harmonic proportion to create an ideal building form that represented ‘a paradigm of gentlemanly life’ (Holberton, 1990, xiii). His work had a

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greater influence on English architecture than that of any other Italian architect (Wittkower, 1998). It took several decades for the ideas of the Italian Renaissance to permeate the building world in England. Its influence began to be felt during the early sixteenth century under the patronage of Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII (Summerson, 1993, 29–32). The first excursions were mostly undertaken by Italian craftsmen, or by French or Flemish craftsmen familiar with the new style. The great Renaissance châteaux being built in France at the time were a particular source of inspiration (Howard, 1987, 125–130). One of the earliest examples of the Renaissance style in England was the classicising tomb in Westminster Abbey that Henry VIII commissioned for his parents in 1512 from the Florentine sculptor Pietro Torrigiano (Brown, 1999, 84). Shortly afterwards, Wolsey decorated his palace at Hampton Court with terracotta medallions containing busts of Roman emperors made by another Italian sculptor, Giovanni da Maiano (Thurley, 2003, 23–25). Despite these Italian and French influences, Early Tudor architecture was in essence an indigenous English style developed by English craftsmen. It combined classical motifs with vernacular elements reminiscent of medieval castles and courtyard houses, such as turreted gatehouses, crenellated towers and great halls. Though the spirit of the fortress still lingered, its purpose had become more decorative than functional, more hegemonic than coercive. Furthermore, imposing interiors were no longer confined to the hall and chapel; suites of richly furnished public and private apartments were also provided to accommodate an increasingly leisurely and luxurious style of aristocratic life (Summerson, 1993, 23–24). It has generally been thought that the hybrid nature of Tudor architecture stemmed from muddle and ignorance, which caused England to be more hesitant than the rest of Europe in adopting classical architectural forms. However, there is an alternative political and cultural explanation, which is that attitudes to classicism were coloured by the discourse on national identity, which fed the English taste for exceptionalism (Arciszewska, 2004, 14–23). In other words, the Tudor style was a conscious construct, designed to distance Protestant England from the wholehearted embrace of classicism by Catholic Europe (Starkey, 1992, 160). In the Tudor period, great houses were still being produced in the medieval manner, designed and built by master craftsmen for patrons who often took an active role in the design process (Airs, 1998, 31–56).

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However, more progressive patrons were becoming familiar with Renaissance architecture, visiting France, Italy and the Low Countries to examine buildings in the new style, and studying architectural treatises by the Italian masters. In the vanguard was a small circle of Protestant reformers around Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector during the minority of his nephew Edward VI. For a brief period in the middle of the sixteenth century their classical tastes fostered a deeper appreciation of Renaissance architecture in England. However, once Seymour himself had been arrested and executed on charges of treason in 1552, their influence on the future direction of English architecture waned (Howard, 1987, 184–199). Resistance to full-blown classicism persisted through the Elizabethan age and into the Jacobean. Though Renaissance influences grew stronger, Elizabethan architecture still exhibited many elements that harked back to the nation’s Gothic past (Girouard, 2009). Built forms became more compact and symmetrical, in the Renaissance manner, but classical facades of columns and pilasters competed for pre-eminence with medieval skylines of battlements and turrets. Though a stylistic amalgam, Elizabethan architecture was relatively sober in tone, whereas Jacobean taste favoured buildings with a greater sense of fantasy. In the spirit of Italian Mannerism, this was achieved through complex spatial forms, striking silhouettes and flamboyant decorative schemes (Summerson, 1993, 75–89). As the seventeenth century progressed, building design in England became more professional, undertaken by architects who were not practical craftsmen but rather educated intellectuals with a thorough knowledge of classical architecture (Airs, 1998: 207–9). Inigo Jones, the country’s first true classical architect, was just such a professional (Hart, 2011). In 1613 he had embarked upon a prolonged tour of Italy to study the buildings of Roman antiquity as well as their Renaissance descendants, and had become particularly inspired by the works of Palladio. Appointed Surveyor of the King’s Works in 1615, Jones developed a distinctively English style of classicism for his royal patrons, drawing upon a repertoire of Palladian motifs which he combined in original ways (Tavernor, 1991, 115–146). His were the first buildings in England to show a complete grasp of Vitruvian principles, leading to him being named the ‘British Vitruvius’, but he applied those principles in a manner that pleased rather than offended the national sense of Protestant identity (Thomas, 1995).

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4.6  An Abundance of Palaces The Norman and early Plantagenet kings had led a peripatetic existence, moving their court around the country as circumstances dictated. Over time, as the political situation stabilised, there was a steady increase in the size of the royal household and in its desire for comfort. These trends required the provision of a range of suitably located royal houses of substantial size to act as more permanent residences for the court (Thurley, 1993, 1–23). Its main London base was the Palace of Westminster, with occasional excursions to the Tower, while the castle at Windsor was redeveloped by Edward III as a second luxurious palace outside the capital. When in need of rural relaxation, the monarch could also retreat to one of a small number of ‘pleasure palaces’ located around the city. The Tudor dynasty required a grander stage for the realisation of its absolutist ambitions. When Henry VII won the crown, he acquired the Palace of Westminster plus eight other royal houses, to which he added a further four during the course of his reign (Colvin et al., 1982, 1). Having set the royal finances in order, he began to rebuild several of these houses on a more palatial scale, in particular two of the Plantagenet rural retreats, at Sheen (Richmond) and Greenwich. Concentrating resources on these two riverside show palaces was no accident. Since Roman times, the banks of the Thames have offered the most desirable location for the houses of wealthy Londoners, whether aristocrats, priests or merchants. The river provided the cleanest air, the most salubrious outlook and the most reliable means of transport through the city. Perhaps most important of all, a riverside aspect displayed the hegemonic buildings of the ruling elite to their best effect. There had been a royal house at Richmond since the early fourteenth century. It was rebuilt on a larger scale in the early fifteenth century as a dynastic residence for the Lancastrian kings, incorporating a tower keep linked to an adjacent court. Around the turn of the century, Henry VII extended the palace through the addition of three outer courts clustered around the inner court, with hall and chapel, and the surviving Lancastrian tower keep containing the royal lodgings (Thurley, 1993, 25–32). Dynastic propaganda was much in evidence: Tudor roses decorated the chapel roof, while sculpted figures in the hall and chapel identified Henry as the legitimate successor of a line of illustrious English kings (Colvin et al., 1982, 227). Surviving paintings show that the palace boasted a spectacular riverside facade enlivened by picturesque towers crowned with cupolas. While

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the keep was of stone, the new Tudor courts were built of brick, a material coming back into favour for the construction of aristocratic houses, reviving the Roman practice largely abandoned during the previous millennium (Schofield, 1984, 126–129). The design and layout of the archetypal Tudor palace was perfected under Henry VIII. A distinctive court style of architecture was created in a series of palaces designed and built for the king by master craftsmen working under the supervision of the Surveyor of the King’s Works (Colvin et al., 1982, 10–28). In appearance, these palaces remained predominantly Gothic, but with Renaissance elements increasingly apparent. Skylines were a riot of battlements, turrets, chimneys and cupolas. Heraldic symbols such as coats of arms and mythical beasts were everywhere to be seen, employed to assert the legitimacy of the Tudor dynasty (Thurley, 1993, 98–102). The medieval courtyard plan was maintained, but reflecting the influence of Renaissance ideas it was organised to be symmetrical around a central axis linking the sequence of courts through a series of gatehouses. Moving through the courts provided access to progressively higher status accommodation. The traditional great hall declined in importance, while long galleries became popular for recreation, conversation and display. Interior rooms were arranged to suit the routines of court life: ‘outward chambers’ were public rooms for assemblies and ceremonial events; ‘inward chambers’ were private suites where the king was attended by his closest household staff and by members of the Privy Council (Thurley, 1993, 113–143). To enter this inner sanctum, lavishly decorated with murals and tapestries, was to come into the presence of the absolute monarch in all his sovereign majesty. In the first two decades of Henry’s reign, it was not the king but rather his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, who was the greatest palace-builder in the land. Not only was Wolsey the second most powerful man in the kingdom; he was also the second wealthiest. As a prelate, he had accumulated rich livings from the dioceses of York, Lincoln, Bath and Wells, Durham and Winchester, as well as from the abbey of St Albans. Together with pensions from foreign powers, gratuities and other fruits of office, his total income was probably in excess of £40,000 a year (Gwyn, 1992, 313), which would have been between a third and a half of the regular income received by the king at that time (Weir, 2020, 64). It is little wonder that foreign envoys took to calling Wolsey ‘alter rex’, the ‘other king’—not a title Henry would have appreciated (Guy, 2018, 25).

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Wolsey was famous for his ostentatious displays of wealth and for his conspicuous investment in great houses (Gwyn, 1992: 27–30). The two most notable were York Place, the traditional London residence of the archbishops of York, and Hampton Court, his principal out-of-town residence (Richardson, 2020, 161–168). Wolsey acquired York Place when he became archbishop in 1514 and immediately initiated a programme of work to expand it, rebuilding the great hall and adding a new long gallery on the river frontage (Thurley, 1999, 13–36). A few months later he took over the lease on the Thames-side manor of Hampton, some twenty-­ two miles upstream from Westminster. There he began construction of the only building in England that could compare in scale with the château of Chambord being built in the Loire valley by the French King François I, which was considered to be one of the architectural wonders of the age (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 481). Because Hampton Court was Wolsey’s own private residence, unlike York Place, he chose it to showcase his ecclesiastical status as cardinal and papal legate, and his temporal status as chief minister. By 1525 the palace was being described as a ‘most splendid and magnificent house’ (Gwyn, 1992, 28), in marked contrast to the royal palace at Richmond, built by the king’s father and already looking dated. Conscious of royal displeasure at the pre-eminence of his palace, Wolsey seems to have offered to make it over to the king, perhaps in exchange for Richmond Palace (Richardson, 2020, 168). However, events overtook the Cardinal. He fell from grace in 1529 when he failed to persuade the pope to sanction the king’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The price of failure was to be stripped of his assets and estates, banished to his see in York, then dragged south to be incarcerated in the Tower of London, a fate he only avoided by dying en route (Gwyn, 1992, 599–639). Wolsey’s fall was Henry’s gain. The king seized Hampton Court, which became his principal country seat, and York Place, renamed Whitehall Palace, which became his main London residence, conveniently close to Westminster. Henry turned Hampton Court into the grandest of all the Tudor palaces (Photograph 4.1). Between 1529 and 1545 his work on the palace accounted for one quarter of the total recorded expenditure on his whole portfolio of royal houses (Colvin et al., 1982, 126–140). The core of Hampton Court was a late fifteenth-century courtyard house that became Clock Court, with great hall and chapel attached, to which Wolsey added a second outer court known as Base Court, entered by a ceremonial gatehouse. This new court contained accommodation for

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Photograph Stock Photo)

4.1 Hampton

Court

1515-45

(Source:

Skyscan/Alamy

the cardinal’s household and a large number of guests, while Clock Court was provided with lodgings for Wolsey himself and suites of rooms to accommodate the royal family when they visited (Thurley, 2003, 15–41). After Henry took over the palace he rebuilt the great hall, remodelled the chapel and created royal lodgings around a new court which later became Fountain Court (Thurley, 2003: 43–77). Within the king’s lodging there was the ‘Paradise Chamber’, a room glittering with gold, silver and jewels that was designed to overawe distinguished visitors (Colvin et  al., 1982, 136).

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In 1536, the king’s main London residence at Whitehall Palace was designated the King’s palace, his official seat and therefore the seat of government (Thurley, 1993, 54–55). Its administrative as well as domestic function required that Whitehall be expanded to become the largest metropolitan palace in Europe (Thurley, 1999, 37–64). To create this locus of royal power required the clearance of a whole suburb of Westminster and the eviction of all its inhabitants. The palace was divided into two haves by a road then called King Street. To the east, facing the river, were galleries containing the royal lodgings; to the west was a large recreation area containing tennis courts, bowling alleys, a cockpit and a tiltyard where jousts were staged (Colvin et al., 1982, 300–315). Two ornamental gatehouses spanned the street, linking the two halves of the palace. One was predominantly Tudor in form, but the other was much more classical in inspiration (Summerson, 1993, 32–33). While externally unimpressive, the palace interior was sumptuously decorated, with ceilings painted in gold and walls hung with tapestries. One set of tapestries depicting the Acts of the Apostles was the duplicate of a set in the Vatican based on cartoons by Raphael. This act of cultural appropriation was a statement of Henry’s belief that he had become the new pope in England (Guy, 2018, 95). Expropriation of Wolsey’s palaces whetted Henry’s appetite to expand his portfolio of hegemonic buildings. He went on to seize some thirty more houses from his reluctant subjects, mostly from prelates caught up in the dissolution of the monasteries or courtiers who were forced to forfeit or exchange properties which the king coveted (Thurley, 1993, 48–51). The income flowing into royal coffers from the dissolution of the monasteries also enabled the king to launch a massive building programme; over thirty royal houses were undergoing work at any one time between 1536 and his death in 1547 (Colvin et al., 1982, 3–7). This was the climax of hegemonic building by England’s absolutist monarchy. The contemporary historian William Harrison eulogised Henry’s feats as a builder, comparing him to the Roman emperors Hadrian and Justinian and claiming that his works ‘excel all the rest that he found standing in this realm, so they are and shall be a perpetual precedent unto those that do come after to follow in their works and buildings of importance’ (Harrison, 1994, 225). The attraction of London as the principal focus of royal life becomes apparent from the distribution of these houses: the great majority were located in and around the capital. Many were surrounded by extensive

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wooded parks to serve the king’s passion for hunting, a long-established hegemonic pastime favoured by the ruling elite. Henry created several new parks in which to pursue the sport of kings: St James’s Park, Green Park, Hyde Park and Marylebone Park (Regent’s Park) all originated as royal deer parks. The hunting imperative influenced the distribution of the royal property portfolio, with clusters of lesser houses serving as hunting lodges in the orbit of greater houses where the whole court would be based (Thurley, 1993, 68–70). Of all Henry’s houses, the most hubristic was Nonsuch near Sutton. It was in essence a glorified hunting lodge, but one in which Henry indulged his taste for absolutist excess to the fullest extent. Work on Nonsuch started in 1538 and the house was still incomplete at the king’s death. It was the most determinedly Renaissance-inspired of the king’s palaces, and the most obviously designed to emulate the palaces of his great rival, François I.  The Jacobean antiquarian William Camden described the structure as ‘built with so great sumptuousness and rare workmanship, that it aspireth to the very top of ostentation for shew; so as a man may think, that all the skill of Architecture is in this one piece of work bestowed, and heaped up together’ (Girouard, 2009, 129). Ironically, despite its elegance and splendour, the king reportedly only stayed twice in the palace because no adequate water source could be located nearby (Guy, 2018, 111). Such is the futility of hubristic building. What particularly distinguished Nonsuch from its predecessors were the strong Italian and French influences (Summerson, 1993, 33–36). The garden range showed the influence of the château at Chambord, with each end marked by a huge octagonal tower terminating in a glazed pavilion. An Italian artist, Nicholas Bellin, adorned the courtyard walls with stucco panels displaying classical scenes. Included in the display were full-sized statues of Henry and his son and sixteen scenes from the life of Hercules, a classical hero with whom the king closely identified (Colvin et al., 1982, 193–201). Bellin had previously worked for François, decorating his château at Fontainebleau, but became involved in a plot to defraud the king which forced him to flee to England. Henry was more than willing to give him employment, to the extent of twice rejecting a demand to extradite him back to France. A talented craftsman, valued by the French king, was too good a prize for the English king to relinquish. To have left a legacy of over fifty houses and palaces at his death is a measure of Henry’s obsession with hegemonic building. The absolutist imperative meant that his principal palaces had to exhibit a far higher level

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of extravagant expenditure than the costliest houses of his aristocratic followers (Barras 2016, 295–301). This extravagance was not just expressed through the buildings themselves, but also through the paintings, sculptures, plate and tapestries that adorned the principal rooms (Guy, 2018, 110). Since the costs of accumulating this vast property portfolio far exceeded his regular income, the king was obliged to seek extraordinary sources of extra revenue to fund his obsession. In addition to his income from the sale of monastic lands, he had recourse to forced loans and the levy of special taxes. Maintenance of such a portfolio was unsustainable. Recognition of financial realities forced Henry’s successors to dispose of most of it, leaving just seven royal palaces for the regular use of Elizabeth and the Stuart kings—Whitehall, Greenwich, Richmond, Hampton Court and Nonsuch, together with a subsidiary London palace at St James’s and a second rural retreat at Oatlands near Weybridge (Colvin et  al., 1982, 7–8). Of those seven, only Hampton Court and St James’s retain a Tudor form, Whitehall and Greenwich were subsequently redeveloped, and Richmond, Nonsuch and Oatlands were demolished in the seventeenth century.

4.7   Prodigy Houses While Henry was alive, the magnates of the realm took care not to challenge his supremacy as a builder of great houses, particularly after Wolsey’s fall. However, once the king had gone, their building ambitions were unleashed, and under Elizabeth they were positively encouraged (Girouard, 2009, 2–23). Elizabeth prudently redefined the relationship between absolutist monarchy and hegemonic building. She shifted the responsibility for building great houses from the monarchy to the new Tudor aristocracy. In an arrangement altogether more advantageous to the crown, courtiers paid for the building and maintenance of what have been termed ‘prodigy houses’, which were palaces in all but name, while the ‘portable queen’ would graciously agree to stay in one after another as she made her annual summer progress around the country. These houses provided the queen with a moving stage on which she could interact with her subjects, both the noble elite and the common people, by means of ceremonies and social events (Cole, 1999).

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This arrangement stimulated fierce competition between the queen’s courtiers as they vied for royal favour. Their struggle to outdo each other in extravagance and sycophancy led to an escalation in the scale and cost of great houses, leading some owners to financial ruin (Stone, 1965, 549–555). The queen’s Lord Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton, was a particularly fervent devotee of the cult of Gloriana, dedicating his Holdenby House in Northamptonshire to Elizabeth as a shrine in which ‘that holy saint may sit in’ (Deacon, 2008, 100). Yet the queen never even deigned to visit the house, while Hatton for his pains died heavily in debt. The cost of pleasing one’s queen lay not just in the construction of a prodigy house, but also in its subsequent use to accommodate her and her entourage when she condescended to pay a visit. These visits could be ruinously expensive (Cole, 1999, 63–78). William Cecil, the queen’s chief minister, entertained Elizabeth at his Hertfordshire house Theobalds on no less than twelve occasions. Cecil admitted that the queen’s frequent visits forced him to make regular extensions of the house, which ‘encreast by occasion of her Majesty’s often coming’ (Summerson, 1959, 108). When he had finished Theobalds was ‘the most extravagant and palatial house of its time’ (Airs, 2002, 3). In effect, it functioned as a proxy royal palace. Competitive emulation amongst the Tudor magnates was manifested as much in their London townhouses as in their country mansions. The need to be in close attendance to a London-based monarch meant they had to spend more and more time in the capital. Conspicuous investment in townhouses inevitably increased, as the nobility came to recognise that the form of their buildings could be as potent an expression of their wealth and power as their contents. ‘The mobile grandeur of the medieval nobleman was to give way to the settled magnificence of the Tudor aristocracy’ (Barron, 2017, 443). The aristocratic presence in the city was supplemented by growing numbers of the gentry, drawn there to advertise their rising wealth and status (Heal & Holmes, 1994, 311–318). The Elizabethan and Jacobean eras were the golden age of mansion-building by the new generation of magnates. While many wealthy families still lived within the crowded City, the preferred location for the Tudor nobility was the western suburbs, where there was space to build a country house within the town. Here they created a new aristocratic landscape of power, their embrace of rus in urbe echoing that of the Roman aristocracy of London more than a millennium earlier. A palatial house on the Strand with a garden and river frontage was

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the most prized possession of all. It had been the first choice of medieval prelates, but after the break with Rome and the dissolution of the monasteries, they could not hold on to such prime properties. Thus the Bishop of Norwich’s house at Charing Cross was given over to the Duke of Suffolk, while the mansion of the Bishop of Bath and Wells on the Strand found its way into the ownership of the Earl of Arundel (Barron, 2017, 442). The first great aristocratic mansion developed in London after the death of Henry VIII was Somerset House on the Strand, built between 1547 and 1552 by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector (Photograph 4.2). The extensive site, immediately to the east of the Savoy Palace, had been assembled by Seymour from some half dozen, mostly ecclesiastical, properties, including the inns of the Bishops of Worcester, Chester and Llandaff (Pearce, 1986, 32–35). Here Seymour built a quasi-­ palace from which he aimed to rule the kingdom on behalf of his young nephew Edward VI (Watkin, 2009, 57–60). Though redeveloped in the eighteenth century, surviving drawings show that Seymour’s appreciation of the classical revival was apparent in the stone façade of his new house (Summerson, 1993, 43–44). A central gateway in the form of a Roman triumphal arch surrounded by

Photograph 4.2  Old Somerset House 1547-52 (Source: FALKENSTEINFOTO/ Alamy Stock Photo)

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superimposed classical orders, flanked by pedimented windows to either side and topped by a balustraded roof, ‘marked the coming of a truer understanding of the Franco-Italian Renaissance than had previously existed in England’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 318). Behind the façade, the courtyard house with great hall was more traditionally Tudor in style, but had sufficient grandeur for a Renaissance prince who had briefly assumed ‘virtually the power of a king’ (Williams, 1995, 35). It was under James I that conspicuous investment by the magnates reached its climax. The inflation of honours under the Stuarts fed the competitive frenzy, as newly ennobled families sought to outshine their older, established rivals through the splendour of their buildings in both town and country. It was also an age of endemic corruption, in which it was a matter of routine for the aristocracy to supplement the regular income from their estates and government offices with gratuities, bribes, proceeds of customs farming and even secret payments from foreign powers, especially from England’s arch-enemy, Spain. These irregular sources of income were a vital support for extravagant building programmes, which in many cases required still further support from borrowings (Stone, 1973, 3–61). Two men of very different lineage epitomise the spirit of the age— Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton and Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. Howard belonged to one of the richest and most powerful aristocratic families in England, long established at the heart of the nation’s affairs, whereas Cecil was son of Lord Burghley, the self-made man who became Elizabeth’s chief minister. Howard’s grandfather was the third Duke of Norfolk, who had been one of Henry VIII’s closest advisers; Cecil’s grandfather on the other hand had been a mere page in Henry VIII’s chamber. Despite their very different bloodline, the two men climbed to the top of the Jacobean power structure, succeeding one another as Lord Privy Seal and Lord Treasurer. To proclaim their official power and status, each decided to construct a great mansion on the Strand that would act as their Westminster power base, from where they could exercise their influence over the operations of government, parliament and the law courts (Merritt, 2002). Cecil built Salisbury House on the Strand to the west of Somerset House between 1599 and 1608; Howard built Northampton (later Northumberland) House at Charing Cross between 1605 and 1612 (Pearce, 1986, 27–32). Now demolished, both houses were laid out on a courtyard plan. The courtyard of Salisbury House was open to the street,

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one of the first examples in London of a plan dictated by the desire for outward display rather than inward privacy and protection (Schofield, 1995, 43). The main difference between these two early seventeenth-­ century houses and Somerset House, built half a century earlier, was that their facades were designed in a flamboyant Jacobean not restrained classical style. Northumberland House in particular had a ‘fabulously ornate frontispiece’ swarming with a riot of attached ornament (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 356). These were Renaissance palaces, but still dressed in the romantically medieval form that appealed to the English sense of exceptionalism. It was not only the Stuart aristocracy that was engaged in hegemonic building at the start of the seventeenth century. Being less popular than Elizabeth, the Stuart kings were less welcome and less inclined to progress between the houses of the aristocracy (Stone, 1965, 553). This meant that the much-reduced portfolio of royal houses had to provide the setting for their theatre of power. While Elizabeth did no more than maintain the royal portfolio, the Stuarts invested in its embellishment and modernisation. In so doing they intended to demonstrate that the English monarchy, unlike its nobility, was finally sophisticated enough, and European enough, to fully embrace the architecture of the Italian Renaissance. They wished the ongoing debate about whether vernacular Gothic or cosmopolitan Classicism better reflected national identity to be resolved in favour of Classicism as the hegemonic visual idiom for the great buildings of state. They believed that its ‘regularity, simplicity and harmony of proportion were…symbols of good order and government’ (Lubbock, 1995, 178). To advance his classical agenda, James I commissioned the court architect Inigo Jones to design two new palace buildings: the Queen’s House at Greenwich and the Banqueting House on Whitehall (Summerson, 1993, 110–122). Begun in 1616 but not completed until 1637, the Queen’s House at Greenwich was intended as a ‘house of delight’, a royal retreat in semi-­ rural surroundings set apart from the main palace (Colvin et  al., 1982, 33). Palladian in inspiration, it comprises two parallel rectangular blocks linked by a covered bridge, plain in form apart from a loggia on the upper floor of the south block. The main hall is at the centre of the north block, dimensioned as a perfect cube with a gallery running around the upper floor. Jones derived aspects of the design from two Italian villas, the Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano near Florence and the Villa Molini near Padua. In

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contrast to the prevailing Jacobean love of ornate decoration, Jones’s austere villa was ‘as novel in its chastity and bareness’ as were the first Modernist buildings of the early twentieth century in comparison to the prevailing florid style of Edwardian Baroque (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 257). More imposing in appearance and hegemonic in purpose was the Banqueting House in Whitehall Palace, rebuilt by Jones between 1619 and 1622 (Photograph 4.3). It is the only palace building to have survived the subsequent redevelopment of Whitehall as the administrative centre of the British state.

Photograph 4.3  Banqueting House Whitehall 1619-22 (Source: Angelo Hornak/Alamy Stock Photo)

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The Banqueting House was intended to be the ceremonial centre of the Whitehall complex, a great hall which could host state receptions and feasts, and stage the masques which Jones designed for both James I and Charles I (Colvin et  al., 1982, 34). Its imposing façade, with superimposed orders of Ionic and Composite columns, shows the influence of Palladio’s Palazzo Barbaran in Vicenza and Michelangelo’s Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Again employing Palladian ideas of geometric proportion, the main hall is dimensioned as a double cube (Tavernor, 1991, 133–134). The ceiling was covered in paintings by Rubens which had an overtly ideological purpose, to promote the apotheosis of James I. The figure of the king points to Peace and Plenty, surrounded by figures of Justice, Zeal, Honour and Victory, with Reason triumphing over Discord and Abundance over Avarice. Planted in the heart of Westminster, the ‘sobriety, the gravity, the learning’ of Jones’s Italian palazzo must have made a startling cultural contrast to the nearby Jacobean extravaganza that was Howard’s Northumberland House, built just a decade earlier (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 239–242). This was the last hegemonic building erected in London to celebrate absolutism. Less than thirty years after its completion, on 30 January 1649, it staged the most momentous act of political theatre in English history—the execution of Charles I, found guilty of treason for having ‘traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present Parliament and the People therein represented’ (Holmes, 2010, 301). By pronouncing Parliament rather than the monarch as sovereign, the English Revolution destroyed the basis for absolutist rule in England.

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Starkey, D. (1987). The English court: From the wars of the roses to the civil war. Longman. Starkey, D. (1992). England. In R. Porter & M. Teich (Eds.), The renaissance in national context (pp. 146–163). Cambridge University Press. Stevens, G. (1998). The favored circle: The social foundations of architectural distinction. MIT Press. Stone, L. (1965). The crisis of the aristocracy 1558–1641. Oxford University Press. Stone, L. (1973). Family and fortune: Studies in aristocratic finance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Oxford University Press. Stow, J. (2005). A survey of London, written in the year 1598. History Press. Strong, R. (1984). Art and power: Renaissance festivals 1450–1650. Boydell Press. Summerson, J. (1959). The building of Theobalds, 1564-1585. Archaeologia, 97, 107–126. Summerson, J. (1980). The classical language of architecture. Thames and Hudson. Summerson, J. (1993). Architecture in Britain 1530–1830. Yale University Press. Tavernor, R. (1991). Palladio and Palladianism. Thames and Hudson. Tawney, R.  H. (1941). The rise of the gentry, 1558-1640. Economic History Review, 11(1), 1–38. Thomas, K. (1995). English Protestantism and classical art. In L.  Gent (Ed.), Albion’s classicism: The visual arts in Britain, 1550–1660 (pp. 221–238). Yale University Press. Thompson, M. (1995). The medieval hall: The basis of secular domestic life, 600–1600 AD. Scolar Press. Thrupp, S.  L. (1962). The merchant class of medieval London. University of Michigan Press. Thurley, S. (1993). The royal palaces of Tudor England: Architecture and court life 1460–1547. Yale University Press. Thurley, S. (1999). Whitehall palace: An architectural history of the royal apartments, 1240–1698. Yale University Press. Thurley, S. (2003). Hampton court: A social and architectural history. Yale University Press. Turner, B.  S. (1990). Conclusion: Peroration on ideology. In N.  Abercrombie, S.  Hill, & B.  S. Turner (Eds.), Dominant ideologies (pp.  229–256). Unwin Hyman. Vitruvius. (1960). The ten books on architecture. Dover. Watkin, D. (2009). The architecture of a palace. In M. Etherington-Smith (Ed.), Somerset house: The history (pp. 57–70). Cultureshock Media. Weir, A. (2020). Henry VIII: King and court. Vintage. Williams, P. (1995). The later Tudors, England 1547–1603. Oxford University Press. Wilson, C. (2000). The gothic cathedral: The architecture of the great church 1130–1530. Thames and Hudson.

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CHAPTER 5

Aristocratic Playground

5.1   English Revolution Beneath the glittering spectacle of Tudor and Stuart court life, economic hardship was intensifying across the country during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After nearly two centuries of contraction, growth in both population and economic activity was resumed, but this growth was accompanied by rapid price inflation which depressed the value of real wages and widened income inequalities across society (Barras, 2016a, 28–29). At the start of the Tudor age, England’s total population is estimated to have been around two million, still less than half the peak total it had reached prior to the Black Death. Thenceforth greater political and economic stability provided the stimulus for increases in marriage and fertility rates, combined with decreases in mortality rates due to less frequent outbreaks of plague (Clay, 1984, 1–28). As a consequence, national population reached four million by 1600 and over five million by 1650. This population explosion created intense pressures for the greater commercial exploitation of farmland, to improve yields and expand production (Clay, 1984: 67–91). However, despite increases in both agricultural productivity and the area of land under cultivation, a Malthusian feedback cycle was in operation: growth in the supply of food and other consumables could not keep pace with the rapid increase in population

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Barras, Monumental London, Palgrave Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38403-5_5

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(Wrigley & Schofield, 1989, 402–412). The resultant inflation was further exacerbated by expansion of the money supply, leading to a fivefold increase in consumer prices between 1500 and 1600, with agricultural prices rising faster than industrial prices (Fisher, 1989). Income inequalities widened sharply in response to the population explosion and price revolution. Surging food prices boosted the real incomes of both the landowning elite and the lower tier of yeoman farmers, while depressing the real wages of the landless majority (Palliser, 1992, 181–184). By the early decades of the seventeenth century, the living standards of the labourer seem to have been as low as at any point in the previous four centuries. Falling real wages were accompanied by rising unemployment, plunging growing ranks of the population into poverty and destitution (Clay, 1984, 214–222). These decades ‘witnessed extreme hardship in England, and were probably among the most terrible years through which the country has ever passed’ (Bowden, 1967, 621). Increasing inequality and worsening poverty among the labouring masses did not, however, lead to social unrest on the scale that had broken out in the fourteenth century. Where the preconditions for revolution were forming was within the ruling class itself. The costs of maintaining an absolutist monarchy were becoming unsupportable, causing a financial crisis for government. It was towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign that the crisis first emerged, because the government failed to maintain an adequate taxation system in the face of rising inflation and soaring expenditure, particularly on the war with Spain (Smith, 1997, 235–241). Frequent recourse to Parliament failed to generate sufficient tax revenues to meet expenditure, so that the government had to resort to borrowing and sale of crown lands to cover its accumulating deficit (Guy, 1988, 379–385). When James I inherited the throne, he translated a financial crisis into a political crisis by adopting a contemptuous attitude towards Parliament, in the belief that it functioned not by the right of the people but by the grace of a monarch endowed with a divine right to rule. To make matters worse, ‘Divine Right doctrines of monarchy were matched by High Church ritualism in religion’ (Anderson, 1979, 138). The conflict between King and Parliament revolved principally around taxation (Russell, 1990, 161–184). While James believed it was the duty of Parliament to provide adequate funding for the normal activities of government, the Commons held to the view that those activities should be funded out of regular crown income, reserving parliament-approved taxes

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for special needs such as war and other emergencies. In this conflict, the Commons adopted the role of defender of the national interest, its increasing assertiveness reflecting the growing numbers, wealth and education of the gentry class from which its members were principally drawn (Stone, 2017, 102–110). Parliament’s refusal to cover the shortfall in royal funds was a catalyst for the king’s burgeoning sale of offices and titles. After Charles I succeeded his father in 1625, the conflict intensified. His extravagance was legendary (Lincoln, 2021, 64–72), forcing him to seek extra-parliamentary sources of income, such as compulsory ‘gifts’ and forced loans. Fierce resistance to these impositions meant that they failed to generate the required revenue, while alienating powerful sections of both the landed gentry and the London merchant community (Brenner, 2003, 199–239). In 1629, the king dissolved Parliament and had the leaders of the Commons imprisoned. Between 1629 and 1640 he attempted to govern England through personal rule and the levy of prerogative taxes, exploiting every conceivable source of income such as customs farming and sale of monopolies (Loades, 1999, 311–332). Revenues from the sale of offices reached 30 to 40 per cent of royal income in these years (Anderson, 1979, 141). This was absolutism in extremis, and the propertied classes would have none of it (Wood, 2012, 220–224). The financial crisis finally engulfed the crown at the end of the 1630s, brought to a head by the outbreak of religiously inspired rebellions in Scotland and Ireland. Charles had no option but to recall Parliament, and the elections of 1640 returned a radical House of Commons intent upon a constitutional revolution that would demolish the system of prerogative government which the king had established. The political crisis reached a head in January 1642. In the face of radical constitutional demands from Parliament, the king made the fatal mistake of laying charges of high treason against the leaders of the Commons. He assembled an armed force to conduct the arrests, prompting thousands of armed Londoners to flood onto the streets of the capital in defence of Parliament. As the machinery of government collapsed and public order began to disintegrate, the country descended into civil war (Loades, 1999, 345–361). The English Revolution had begun. As the two sides raised their armies during 1642, religion and class both played a part in determining allegiances, although there were splits within every group and every locality. Anglicans tended to support the crown; non-conformist Puritans tended to fight for Parliament. The aristocracy, greater gentry and parts of the merchant elite tended to side with the

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crown; the lesser gentry and yeomen in the countryside and the artisans and middling commercial classes in the towns tended to gravitate towards Parliament. Significantly, despite their economic hardships, the labourers in town and country by and large stayed neutral in the conflict. This was no proletarian uprising of the poor against the rich, nor was it a bourgeois revolution to install a new capitalist order. Rather, it was a predominantly middle-class revolution led by the more radical sections of the gentry and commercial classes to unseat a hostile and autocratic monarchy (Stone, 2017, 51–64). By playing a central role in the revolutionary events of the age, these sections of society were investing in their own future economic success. While opinion in London was as divided as it was elsewhere, the majority swung behind Parliament (Porter, 1994, 73–78). During the first year of the civil war, when the chances of royalist victory were strongest, London volunteers and City loans played a vital part in Parliament’s survival. But after Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army took control, Parliament gained the upper hand (Hill, 1970). As victory approached, the programme of parliamentary government became increasingly radical. Fundamental reform of the church was undertaken, with the episcopacy abolished and the Anglican liturgy replaced by a Presbyterian form of worship. Revolutionary fervour reached its climax in 1649. In January the king was executed; in March the monarchy and House of Lords were abolished; in May England was declared ‘a Commonwealth and Free State’, in effect a republic governed by representatives of the people sitting in the House of Commons (Smith, 1997, 309–321). However, having overthrown the apparatus of absolutist government, the impetus of the revolution was exhausted. Calls for a more democratic constitution, and even for the common ownership of property, were resisted; this was a revolution led by men who had no intention of substantially widening the franchise or implementing a major redistribution of landed property. Cromwell was made Lord Protector, assigned quasi-­ monarchical powers at the head of what was becoming a military dictatorship. When he died in 1658, the whole republican edifice collapsed (Loades, 1999, 368–393). In 1660, the Stuart monarchy under Charles II was restored, and the House of Lords and Church of England re-established (Holmes, 1993, 27–43). However, the social, political and religious changes wrought by the English Revolution could not be reversed (Hill, 1986, 104). Attempts by the restored Stuart kings to return to the sort of absolutist rule enjoyed

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by their second cousin Louis XIV in France were bound to fail. When Catholic James II succeeded his elder brother, he sought to institute a counter-revolution. Opposition elements in Parliament responded by organising a bloodless coup in 1688, deposing James and installing as joint monarchs his daughter Mary and her husband, the protestant Dutch leader William of Orange, who became William III (Speck, 1988). In established English history, this episode is fondly known as the ‘Glorious Revolution’ in contrast to the more momentous, but more problematic, English Revolution that occurred four decades earlier.

5.2  Oligarchy of Virtue Taken overall, the revolutionary turmoil between 1640 and 1688 marks the end of the absolutist era in England, well ahead of its demise in continental Europe. This transformative upheaval led to a new era of economic and social consolidation which saw the rise of agrarian, commercial and financial capitalism and the establishment of parliamentary rule, albeit under a Parliament that principally served the interests of the landed classes. This era of consolidation spanned what has been termed ‘the long eighteenth century’, stretching from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to the First Reform Act of 1832 (O’Gorman, 2012). It was an era that has even been likened to England’s own ancien régime, a period of patrician hegemony founded upon an alliance between aristocracy, monarchy and established church (Clark, 2000). However, it was in no sense comparable to the absolutist regime that had been established in France and was to meet its violent end in the republican revolution of 1789. The constitutional monarchy established in England by the revolution of 1688 was based upon the fundamental principle that the monarch as head of state ruled with the consent of the people acting through Parliament. The constitutional settlement underpinning the new ruling order was set out in the 1689 Declaration of Rights, which listed thirteen ‘undoubted rights and liberties’ of the British people (Hoppit, 2000, 23–27). The rights of free elections and free speech were protected by law, and it became illegal for the crown to suspend the laws of the land, maintain a standing army in peacetime, or levy taxes without parliamentary approval. Ideological support for the new political system was provided by John Locke, the country’s leading philosopher, whose Two Treatises of

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Government were published in 1690. This was an attack on absolutist monarchy, a system of government defended by his predecessor Thomas Hobbes, and a call for a limited form of parliamentary government based upon the rule of law (Wood, 2012, 240–273). Locke argued that the rule of law is essential for the protection of liberty, and that representative governments are entrusted with the power to rule by the consent of the people. His most arresting assertion is that the prime purpose of government is the protection of private property: ‘The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property’ (Locke, 1988, 350). Individual ownership of private property is sacrosanct: ‘without a Man’s own consent it cannot be taken from him’ (Locke, 1988, 395). Here Locke is applying the concept of liberty under the rule of law to the two autonomous sources of power, state and civil, that have been recognised in western European political thought since the Roman era. He is endeavouring to marry political freedom as guaranteed by the state with the freedom to own private property as protected by civil society (Wood, 2012, 3–8). This hegemonic doctrine became the dominant ideology of the new ruling order. If state power was now to be exercised through Parliament, the crucial question was who controlled Parliament? The answer was a constitutional oligarchy of the nation’s most powerful and wealthy aristocrats (O’Gorman, 2012, 101–108). The century following the revolutionary settlement marks the apogee of aristocratic power and wealth in England. Their supremacy was founded upon an ideological consensus built around aristocratic values and leadership (Cannon, 1984, 148–174). Ideological justification for their rule was not just provided by contemporaries such as Locke; it was found in the ideals of Republican Rome. Legitimisation of aristocratic rule was sought through universalisation, presenting it as the natural order of society through the ages. The aristocracy of eighteenth-century England sought to frame their hegemony as an ‘oligarchy of virtue’ by adopting the self-image of aristocratic Romans steeped in the ideology of honour (Ayres, 1997, 1–29). Though operating within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, they promoted the republican ideals of civic virtue and liberty under the rule of law. However, in the manner of Roman senators, what they meant by liberty was the aristocratic right to govern and the right of the governed to exercise their democratic rights according to the wishes of their superiors. Cicero’s defence of aristocracy, that it occupied the moderate

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middle ground between the inadequate autocrat and the reckless mob, accorded perfectly with their self-image (Cicero, 1998, 24). It even became acceptable to characterise England as a republic headed by a monarch, a stance subsequently adopted by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract published in 1762. He asserts that ‘any state which is ruled by law I call a “republic”, whatever the form of its constitution’, which leads him to conclude ‘so even a monarchy can be a republic’ (Rousseau, 1968, 82). The Scottish philosopher David Hume, writing in 1741, was amazed at the ease with which the aristocratic elite were able to exercise their hegemony, which he attributed to the power of public opinion. ‘Nothing appears more surprizing…than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few…as FORCE is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion’ (Hume, 1994, 16). In an era of post-revolutionary consolidation, the order of the day was deference, not hostility, towards the paternalistic rule of the landowning elite. Large sections of the population were dependent upon the aristocracy for employment, custom, patronage or charity, which reinforced their opinion that its rule was both inevitable and beneficial. It was only towards the end of the eighteenth century that the bourgeoisie of the towns and cities, empowered by the Industrial Revolution, began to mount a serious assault on the hegemony of the landowning class. Aristocratic hegemony was achieved by a variety of means. Though the House of Commons retained the role it won during the Civil War, as the nation’s supreme legislative body, the restored House of Lords was able to regain considerable indirect control over both the executive and legislature (Cannon, 1984, 93–125). Peers took a majority of the leading roles in the cabinet of ministers which replaced the old Privy Council, and used their patronage to secure many of the seats in the Commons for their clients. Furthermore, the scope of the democratic process remained severely restricted. The franchise was limited by property ownership; seats in the Commons were openly sold; there was widespread bribery and corruption of candidates; only a small minority of eligible voters participated in elections; the ballot was public and contested elections became the exception rather than the rule. In 1705, some 65 per cent of county constituencies went to the polls, whereas by 1747, the proportion had shrunk to just 7.5 per cent (Cannon, 1972, 24–46).

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In reality, in the Roman mould, Georgian England was an aristocratic republic hostile to absolutism and democracy alike. Its spurious democratic justification was the doctrine of ‘virtual representation’, which claimed that although the poor were represented in Parliament by men of property, a social contract between the classes ensured that their interests were not neglected. This was how the oligarchy of virtue saw itself; its virtuous rule justified its version of liberty. There was political conflict, but it was confined to disputes between fractions of the landowning class. During the Restoration, a clear division had emerged between a ‘court’ party, loyal to absolute monarchy and established church, and a ‘country’ party which opposed the ruling order. These two groupings crystallised into the Tories and the Whigs, the founding political parties of the British parliamentary system. The Whigs acted primarily for the more liberal and cosmopolitan aristocracy and the Tories for the more conservative gentry of the shires (Holmes, 1993, 133–142). In terms of their political ideology, the Tories held to an ideology of order, promoting the virtues of rank and hierarchy to maintain social stability, whereas the Whigs acted on an ideology of consent, promoting the virtues of the social contract to contain social change. While the Tories regarded themselves as protectors of landed property, the Whigs sought to protect private property of all types, commercial as well as landed (Dickinson, 1979, 13–90). It was the Whig aristocracy which engineered the Hanoverian succession in the person of George I when the Stuart line died out on the death of Mary’s sister Anne in 1714. By this means, they ensured the survival of England’s protestant constitutional monarchy. Their reward was uninterrupted control of the government between 1714 and 1762, during what has traditionally been known as the era of ‘Whig supremacy’ (O’Gorman, 2012, 65–95). Membership of England’s landed elite remained broadly stable during the Georgian era because the majority of leading families retained a tenacious hold on their great estates (Habakkuk, 1979). In this they were assisted by the principle of primogeniture enshrined in English law, which ensured that the eldest male heir inherited the whole estate, allowing it to be passed down through the generations without subdivision by a process known as ‘strict settlement’ (Stone & Stone, 1984, 69–86). It was to some degree an open elite, gaining new entrants with sufficient wealth while losing established families suffering declining fertility or

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fortune. However, the vast majority of the new recruits already had peerage connections through family or marriage; the aristocracy continued to renew itself, but did so by promoting its own (Cannon, 1984, 1–33). Strategic marriage alliances were a favoured means of consolidating great estates. Endogamous marriages between landed families of equal status were strongly preferred, although daughters of wealthy bourgeois families might be considered suitable spouses if endowed with sufficiently large dowries (Cannon, 1984, 71–92). The supremacy of the aristocratic oligarchy rested upon their economic as much as their political power. However, this was no feudal ruling class. They presided over an economy that was becoming capitalist in its mode of production, yet they could in no sense be regarded as bourgeois. In the sources of their wealth and power, and the tenor of their attitudes and behaviour, they remained aristocrats for whom landed wealth had a virtue denied to commercial wealth (Ayres, 1997, 25). This set the wealthy aristocrat above the wealthy bourgeois, enabling him to be a ‘gentleman of leisure’, a rentier whose income derived from his ownership of land rather than from his entrepreneurship and industry. As Veblen put it, ‘Abstention from labour is the conventional evidence of wealth and is therefore the conventional mark of social standing’ (Veblen, 2007: 32). By adapting successfully to the economic revolution that was taking place beneath them, the landed elite were able to enjoy the best of both worlds: the profits of the entrepreneur and the prestige of the aristocrat. ‘They were capitalists, although rentiers, innovators although patricians’ (Stone & Stone, 1984: 286). Though land remained the crucial signifier of aristocratic status, the manner of its exploitation within the agrarian economy to generate an economic surplus had been transformed over the previous two centuries. The agricultural revolution which began in the sixteenth century had evolved into a mature form of capitalist agriculture by the eighteenth (Overton, 1996). ‘Capital’s first historical incarnation in England was agrarian’ (Anderson, 1987, 32). Great gains in output and yields were achieved through investment in agricultural improvements such as land drainage and reclamation, better animal husbandry, new plant strains and animal breeds, more systematic crop rotation and soil fertilisation (Beckett, 1989, 157–205). In parallel with the technical improvements undertaken by landowners and farmers, the oligarchical state promoted institutional changes which further boosted the profitability of landed estates (Daunton, 1995, 61–121). Leaseholds became the favoured form of tenure, private property rights

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were strengthened and customary rights weakened, the markets for agricultural products were deregulated, and there was an acceleration in the enclosure of common land which had started in the sixteenth century. In the classic tripartite structure of agrarian capitalism, the great estates of the aristocracy were divided into tenanted holdings worked by farmers who paid rents to the landowner and wages to their hired labourers (Brenner, 1985: 46–52). It was a system that generated great wealth for those landowners with the capital to operate on a sufficiently large scale. The more consolidated the estate and the wealthier the family, the greater the economies of scale that could be exploited and the more profitable the returns (Mingay, 1963, 50–79). This economic dynamic shifted the balance of power away from the lesser gentry who had prospered in the aftermath of the Civil War, back towards the aristocrats and greater gentry who were able to accumulate vast estates during the eighteenth century (Habakkuk, 1940). The incomes of the leading aristocrats were enormous, sustaining equally prodigious expenditures. As their wealth multiplied during the eighteenth century, so did the profligacy of their lifestyles; the conspicuous consumption of the Georgian aristocracy became the stuff of legend (Porter, 1991, 59–60). It was the hallmark of every aspect of their social lives, which required them to maintain both their ancestral country seat and a fine house in London. On their social round, they stayed in town for the season, took the waters at a spa, visited friends and family around the country, and attended to their country estates. Wherever they went, their extravagant lifestyle fed the rise of the commercial and professional classes, who they relied upon to satisfy their inexhaustible appetite for goods and services. There was a shift in the focus of aristocratic life, from the stagnant countryside to the energetic city, in response to the growing delights and diversions to be found in London (Stone, 1980, 177–186). The city was undergoing a metamorphosis from medieval entrepôt to modern metropolis, a national and international centre of wealth and power (Manley, 1995). It was the place where conspicuous consumption could be satisfied, not only through the acquisition of luxury goods but also through the enjoyment of lavish leisure pursuits and the patronage of notable cultural events. Such an environment provided the ideal conditions for ‘high culture’ to move out of the narrow confines of the royal court and flourish in the wider expanse of sophisticated urban society (Brewer, 2013, 15–54).

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Through their engagement with this culture, the ruling class became increasingly cosmopolitan in outlook. London was their cultural as well as their material bazaar, ‘importing and translating cultural ideas, goods and practices from continental Europe and beyond’ (Clark & Houston, 2000, 575). Members of the aristocracy and gentry could spend up to nine months of the year in the metropolis (Peck, 2005, 202). Stretching from October to May or June, the London season coincided with the Parliamentary term which drew peers and squires to their seats in the Lords and Commons (Mitchell, 2005, 40). But the elite were in the capital for far more than political debate. They conducted their business affairs, arranged marriages, attended balls and receptions, went to plays and concerts, and socialised at polite assemblies. London was a city of pleasure as well as politics and commerce. It provided a stage upon which the whole theatre of aristocratic life could be acted out, its myriad playhouses, concert halls, clubs, coffee houses, pleasure gardens, gaming houses and brothels catering for every taste and every occasion (Porter, 1994, 169–180). As the commentator Edward Waterhouse observed in 1665, the up-and-coming West End offered an abundance of ‘Rich Wives, Spruce Mistresses, Pleasant Houses, Good Dyet, Rare Wines, Neat Servants, Fashionable Furniture, Pleasure and Profits the best of all sorts’ (Manley, 1995, 505). Somewhat later, the poet Lord Byron was pleased to report that living in the West End he had been ‘breaking a few of the favourite commandments’ (Porter, 1994, 110). Pleasure and profit summarise the metropolitan lifestyle of the Georgian elite. It was a lifestyle pursued in an urban landscape of supreme elegance, formed of mansions, terraces and squares that were the epitome of leisured wealth and exquisite taste (Summerson, 2003). But London has always been a city of extremes, and the aristocratic neighbourhoods that emanated wealth and power coexisted with slums that spoke of great poverty and hardship. There was to be found the ‘Other London’ of the labouring poor and the miserably destitute, living at or below subsistence level (Rudé, 2003, 82–99). Living outside civil society, this underclass was enduring a life that was indeed, in the famous words of Hobbes, ‘solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’ (Hobbes, 1985, 186). The enormous disparities in conditions of life within the city had never been so starkly exposed to view.

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5.3  Landscape of Leisure While England was undergoing revolutionary upheaval, absolutism continued to flourish across much of seventeenth-century Europe. Indeed, in the France of Louis XIV, it was reaching its apogee (Anderson, 1979, 85–112). There it displayed itself through hegemonic building on a vast scale, most spectacularly in the Louvre and Versailles palaces built by Louis in Paris. Building on such a scale required a commensurately flamboyant hegemonic architecture, and that style was the Baroque (Turner, 1990, 238–240). The Baroque was a new form of classical architecture that evolved in Italy at the beginning of the seventeenth century, continuing the progression from Renaissance through Mannerism that had occurred during the sixteenth (Wittkower, 1999, 75–89). As developed by architects such as Bernini and Borromini, it was a very different style from the Renaissance: restless and emotional rather than calm and rational. Instead of balance and harmony, there is sensuality and excess. Curved facades carry unrestrained decoration; rectangular blocks are enlivened with jutting wings; colonnaded forecourts frame spectacular entrances. Leadership of the new movement soon passed from Rome to Paris, where it was embraced with enthusiasm as a dramatic style eminently suited to the glorification of the all-powerful French monarchy (Lemerle & Pauwels, 2008, 106–161). During the later seventeenth century, English architects led by Christopher Wren, John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor developed a more polite form of English Baroque that better captured the spirit of their post-revolutionary world (Downes, 1966). When Wren was appointed King’s Surveyor by Charles II in 1669, this became the official court style, supplanting the more restrained classicism of his predecessor Inigo Jones. This national version of Baroque was the style adopted for the last gasp of hegemonic palace-building by the Restoration monarchy. Prior to Wren’s appointment, the king had commissioned John Webb, a pupil of Inigo Jones, to start rebuilding the Tudor palace at Greenwich. He planned a layout of Baroque formality and grandeur, with a main block surmounted by drum and dome, framed by two wings extending northwards to the river (Summerson, 1993, 178). Only the west wing, known as the King Charles Block, was constructed between 1662 and 1669, but Webb’s use of a giant Corinthian order to enhance the central portico and end pavilions of the range offer the first visible evidence of Baroque influence on English architecture. When William and Mary ascended the

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throne they decided against living at Greenwich, preferring the healthier air of Hampton Court (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 259). Instead, Mary made the complex over to be developed as a Naval Hospital during the early decades of the eighteenth century. An absolutist palace was transformed into a military facility for a rising imperial power. Soon after their accession, the joint monarchs commissioned Wren to rebuild the Tudor palace at Hampton Court in the French classical style, to act as their Versailles but on a scale appropriate to a constitutional monarchy. Their intention was to replace everything but the Great Hall, but in the end only Fountain Court was rebuilt, with Henry VIII’s royal lodgings replaced by new state apartments (Thurley, 2003, 151–209). The work proceeded rapidly between 1689 and the queen’s death in 1694, but the outcome was far more modest in ambition than Wren had wanted, and far more modest in scale than the French equivalents built in Paris for Louis XIV. The new Fountain Court was only a fraction of the size of the Cour Carrée in the Louvre, and in appearance its facades were comfortable and cheerful rather than awe-inspiring (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 489–491). As an exercise in competitive emulation of the French monarchy, William and Mary’s Hampton Court, unlike Henry III’s Westminster Abbey, was an inevitable failure because it was the creation of a very different form of monarchy with much more limited resources and ambitions. The anti-climax of Hampton Court marks the final act in the transfer of the mantle of England’s principal hegemonic builder from the monarchy to the aristocracy, a process which had begun under Elizabeth more than a century earlier. The landed elite now took command of building London as a landscape in which they could display not only their economic and political power but also their cultural taste and discernment. Most of all they wished to distinguish themselves as gentlemen of leisure, able to enjoy the pleasures of metropolitan life without the need to engage in mundane labour. They developed London as their playground, creating a landscape of leisure that functioned like a stage set upon which they acted out their social roles in a continuously repeated display of supremacy over the lower orders. In the spirit of their Jacobean predecessors, some of the Georgian elite made a conspicuous investment in a London mansion designed to present as grand an outward show as their country seat. The majority, however, favoured a seemingly more restrained approach, content to rent the standard product of the time, a graceful terraced house on an elegant square,

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luxurious within but presenting a modest frontage to the street (Port, 1995). Rather like the feudal aristocracy before them, the anonymous face that the Georgian aristocracy presented to the outside world was perhaps indicative of a prudent desire not to advertise one’s wealth too ostentatiously in a city harbouring extreme poverty, seething with radicalism and prone to riot. As the architect John Soane commented in 1815, the disregard to external appearance was also a manifestation of the self-conscious understatement favoured by the aristocracy: ‘by keeping the exterior very plain and very subordinate, more contrast is produced and an additional value given thereby to the interior’ (Watkin, 2000, 230). For an aristocratic family, there was a clear distinction between the hegemonic purpose of their country house and their London townhouse. The country house was outward-looking; its exterior display was an authoritative statement of power directed primarily at the lower orders who worked on its estates or lived in its vicinity. The townhouse was inward-looking; behind the discreet facade its display was a competitive statement of status directed primarily at visiting members of the ruling elite, whether aristocratic, gentry or bourgeois. Within their townhouse, the owners schemed and socialised and debauched with their peers (Mitchell, 2005, 41–57). Consequently, the family’s best furniture, paintings, plate and wine tended to be kept for the delight of their London visitors rather than their country guests. In particular, they kept their collection of valuable artworks in their townhouse, not their country house, a practice that only began to change towards the end of the eighteenth century (Brewer, 2013, 180–181). It is necessary to distinguish between the inward display of aristocratic families entertaining within their individual townhouses and their outward display as they went about their lives within the wider urban landscape. ‘To live in a square was more convenient than to live in a street, because it allowed an unrestricted view of all one’s neighbours’ (Mitchell, 2005, 40). It was as important to be the object of observation as it was to be a participating subject, whether riding in the park or attending a reception. Indeed, it can be said that it was for the purpose of seeing and being seen that the aristocracy created their landscape of leisure. In the theatre of aristocratic life, they were not only the actors but also the audience. In creating their landscape of leisure, aristocrats acted as developers as well as occupiers. They took advantage of the emergence of a capitalist land market to assume the archetypal role of real estate speculators, being

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far more willing to trade their London property than the ancestral country seat to which their identity was more closely bound (Stone, 1980, 194–196). ‘The noble landlord with a greedy purse’ was a prime mover in the development of London during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though successful businessmen such as the notorious Nicholas Barbon were able to operate on a similarly grand scale (Summerson, 2003, 21–35). ‘The great landlord and the speculative builder found each other and together they created the London square with its character of unity surrounded as it is by dignified houses, all alike’ (Rasmussen, 1982, 166). The magnetic attraction of London was creating an ever-growing demand for high-quality houses to accommodate the nobility and gentry during their seasonal occupation of the city, as well as the commercial and professional bourgeoisie who were its permanent residents (Stone, 1980, 173–177). Large-scale development projects were required to meet this burgeoning demand, and the necessary tracts of land could be supplied by aristocratic landowners fortunate enough to own estates in and around the city. During the seventeenth century, the owners frequently sold their freeholds to businessmen such as Barbon, but in the eighteenth century, the aristocracy tended to keep tighter control of the process (McKellar, 1999, 38–56). Development of these aristocratic estates constituted the first exercises in town planning in London (Olsen, 1982). Owners typically planned the layout of their estates, invested in the necessary infrastructure of roads and drainage, and let out plots to builders on long ground leases. By this means, it was the builder or tenant who supplied most of the development capital, while the landowner was able to retain the freehold of the estate, enjoy a valuable income stream from the ground rents, and eventually gain ownership of the developed property when the building leases expired (Stone, 1980, 196–205). Not only did these aristocratic developers leave a physical legacy in the form of a new urban landscape, they imprinted their identity on that landscape by using their titles to name the streets and squares they had created (Porter, 1994, 123).

5.4  Palladian Revival The development of the aristocratic landscape of leisure was bound up with the westward and northward expansion of Georgian London. Three pioneering projects powered the westward expansion of the metropolis during the early Stuart era. The Earl of Salisbury, Robert Cecil,

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who had previously built his own palatial mansion on the Strand, initiated the development of an adjacent nine-acre site in St Martin-in-the-Fields to accommodate tenants who included courtiers and government office-­ holders (Stone, 1973 109–112). The fourth Earl of Bedford, Francis Russell, developed Covent Garden to the north of the Strand. He created London’s first formal open square, based on Italian and French models, surrounded by terraces of classical townhouses designed by Inigo Jones that were much coveted by the elite. The landowner William Newton developed Lincoln’s Inn Fields as the largest public square in London on land formerly used for cattle grazing and the occasional public execution. The terraces around the Fields, like those around Covent Garden piazza, were of classical design, symmetrically arranged with a great house at the centre of each range (Summerson, 2003, 12–18). By 1664, twenty-one peers and forty-two gentlemen lived around the square (Thorold, 2001, 25). Following the restoration of Stuart rule in 1660, the resurgent aristocracy resumed building on a large scale (McKellar, 1999, 17–21). Thomas Wriothesley, fourth Earl of Southampton, developed Bloomsbury Square; Robert Sidney, second Earl of Leicester, laid out Leicester Square; Henry Jermyn, first Earl of St Albans, created St James’s Square (Summerson, 2003, 22–27). While the first two developments contained a portion of more modest houses, St James’s was the first of the really grand West End squares (Photograph 5.1). The earl had lived out the Civil War in France, from where he probably drew inspiration for his plan to provide ‘great and good houses’ for courtiers who wished to live in close proximity to St James’s Palace. By 1721, six dukes and seven earls were resident there (Porter, 1994, 106). Construction of freestanding mansions for individual families also resumed after the Restoration. However, the insatiable demand for speculative development meant that such houses might only enjoy a relatively short lifespan before being demolished to provide sites for more intensive redevelopment. Thus during the course of the seventeenth century, nearly all the great palaces on the Strand were pulled down and their sites subdivided into building lots: ‘It was the end of the aristocratic age of the Strand’ (Stone, 1980, 195). Aristocrats followed the direction of London’s expansion to find new sites on which to build, and Piccadilly became the most desirable residential location for the new elite. Post-revolutionary caution ensured that they clothed their new mansions in a restrained classicism, rather than the

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Photograph 5.1  St James’s Square 1665-77 (Source: FALKENSTEINFOTO/ Alamy Stock Photo)

ostentatious ornament favoured by their Jacobean predecessors. The trend towards more compact and symmetrical built forms continued, catering for households which were becoming smaller in size, more private in lifestyle and more demanding of comfort and convenience. The most striking of these classical Restoration mansions was Clarendon House, built on Piccadilly between 1664 and 1667 by the gentleman-­ architect Sir Roger Pratt. The occupier was Charles II’s Lord Chancellor Edward Hyde, the first Earl of Clarendon, one of the most powerful men in the kingdom. The diarist John Evelyn lauded it as ‘the best contriv’d, the most usefull, gracefull, and magnificent house in England’. Despite its hegemonic status, the house survived for only sixteen years. Clarendon fell from grace and went into exile, the house was sold to the second Duke of Albemarle whose debts forced him to sell it to a consortium of investors led by Sir Thomas Bond, who demolished it so that they could redevelop the area around the twin thoroughfares of Bond Street and Albemarle Street (Pearce, 1986, 52). Here was a seventeenth-century example of the accelerated obsolescence of trophy buildings that is so apparent in London today.

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By the turn of the century, English Baroque was in the ascendancy, and amongst London mansions the two most monumental examples of the style were Marlborough House and Buckingham House, both in St James’s. The former was built between 1709 and 1711 by Wren for John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, who had won a series of famous victories over the French in the War of the Spanish Succession. Despite Churchill’s heroic status, the plain brick pile designed for him by Wren is one of the architect’s most restrained designs, far less imposing than the grandiose Baroque palace of Blenheim in Oxfordshire, designed for the duke by Sir John Vanbrugh as the gift from an adoring nation (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 591–594). Buckingham House was completed in 1705 for the Tory peer John Sheffield, first Duke of Buckingham, by William Winde, a contemporary of Wren. It was originally built as a grand country house set within St James’s Park, a setting so rural that nightingales could be heard outside the library window (Pearce, 1986, 53). In 1762, the house was purchased as a retreat for George III and his family, and over subsequent decades it underwent progressive enlargement until, in 1825, John Nash began the work of transforming it into Buckingham Palace, to act as George IV’s official London residence (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 644–645). During the second decade of the eighteenth century, the era of English Baroque was drawing to a close. The Hanoverian succession brought about a conscious political reaction to the Baroque by the ruling Whig oligarchy, who viewed it as a foreign style best suited to the extravagances of Catholicism and the grandiloquence of absolutist monarchy. Great power rivalry engendered growing hostility to cultural influences from France, whereas the classical legacy of the Italian city states could more easily be accepted because they boasted republican constitutions that harked back to the idealised world of Republican Rome. The Whigs sought a distinctively national form of classicism that would give physical expression to the republican ideals of liberty and civic virtue that they espoused (Ayres, 1997, 115–132). A return to the Palladian classicism of Inigo Jones, the ‘British Vitruvius’, was the chosen path to a hegemonic architecture that suited the ideological purposes of the ruling elite. The Palladian Revival resurrected those qualities of balance and restraint considered more appropriate to the virtuous architecture of a Protestant constitutional monarchy than the excesses of the Baroque, and it set the tone of English architecture for the next half century of Whig supremacy (Summerson, 1993, 295–323). This cultural shift launched the

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golden age of Georgian house-building in Britain, driven by two great waves of construction: the Palladian boom of the 1720s/1730s and the Neoclassical boom of the 1760s/1770s (Barras, 2016b, 77–93). The Palladian Revival spread rapidly once the Vitruvian principles of harmony and proportion had been re-established (Worsley, 1995, 105–29). The architectural manifesto of the new movement was the Vitruvius Britannicus by Colen Campbell, first published in 1715 (Campbell, 2007). There followed a stream of architectural treatises extolling the style, while the Grand Tour introduced the classical buildings of Italy to many young aristocrats. Prominent among the Palladians were Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington, and his protégé William Kent, who spent ten years studying in Rome before embarking on a long association with Burlington. In his Epistle to Burlington, published in 1731, the poet Alexander Pope eulogised the gentleman-architect as the leader of the movement, urging him to ‘be whate’er Vitruvius was before’ (Ayres, 1997, 119). Too great a distinction can be made between English Baroque and Palladianism in terms of their architectural vocabulary; even the great Baroque architects made plentiful use of motifs derived from Palladio and Jones (Worsley, 1995, 85–103). Both architectural languages were used to denote aristocratic residence; where they differed was in the messages they were trying to convey—Baroque connotes absolutist abandon, Palladian connotes republican restraint. Baroque facades emphasise the vertical, with a phalanx of giant pilasters supporting an elaborate entablature and a balustrade crowded with urns and statues, while a pedimented centrepiece bursts up through the balustrade, often to be crowned by a dome. Palladian facades emphasise the horizontal, with rows of pedimented windows articulating a rusticated basement floor that supports a tall piano nobile which is in turn surmounted by a shallow attic storey. The Palladian confines giant orders to a central portico, typically of ‘hexastyle’ form with six giant columns supporting a sculpted pediment. The intended impression is that a Roman temple is set into the house, signifying the ideological affinity between the Georgian and Roman aristocracies (Downes, 1966, 7–9).

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5.5  Georgian Elegance Georgian London was a Palladian construct, and its showpiece was the West End, home of aristocracy, as opposed to the City to the east, home of commerce. The West End landscape of leisure was constructed using terraced housing of standardised designs, carefully graduated by size and richness of finish to accommodate noble families of differing wealth and status. Streets were laid out on a grid pattern, to create an urban armature of intersecting vistas linking landmark buildings. By these means, the Georgian landowners created a distinctive urban image for eighteenth-century London, similar in hegemonic intent to that created in Augustan Rome even if very different in physical appearance. While both urban images employed strongly geometrical built forms, the facades of Georgian London were a model of elegant restraint when compared with the decorative extravagance of Imperial Rome. At the heart of the West End was Mayfair, a district of unparalleled grandeur and refinement designed to display the wealth and taste of the Whig aristocracy. Here they congregated in close proximity, luxuriating in their mansions and their townhouses (Rudé, 2003, 40–46). The early nineteenth-century writer Sydney Smith, who moved in Whig circles, claimed that ‘the parallelogram between Oxford Street, Piccadilly, Regent Street and Hyde Park, encloses more intelligence and human ability, to say nothing of wealth, and beauty, than the world has ever collected in such a space before’ (Mitchell, 2005, 39). Whigs not only occupied Mayfair, they built it. In his Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain, published between 1724 and 1726, Daniel Defoe compares the scale of development of the new London to that of Ancient Rome. ‘New squares, and new streets rising up every day to such a prodigy of buildings, that nothing in the world does, or ever did, equal it, except old Rome in Trajan’s time’ (Defoe, 1986, 286). The whole enterprise was indeed an exercise in hegemonic building worthy of Ancient Rome, intended to celebrate the political as well as the social supremacy of the Whig aristocracy. A century later, the Tory Lord Randolph Churchill complained about ‘the great Whig dukes who covered London with their bloated estates’, while his colleague Sir Henry Drummond Wolff protested that ‘We are in London the vassals of Whig dukes who rule us through a lot of solicitors and surveyors’ (Quinault, 1979, 148). Four major landed estates were contained within the Mayfair parallelogram, with each estate centred on a landmark urban form (Bradley &

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Pevsner, 2003, 471–478). Between 1713 and the 1720s, the Earls of Scarborough developed the north-east quadrant around Hanover Square, creating a vista to the Corinthian portico of St George, the parish church of Mayfair. Between 1718 and 1739, Lord Burlington developed the south-east quadrant behind Burlington House, the only great seventeenth-­ century mansion to have survived on Piccadilly. Between 1720 and the 1760s, Sir Richard Grosvenor developed the Grosvenor Estate in the north-west quadrant, creating a regular street grid centred on Grosvenor Square. Finally, between 1736 and 1759, the Lords Berkeley of Stratton developed the south-west quadrant around Berkeley Square. There were Tory enclaves within the West End, but they tended to be relegated to the fringes rather than occupying the centre. Developments on either side of Oxford Street during the 1720s illustrate the overtly political nature of the Georgian landscape of power (Summerson, 2003, 87–103). To the south, the Hanover estate was being developed by the Whig Richard Lumley, first Earl of Scarborough, a retired General who had fought for William III and welcomed the accession of George I, naming his district in the monarch’s honour. To the north, in the fields of Marylebone, the Cavendish-Harley estate, centred on Cavendish Square, was being developed by Edward Harley, earl of Oxford and son of the chief minister in the Tory government under Queen Anne, together with his wife Henrietta Cavendish, daughter and heiress of the Duke of Newcastle. Their chosen architect was James Gibbs, Tory rival of the Whig Colen Campbell, who still favoured working in the tradition of Wren rather than that of the Palladians (Summerson, 1993: 324). Leading Tory peers supported the project, with the Duke of Chandos initially taking the whole north side of Cavendish Square and the Duke of Norfolk the west side, although neither of their schemes were fully realised. Back in the heart of Mayfair, the development of the Grosvenor Estate, the largest and most valuable of the West End estates, powered the spectacular rise of the Grosvenor family from obscure provincial gentry in Cheshire to the richest family in England. It started when the third baronet, Sir Thomas Grosvenor, contracted a most fortunate marriage in 1677 to Mary Davies, heiress to part of the manor of Ebury comprising some 500 acres of grassland to the east of Hyde Park. At the start of the 1720s, the westward expansion of the metropolis provided Sir Richard Grosvenor, the fourth baronet, with the opportunity to start developing the Mayfair portion of the estate. An agricultural rent

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of under £400 was transformed into urban ground rents totalling £3450 by 1768 and over £8000 by 1820. Then the ninety-nine-year ground leases that were first granted in 1721 started to expire, allowing rental income to surge to nearly £20,000 by 1821 and some £60,000 by 1835, which is equivalent to an income of almost £7 million per annum in 2020 prices (Sheppard, 1977, 43–4). The spectacular wealth accumulated by the family was subsequently recognised by Queen Victoria, who bestowed the hereditary title of Duke of Westminster upon them. The attraction of the Grosvenor Estate for the social elite is illustrated by the standing of its first occupants. Of the 277 households that moved in during the 1720s and 1730s, 117 were drawn from the titled classes and 48 of these were peers of the realm. Located at the centre of the estate, Grosvenor Square displayed the grandest architecture and accommodated the most distinguished families. This was considered the best address on the estate, if not the best in London. Of its fifty-one initial householders, thirty-five were titled, of whom sixteen were peers including two dukes, a marquess and nine earls. The august company around the square also included two duchesses, a bishop and a mistress of the Prince of Wales (Sheppard, 1977, 174–179). Set within the matrix of Mayfair streets and squares were individual mansions of exceptional splendour. Two such mansions flanked the short-­ lived Clarendon House on Piccadilly. Burlington House to the east (now transformed into the headquarters of the Royal Academy) had been completed for the first Earl of Burlington in 1668 and was remodelled for the third earl by Colen Campbell between 1717 and 1720, with some of the interiors painted by William Kent (Pearce, 1986, 61–64). Campbell transformed the house into a showcase of the Palladian virtues, modelling the design on the master’s Palazzo Porto in Vicenza. To the west of Clarendon House was Berkeley House, an early example of Palladianism by the architect Hugh May, completed for the first Lord Berkeley in 1666 but burnt down in 1733 (Summerson, 1993, 174). William Cavendish, the third Duke of Devonshire, then commissioned William Kent to build on the site a new Palladian mansion named Devonshire House (Pearce, 1986, 145–154). Devonshire House was an extreme example of the modest exterior/ lavish interior dichotomy. It was provided with an exceptionally plain façade hidden from Piccadilly by a high brick wall, yet within was an interconnected sequence of eleven opulently decorated state rooms. Later in the century, these rooms provided a fitting stage for the political

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machinations of Whig grandees led by the charismatic duchess Georgiana Cavendish, wife of the fifth duke. When not engaged in affairs of state, she gambled away the family fortune in the drawing room, which she organised ‘to resemble a professional gaming house, complete with hired croupiers and a commercial faro bank’ (Foreman, 1999, 89). A grand freestanding mansion was not a necessary stage set for hegemonic display if the owner’s primary concern was not outward show, but rather the inward allure of sumptuous rooms designed for the eyes of distinguished guests alone. The acme of luxury and taste could be concealed behind the modest façade of a terraced house, as demonstrated by William Kent at 44 Berkeley Square, built in 1742–5 for Lady Isabella Finch, the unmarried daughter of the second Earl of Nottingham (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 501–502). Kent created what can justifiably be called the finest terrace house in London for a client who wished to devote her time and resources to the roles of courtier and society hostess. Behind the restrained Palladian façade rises a staircase of Baroque theatrical effect, leading to a majestic saloon with a richly gilded coved ceiling adorned with paintings of antique gods and goddesses. The interior of 44 Berkeley Square is a reminder that the Palladians were unable totally to suppress the fondness for absolutist flamboyance that persisted amongst sections of the English aristocracy. This predilection was again manifested in Chesterfield House, one of the most elegant and expensive mansions build in London in the first half of the eighteenth century, but demolished in the 1930s (Pearce, 1986, 70–73). Situated close to Hyde Park, it was built between 1748 and 1752 by Isaac Ware, a protege of Burlington’s, for Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield. In external appearance, it resembled a Palladian country mansion, with side blocks linked to the main block by colonnades. The interior, however, was in a lavish Rococo style, an exceptionally ornamental form of Late Baroque that was fashionable at the time in France. Though Stanhope was a Whig, his diplomatic career, his association with French writers and philosophers, and the attentions of a French mistress had opened his mind to the pernicious influence of French taste, and Ware, though originally a Palladian, was willing to satisfy that taste. By the start of the 1760s, the dynamic of the Palladian Revival was exhausted. The era of Whig supremacy was drawing to a close, and a more fluid social and political order was conducive to experiments with new styles of building. The emergence of Romanticism was posing a cultural challenge to Classicism, giving rise across Europe to a more eclectic

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approach to architectural design, embodying elements of both the classical and the romantic (Hitchcock, 1987, 23–46). British architecture pursued two divergent paths: the Neoclassical, inspired by the architecture of Greece as well as Rome, and the Picturesque, inspired by medieval rather than antique models. In the early nineteenth century, these two movements further evolved into the Greek and Gothic Revivals. Purists of the Neoclassical movement promoted the ideals of strict geometric forms and plain flat surfaces, principles which anticipated the Modern movement more than a century later (Rykwert, 1983). Many of their ideas emanated from France, where the social upheavals which preceded the French Revolution were also conducive to an architectural revolution. The Neoclassicists sought to uncover the fundamental principles of architectural design through the archaeological study of antique buildings, bypassing the mediating influence of the Renaissance, which had inspired Palladianism (Stillman, 1988, 27–38). The classical orders were to be employed in the original Vitruvian manner, with free-standing columns rising straight from the floor; later Renaissance indulgences such as pedestals, attached pilasters and entablatures carried on arches were all to be discarded. Nevertheless, as with the transition from the Baroque to Palladianism, there was as much that was similar in Neoclassicism and Palladianism as was dissimilar (Arciszewska, 2004, 22–23). In Mayfair, the transition from Palladianism to Neoclassicism is well illustrated in Spencer House, an imposing mansion overlooking Green Park that was built for the first Earl Spencer by the Palladian John Vardy between 1756 and 1758 (Photograph 5.2). Spencer had acquired the site from the first Baron Montfort who, in deference to the ideology of honour, had shot himself because of he could not cover his enormous gambling debts (Pearce, 1986, 78). Vardy’s exterior is in the classic Palladian manner, but responsibility for the showcase first floor rooms was handed to James Stuart, one of the pioneers of Neoclassicism. By 1766 Stuart had completed what ranks as amongst the earliest Neoclassical interiors in Europe, with the richly decorated principal rooms displaying coved and coffered ceilings of Roman type, Greek friezes and wall paintings with classical scenes (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 621–623). During the 1760s and 1770s, the most fashionable architect in London was Robert Adam (White, 2013, 49–58). To entertain one’s peers within an Adam house was the height of competitive display. Though identified as a leader of the Neoclassical movement, Adam was a strong believer in

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Photograph 5.2  Spencer House 1756-8 (Source: The Print Collector/Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

eclecticism. His style was a unique synthesis of influences: antique buildings, Greek and Etruscan as well as Roman; the works of the Renaissance masters; French town houses; Palladianism of the Burlington-Kent school (Summerson, 1993, 394–396). His houses are best remembered for their interiors, both for their refined decoration, using delicate painted and stucco ornament, and for their carefully planned circuit of rooms, which according to the architect were ‘well suited to every occasion of public parade’ (Stillman, 1988, 206). Adam designed a range of townhouses for eager aristocratic clients across the West End; some were new, others were a remodelling of existing buildings. Two outstanding examples can be highlighted (Pearce, 1986, 94–100). Wynn House at 20 St James’s Square was built in 1771–4 for Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, fourth baronet, a patron of the arts with lavish tastes whose main claim to fame was a coming-of-age party on his family estate attended by 15,000 guests (Thomas, 1964). Derby House at 26 Grosvenor Square was rebuilt in 1773–5 for the Whig politician

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Edward Stanley, twelfth Earl of Derby, noted for his love of horse racing and cockfighting, the latter so strong an addiction that the earl reportedly introduced the sport into his drawing room (Brooke, 1964). Like nearly all of Georgian Grosvenor Square, Derby House was subsequently demolished, lost to a later, more profitable, wave of development. Lansdowne House in Berkeley Square, now much mutilated, is the one major freestanding mansion designed by Adam (Photograph 5.3). It was started in 1762 for John Stuart, third Earl of Bute, who had just become the nation’s first Tory Prime Minister, ending the long era of Whig supremacy. However, the opprobrium he attracted for building a palatial house on the proceeds of public office forced Stuart to sell it incomplete to the Whig peer William Petty, second Earl of Shelburne and later the first Marquess of Lansdowne, who became Prime Minister during the final months of the American War of Independence. The house was finally completed in 1777, and during subsequent decades became a major centre of social and political life under the Lansdowne dynasty (Pearce, 1986, 87–93).

Photograph 5.3  Lansdowne House 1762-77 (Source: The Print Collector/ Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

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Adam was also involved in the northward expansion of estate development into Marylebone and Bloomsbury during the 1770s (Summerson, 2003, 178–195). With his brother James he designed Portland Place as a speculative development of fine houses on a broad street opening up into Marylebone Park. At Home House 20 Portman Square, he designed one of his best-known mansions. It was built in 1775–7 for Elizabeth Countess of Home, a famed society hostess whose wealth derived from her ownership of Jamaican sugar plantations, and whose title derived from her brief marriage to the fortune-hunting eighth Earl of Home (Hollis, 2011, 162–192). Indeed, the whole neighbourhood of Marylebone was favoured by West Indian planters (Thorold, 2001, 133–145). As the century progressed, the aristocratic landscape of power was increasingly being inhabited by people of commercial as well as landed wealth. In addition to Portland Place, the Adam brothers designed the Adelphi, the most ambitious speculative development scheme in the West End during the latter part of the eighteenth century, and one that was aimed at bourgeois and professional rather than aristocratic occupiers (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 326–327). Built between 1768 and 1774 on the south side of the Strand overlooking the Thames, the centrepiece was a great residential terrace of Neoclassical design, set upon a podium enclosing a substructure of warehouses. A likely source of inspiration was the arcaded front of Diocletian’s imperial palace at Spalato (Split) in Croatia, drawings of which Adam had published in 1764. Financially, the Adelphi scheme was a disaster, partly because the government refused to lease the warehouse space as the brothers had hoped, forcing them to dispose of the houses by lottery in 1774 to avoid bankruptcy (Summerson, 2003, 137–141).

5.6   Regency Extravagance Moving into the nineteenth century, we enter the age of Regency extravagance. The spirit of the age is epitomised by the story of Carlton House, the most hubristic of the great West End mansions, situated in a choice position overlooking St James’s Park. Under a series of royal owners, it was under intermittent construction during the whole of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. First built in 1709 for the Whig politician Henry Boyle, the first Lord Carleton, the house was bought in 1732 by Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of George III, who commissioned William Kent to lay out the

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gardens. Between 1763 and 1769 the house was remodelled for Frederick’s widow Princess Augusta by William Chambers, a bitter rival of Robert Adam for leadership of the Neoclassical movement. The most grandiose phase of development was initiated in 1783 by George, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of George III, who was subsequently made Prince Regent when his father suffered a mental breakdown (Smith, 1999, 25–32). George commissioned Henry Holland, a second-generation Neoclassicist, to transform the house into an English equivalent of the emperor Nero’s Domus Aurea in Rome, to be realised in the fashionable French style of Neoclassicism (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 439). Though the prince was racking up enormous debts as a result of his famously profligate lifestyle, work continued on the project into the nineteenth century, with contributions from other distinguished architects including James Wyatt and John Nash. However, when the prince became George IV in 1820, he decided that he had no further use for his bachelor pad, having designated nearby Buckingham House as the future official residence of the royal family. And so in 1827 Carlton House was summarily demolished. As regent and then king, George sought to enjoy the extravagance of absolutist monarchy without the tiresome necessity of exercising the unbridled power that went with it. He therefore chose to rule as the arbiter of national taste, directing his energies not only into the pursuit of personal pleasure but also into patronage of the style and fashion he considered appropriate for polite society (Smith, 1999, 241–265). In this he was highly successful, giving birth to the cultural movement named after the Regency, which had a strong influence on all the visual arts. Architecture was one of the most important elements of the Regency style, and it was a style that provided a very effective medium for the execution of hegemonic building. It was a florid development of Neoclassicism that in the urban realm favoured terraces, crescents and squares of white-­ painted stucco facades, with long colonnaded and pilastered fronts interspersed with grand porticoes and triumphal arches (Tyack, 2013). John Nash was George’s favourite architect, and he made a major contribution to London’s landscape of leisure. Of more importance than his work on Carlton House and Buckingham Palace was his great project to satisfy the prince’s absolutist aspiration to reshape London in a manner that would eclipse the developments underway in Paris after the fall of Napoleon (Olsen, 1986, 42). The plan was to develop Regent Street as a Via Triumphalis, linking the prince’s palace at Carlton House to Marylebone Park, which was to be

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remodelled as Regent’s Park with a pleasure palace to delight the prince at its heart (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 436–439). Nash worked in both Classical and Gothic idioms and was a prime mover in the Picturesque movement, which believed that buildings should be designed to reflect their setting within the natural landscape (Summerson, 1993, 447–470). With his Regent’s Park scheme Nash brought the Picturesque into the heart of the city. In his own words, ‘the attraction of open Space, free air and the scenery of Nature…shall be preserved or created in Mary-le-bone Park, as allurements or motives for the wealthy parts of the Public to establish themselves there’ (Saunders, 1969, 83). Between 1811, when the prince became regent, and Nash’s death in 1835, the scheme was largely realised, although part of its hegemonic purpose was lost when the king had Carlton House demolished and the plan for the pleasure palace was abandoned (Hollis, 2011, 193–227). The north-south route of Regent Street was developed not as a straight avenue in the Parisian fashion, but with curved sections that in part reflected the Picturesque imperative and in part the practicalities of land acquisition. The scheme also extended to the east, along Pall Mall and into the open space by Charing Cross that became Trafalgar Square. A mixture of uses lined the route, with large townhouses concentrated around Lower Regent Street, predominantly commercial uses between Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus, and a mixture of grand terraced housing and detached villas in a verdant setting around the park (Summerson, 2003, 196–216). The Regency era witnessed the start of the final phase of westward expansion of London’s aristocratic housing, on the Belgravia estate to the south-west of Mayfair (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 727–732). This land formed part of the vast Grosvenor Estate, and systematic development started in 1821 under the control of the great builder Thomas Cubitt, working in collaboration with the architect George Basevi. Belgravia was laid out around a diagonal grid, broken up by squares and crescents, with imposing terraces of houses in the style of Nash’s Regent’s Park (Summerson, 2003, 220–222). A few more palatial houses were clustered around Belgrave Square, the centrepiece of the scheme (Photograph 5.4). Socially, the new district was an instant success, rivalling Mayfair as a fashionable address. As aristocrats and bankers moved in, it could claim to house ‘the richest population in the world’ (Thorold, 2001, 210). Furthermore, unlike parts of Mayfair, its exclusive character remains largely unchanged to this day.

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Photograph 5.4 Belgrave Square Photography/Alamy Stock Photo)

1826-37

(Source:

Bailey-Cooper

As work proceeded on Regent’s Park and Belgravia, the last wave of West End mansion building got underway. The focus of activity shifted from Piccadilly to Park Lane, formerly a rutted country lane running along the edge of Hyde Park (Thorold, 2001, 311). A particular feature of these Park Lane mansions was the incorporation of vast picture galleries. These were required to accommodate the old masters acquired by the British aristocracy at bargain prices from impoverished French aristocrats, forced to dispose of family collections in the desperate circumstances of the French Revolution (Cannadine, 1994, 27). At the southern end of Park Lane was Apsley House, a modest villa by Robert Adam that was extended and remodelled by Benjamin Wyatt in the 1820s to provide a suitably imposing London residence for Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 485–487). The victor in the Napoleonic Wars was to be honoured in a similar fashion to a previous national hero, the Duke of Marlborough. Ironically, although

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the exterior of Apsley House is Palladian, the interior is French Rococo, another example of the English love–hate relationship with French fashion. Contemporaneous with Apsley House were Londonderry House and Dudley House. Londonderry House was a mansion of the 1760s reworked by Benjamin and Philip Wyatt for Charles Vane, third Marquess of Londonderry, who served under Wellington; Dudley House was a new building by William Atkinson for John Ward, first Earl of Dudley, who owned estates in Jamaica and was serving as Foreign Secretary when the house was under construction. Neighbouring Grosvenor House, opulent London home of the Grosvenor family, was a 1720s house improved several times during the nineteenth century and demolished in the 1920s to make way for a luxury hotel (Pearce, 1986, 168–174). Perhaps a fitting finale to the theme of hubristic aristocratic building in London is provided by York House (later Stafford House and then Lancaster House) next to St James’s Palace (Pearce, 1986, 195–202). Originally designed by Benjamin and Philip Wyatt, it was begun in 1825 as a royal residence for Frederick, Duke of York and younger brother of George IV. In a spirit of sibling rivalry, the duke wanted a house of a scale and grandeur to match that of nearby Carlton House, his brother’s home when he was Prince Regent. However, Frederick died in a morass of debt in 1827, the same year that his brother had Carlton House demolished. The unfinished house was taken over by the duke’s largest creditor, George Leveson-Gower, the second Marquess of Stafford, who renamed it Stafford House. Leveson-Gower was known as the ‘Leviathan of Wealth’ through his ownership of vast estates in England and Scotland which made him the richest man in the kingdom during the latter part of his life. He was infamous for his leading role in the Highland Clearances, when thousands of tenants on his Scottish estates were evicted from their homes to make way for sheep farms (Richards, 1973). Created first Duke of Sutherland in January 1833, he died just six months later, only five years after he had acquired Stafford House. Leveson-Gower’s descendants entertained the great and the good in the palatial French Rococo interior of Stafford House for almost eight years before it was acquired in 1912 by the industrialist William Hesketh Lever. He had established a worldwide soap manufacturing empire and was one of the first of the nation’s industrialists to be admitted to the peerage when he was awarded the title of Viscount Leverhulme (Lewis, 2008). Lever renamed the building Lancaster House and then presented it to the nation, on whose behalf it is now used to host state receptions.

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Such a fate has befallen most of the surviving mansions of aristocratic London, used either as public buildings, adapted as tourist attractions or converted into multiple apartments or offices. The landscape of leisure has metamorphosed into a landscape of enterprise.

5.7   Rural Retreat Through the centuries, the aristocracy, as much as the monarchy, have provided themselves with rural retreats for pleasure and relaxation in convenient locations around London. And again, like the monarchy, they have particularly favoured retreats along the banks of the Thames, upstream from the city where the air was cleanest, the aspect most charming and the opportunities for hegemonic display most advantageous. As Defoe eulogised ‘From Richmond to London, the river sides are full of villages, and those villages so full of beautiful buildings, charming gardens, and rich habitations of gentlemen of quality, that nothing in the world can imitate it’ (Defoe, 1986, 174). This was the choice of the Bishops of London back in the thirteenth century when they began to develop a palace on their vast riverside estate at Fulham. From their palace at Lambeth, the Archbishops of Canterbury may have commanded a more central position in the landscape of ecclesiastical power, but at Fulham the Bishops of London could display greater landed wealth. The earliest surviving parts of Fulham Palace are the late fifteenth-century great hall and early sixteenth-century west court in the prevailing Early Tudor style (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 235–238). Moving forward a century, one of the largest Jacobean houses surviving in the London area is Ham House, situated a couple of miles upstream from Henry VII’s palace at Richmond, which was still standing when work started at Ham in 1610. The house was first built by Sir Thomas Vavasour, a courtier under James I, and then remodelled in 1637–8 by William Murray, first Earl of Dysart and one of Charles I’s closest advisors, who had been granted the lease by the king after Vavasour’s death. Further improvements were undertaken in 1672–4 by Murray’s daughter Elizabeth, second Countess of Dysart, and her second husband John Maitland, first Duke of Lauderdale and favourite of Charles II.  They aggrandised the house to accommodate the ceremonial of the Restoration court, transforming it into one of the most imposing Stuart houses in England (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 474–477).

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By the early eighteenth century, the rural villa had emerged as an integral component of the Georgian landscape of leisure, culturally as important as the urban mansion and terraced townhouse. Almost more than the other types of aristocratic residence, the villa has come to epitomise the Palladian movement (Ackerman, 1990, 135–158). It was a building type that met the needs of both the aristocracy and the wealthy bourgeoisie for a compact rural retreat conveniently close to the city, echoing its former appeal to both the landowners of Ancient Rome and the merchants and bankers of Renaissance Italy. As in its previous incarnations, the Georgian villa was more than just a built form. It was an ideological paradigm signifying a country life of beguiling leisure and elegance, its apparent natural simplicity concealing the reality that it supported an existence available only to the wealthy elite. The villa and the townhouse were but two faces of the same privileged lifestyle (Ackerman, 1990, 10–14). The villa had first appeared in England during the sixteenth century, and by the middle of the seventeenth century the first classical versions were appearing, inspired by Inigo Jones’s Queen’s House at Greenwich (Airs & Tyack, 2007). But it was during the eighteenth century that English architects fully embraced the villa form, using Palladio’s books as their bible and his buildings in the Veneto as their models. The countryside around London became densely populated with villas, and two of the finest examples are to be found along the Thames, at Chiswick House and Marble Hill, Twickenham. Chiswick House was built for his own use by Lord Burlington between 1727 and 1729, to a design inspired by Palladio’s Villa Rotonda outside Vicenza (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 395–402). Internally, a sequence of interconnecting reception rooms, decorated by Kent, circulate around a central octagonal saloon in a manner that became one of the trademarks of Palladianism. In a spirit of constructive criticism, the writer Horace Walpole, son of Britain’s first prime minister and fourth Earl of Orford, judged Chiswick House to be ‘a model of taste, though not without faults, some of which are occasioned by too strict adherence to rules and symmetry’ (Denvir, 1983, 34). The influence of Palladio is equally strong at Marble Hill, built between 1724 and 1729 for Henrietta Howard, mistress of George II and later Countess of Suffolk. The architects were Roger Morris in collaboration with Henry Herbert, ninth Earl of Pembroke, one of the leading aristocratic champions of the Palladian Revival (Lees-Milne, 1986, 61–74). The

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house contains a hall based on Vitruvius’s description of a Roman atrium as interpreted by Palladio (Ayres, 1997, 129). Some forty years after these two Palladian villas were built, Robert Adam was remodelling the interior of a far grander country house on the Thames. Syon House was first built by the Duke of Somerset in the middle of the sixteenth century, on the site of a nunnery closed down during the Dissolution. In 1594, it passed by marriage to Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, and has remained in the ownership of the Percy family ever since. It was Hugh Percy, first Duke of Northumberland, who commissioned Adam to modernise the house, and between 1762 and 1769 he created one of his most spectacular interiors, with each of the state rooms modelled according to a different classical prototype. The special feature of the entrance hall, unprecedented in Europe, was the incorporation of copies of famous antique sculptures into the decorative scheme, with the Apollo Belvedere at one end and the Dying Gaul at the other (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 442–446). While Robert Adam was fashioning a Neoclassical palace at Syon, a few miles upstream Walpole was eschewing classicism in favour of a very different style and mood. At Strawberry Hill in Twickenham, between 1749 and 1766, he created one of the first Gothic Revival houses to be built in Britain (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 543–549). Rather than the grandeur that was Rome, Walpole’s fantasy castle was designed to evoke England’s medieval past, resurrecting a style that was to become a dominant strand of nineteenth-century architecture. Even though classicism had predominated during the previous century, that nostalgia for the past which is such a persistent feature of English culture ensured that attachment to the Gothic had never completely died out, and was ready to make a triumphant return (Worsley, 1995, 175–195). By the 1830s, on the threshold of the Victorian age, all these riverside retreats were still located within the countryside rather than the city, and all were still occupied by private owners. Subsequently, however, this landscape of leisure has been transformed. One by one each of these houses has made the transition from rus to rus in urbe, absorbed into the fabric of the city as the countryside has retreated before its relentless growth. Only Syon House is still in family ownership; all the others have been acquired by public bodies as visitor attractions designed to display what was a vital part of the London’s aristocratic landscape of power. Meanwhile, as the Victorian era unfolded, a very different transformation of the landscape of power was underway in the heart of the

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metropolis. At Westminster, work had started to rebuild the Houses of Parliament as a neo-Gothic monument to constitutional government, while new government buildings were springing up on the site of the old Whitehall Palace. In the City, the rebuilding of the Bank of England as a neoclassical monument to capital had recently been completed, while the first generation of private banking headquarters was under construction. These were the hegemonic symbols of a nation approaching the peak of its power, as the world’s first industrial economy presiding over the largest empire the world has ever seen. The long eighteenth century of aristocratic hegemony had finally ended; the age of bourgeois hegemony had begun.

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Hitchcock, H.-R. (1987). Architecture: Nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yale University Press. Hobbes, T. (1985). Leviathan. Penguin. Hollis, L. (2011). The stones of London: A history in twelve buildings. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Holmes, G. (1993). The making of a great power: Late Stuart and early Georgian Britain 1660–1722. Longman. Hoppit, J. (2000). A land of liberty? England 1689–1727. Oxford University Press. Hume, D. (1994). Political essays. Cambridge University Press. Lees-Milne, J. (1986). The earls of creation: Five great patrons of eighteenth-century art. Century Hutchinson. Lemerle, F., & Pauwels, Y. (2008). Baroque architecture 1600–1750. Flammarion. Lewis, B. (2008). ‘So clean’: Lord Leverhulme, soap and civilization. Manchester University Press. Lincoln, M. (2021). London and the 17th century: The making of the world’s greatest city. Yale University Press. Loades, D. M. (1999). Politics and nation, England 1450–1660. Blackwell. Locke, J. (1988). Two treatises of government. Cambridge University Press. Manley, L. (1995). Literature and culture in early modern London. Cambridge University Press. McKellar, E. (1999). The birth of modern London: The development and design of the city 1660–1720. Manchester University Press. Mingay, G. E. (1963). English landed society in the eighteenth century. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Mitchell, L. (2005). The Whig world 1760–1837. Hambledon Continuum. O’Gorman, F. (2012). The long eighteenth century: British political and social history 1688–1832. Bloomsbury. Olsen, D. J. (1982). Town planning in London: The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yale University Press. Olsen, D.  J. (1986). The city as a work of art: London, Paris. Yale University Press, London. Overton, M. (1996). Agricultural revolution in England: The transformation of the agrarian economy 1500–1850. Cambridge University Press. Palliser D M (1992) The age of Elizabeth: England under the later Tudors 1547–1603 Longman, . Pearce, D. (1986). London’s mansions: The palatial houses of the nobility. Batsford. Peck, L. L. (2005). Consuming splendor: Society and culture in seventeenth-century England. Cambridge University Press. Port, M. H. (1995). West end palaces: The aristocratic town house in London, 1730-1830. London Journal, 20(1), 17–46. Porter, R. (1991). English society in the eighteenth century. Penguin. Porter, R. (1994). London: A social history. Hamish Hamilton.

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Quinault, R. E. (1979). Lord Randolph Churchill and tory democracy, 1880-1885. The Historical Journal, 22(1), 141–165. Rasmussen, S. E. (1982). London: The unique city. MIT press. Richards, E. (1973). The leviathan of wealth: The Sutherland fortune in the industrial revolution. Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rousseau, J.-J. (1968). The social contract. Penguin. Rudé, G. (2003). Hanoverian London 1714–1808. Sutton Publishing. Russell, C. (1990). The causes of the English civil war. Oxford University Press. Rykwert, J. (1983). The first moderns: The architects of the eighteenth century. MIT Press. Saunders, A. (1969). Regent’s park: A study of the development of the area from 1086 to the present day. David and Charles. Sheppard, F.  H. W. (Ed.). (1977). Survey of London volume 39: The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, part 1 general history. Athlone Press. Smith, A.  G. R. (1997). The emergence of a nation state: The commonwealth of England 1529–1660. Longman. Smith, E. A. (1999). George IV. Yale University Press. Speck, W. A. (1988). Reluctant revolutionaries: Englishmen and the revolution of 1688. Oxford University Press. Stillman, D. (1988). English neo-classical architecture: volume one. Zwemmer. Stone, L. (1973). Family and fortune: Studies in aristocratic finance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Oxford University Press. Stone, L. (1980). The residential development of the west end of London in the seventeenth century. In B. C. Malament (Ed.), After the reformation: Essays in honor of J H Hexter (pp. 167–212). Manchester University Press. Stone, L. (2017). The causes of the English revolution 1529–1642. Routledge. Stone, L., & Stone, J. C. F. (1984). An open elite? England 1540–1880. Oxford University Press. Summerson, J. (1993). Architecture in Britain 1530–1830. Yale University Press. Summerson, J. (2003). Georgian London. Yale University Press. Thomas, P.  D. G. (1964). Wynn, sir Watkin Williams, 4th Bt. (1748-1789). In L. Namier & J. Brooke (Eds.), The history of parliament: The house of commons 1754–1790. Secker and Warburg. Thorold, P. (2001). The London rich: The creation of a great city, from 1666 to the present. Penguin. Thurley, S. (2003). Hampton court: A social and architectural history. Yale University Press. Turner, B.  S. (1990). Conclusion: Peroration on ideology. In N.  Abercrombie, S.  Hill, & B.  S. Turner (Eds.), Dominant ideologies (pp.  229–256). Unwin Hyman. Tyack, G. (2013). Reshaping the west end. In G. Tyack (Ed.), John Nash: Architect of the picturesque (pp. 101–124). English Heritage.

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CHAPTER 6

Commercial Powerhouse

6.1   Medieval City By the time of the Norman Conquest, London was already by far the most important town in England. At the start of the twelfth century, its population had reached perhaps 20,000, approaching three-quarters of the peak total in Roman Londinium, and at least twice as large as the population of the next largest town. By 1200 the total may have reached 40,000; by 1300 it had risen further to at least 80,000, nearly three times larger than the population of its nearest English rival, though still much smaller than that of Paris or Milan (Keene, 2000, 195–196). The growing dominance of London is also reflected in the wealth of the city. In the twelfth century, it was between one and a half and three times wealthier than the next city as a source of royal income; by 1334 it contained five times as much assessed wealth as its nearest rival (Keene, 1989, 99). Given its size and wealth, it was inevitable that London would become the embryonic capital of the new Anglo-Norman kingdom. A century or so after the Conquest, the cleric William fitz Stephen wrote that ‘Among the noble cities of the world that are celebrated by fame, the city of London, the seat of the kingdom of England, is one that spreads its name more widely, sends its wealth and merchandise further afield and raises its head more high’ (Bartlett, 2000, 342). The unique role of London as national capital and international entrepôt, developed by the Romans and

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restored by the Anglo-Saxons, was fully embraced by the Anglo-Norman monarchy. It is one of the contradictions of history that although feudalism was an essentially agrarian mode of production, towns played a vital role in its economic and social development. While surplus value was predominantly produced in the rural economy through agriculture, it was realised in the urban economy through commerce. The surplus product  produced by peasants was consumed by aristocratic households purchasing goods supplied by urban merchants (Hilton, 1985, 181). Marx observed that the Middle Ages ‘starts with the countryside as the locus of history’, but its further development ‘then proceeds through the opposition of town and country’. It is a history based upon ‘the urbanisation of the countryside, not, as among the ancients, the ruralisation of the city’ (Marx, 1965, 78). Despite the inevitable antagonisms between town and country, urban centres were integral to the reproduction of the feudal order (Katznelson, 1992, 170–175). Medieval towns and cities have famously been described as ‘non-feudal islands in the feudal seas’ (Postan, 1975, 239). In contrast to the cities of Antiquity, which were ‘subordinated to the rule of noble landowners who lived in them’, medieval towns were ‘self-governing communes, enjoying corporate political and military autonomy from the nobility and the Church’ (Anderson, 1996, 150). Here was the source of the dynamic opposition between town and country that has been a feature of English life ever since. It was an ‘opposition between an urban economy of increasing commodity exchange, controlled by merchants and organized in guilds and corporations, and a rural economy of natural exchange, controlled by nobles and organized in manors’. Nowhere was this opposition more starkly drawn than that between London and the rest of the country. The city’s status as national centre of commerce and seat of government set it apart, enabling it to evolve a distinctive metropolitan culture and ideology of its own (Keene, 2000, 211–216). It was through the urbanisation of the countryside that non-feudal urban islands arose from the feudal waters. The process was driven by the economic incentive for feudal lords to promote urban development on their lands, in order to generate additional income from ground rents, land tax and market tolls. These urban revenues were shared between the king and the feudal magnate on whose land a town was situated (Miller & Hatcher, 1995, 285–290). In exchange, the landowners granted certain liberties to their towns and cities, expressed in charters that set out the

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rights and privileges of the citizenry. These included both jurisdictional autonomy, allowing for a degree of self-government, and financial autonomy, allowing for a fixed payment to cover all feudal dues (Bartlett, 2000, 337–339). These rights and privileges were conditional, however. ‘Fully autonomous, self-governing towns did not develop in England. They had to fit into a framework of strong monarchy and lordship and what they achieved was really local self-government at the lord’s will’ (Bolton, 1985, 125). Nevertheless, on the principle of ‘city air makes man free’, the burghers of medieval towns and cities were not bound by feudal relations of servitude, whatever their wealth or rank. They were economically independent through membership of their guild and politically self-governing through election of their city council or corporation (Miller & Hatcher, 1995, 298–320). Their rights included holding markets and fairs, minting coinage, bearing arms and operating their own courts. The growing importance of the urban bourgeoisie gave them the status of a fourth estate within feudal society (Duby, 1980, 212–217). However, they were not a welcome addition. ‘It is not that trade in itself was despised, but that the institutions, the activities and the rather obvious commercial instincts of professional merchants were clearly not consistent with the ideological precepts of the feudal order’ (Harvey, 2009, 251). If the church was the first pillar of communal life in the medieval city, the guild was the second (Miller & Hatcher, 1995, 361–375). Guilds started out as religious fraternities, but over time they acquired the economic function of companies supporting members engaged in particular trades and crafts. Craft guilds acted as local monopolies, regulating and protecting a hierarchically organised workforce of master craftsmen, journeymen, apprentices and labourers. The control that masters exercised over their subordinates had overtones of feudal authority (Thrupp, 1962, 17). The most powerful of these companies were the merchant guilds, associations of the leading merchants that organised and regulated the economic life of the city as a whole (Miller & Hatcher, 1995, 290–298). Trade was undoubtedly the primary economic function of the medieval city and the source of much of its wealth. As society became more commercialised, so the economic base of towns and cities grew stronger and the pace of urbanisation accelerated (Britnell, 1996). All classes of society created demands for locally produced necessities such as food and clothing; the wealthier echelons sought products such as pottery and textiles from skilled craftsmen further afield; the aristocracy demanded luxury

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goods such as wine, silk and spices sourced from producers overseas. Offsetting these imports were exports of domestically produced commodities, especially wool and later woollen cloth in England’s case (Miller & Hatcher, 1995, 135–225). However, as with the Roman city, it is worth remembering that medieval towns and cities accommodated manufacturing as well as commercial activities, undertaken by artisan craftsmen whose operations were also tightly controlled by the guild system. As its industrial base developed, the medieval city became both a producer and consumer city (Weber, 1958, 68–70). London’s position as the country’s pre-eminent commercial and manufacturing centre grew ever stronger as the commercialisation of the national economy progressed (Keene, 2000, 196–203). It is estimated that the share of the nation’s overseas trade flowing through the city doubled over the thirteenth century to reach thirty-five per cent by 1300; it stayed at this level during the fourteenth century, then surged again during the fifteenth century to reach as much as sixty-eight per cent by 1500 (Keene, 1989, 99). Success bred success. London became the financial centre to which kings and nobles had to turn for support when they needed to raise capital. Its function as an international entrepôt attracted a growing body of foreign merchants to congregate in the city. Paramount among them were companies of Italian merchants and bankers, operating on a far greater scale than their English counterparts, allowing them to act as bankers to the English monarchy (Prestwich, 2005, 497–501). The city’s other primary function as the national capital required the presence of large numbers of courtiers and officials who generated further consumption demands within the urban economy (Williams, 1970, 95–105). The wealth of London’s leading citizen families was drawn from a variety of commercial sources: trade, finance, rents and minting. Merchants were the most prosperous class in the urban economy, able to accumulate landed as well as mercantile wealth by lending money and issuing mortgages (Miller & Hatcher, 1995, 225–254). Of a sample of London merchants who died in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, fourteen per cent had estates worth £1000 or more, putting them financially on a par with barons and wealthy knights (Dyer, 1998, 193). Moneyers were another rich and powerful group, closely linked with the city’s goldsmiths and also undertaking associated activities such as moneylending and property dealing. There were twelve licensed mints in the capital, which in the

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late eleventh century produced around a quarter of all the coins issued in the realm (Chibnall, 1993, 154–155). London’s progression to self-government was protracted but inexorable (Williams, 1970). On seizing power, the Conqueror had been careful to confirm the city’s existing rights and laws (Keene, 2000, 204). Consequently, whilst Norman power was concentrated in the hands of sheriffs and justiciars, royal officials answerable to the new ruling order, London’s ancient courts, its long-established assembly and its system of local wards run by aldermen remained important organs of local government. A particularly rich and powerful network of guilds, known as livery companies, developed in the city (Barron, 2000, 428–432). Seeking to strengthen their autonomy, the citizenry sought to establish government institutions similar to those found in the communes that had become an important aspect of civic life in continental Europe. Consequently, they were in frequent conflict with both the monarchy and their feudal landlords. By the end of the twelfth century, the city had gained the status of a self-governing Corporation with its own mayor and ruling council drawn from its body of leading citizens (Brooke & Keir, 1975, 245–257). Frequent discord between king and city continued during the thirteenth century, with the government of London taken under royal control on several occasions. However, the city was too large and powerful to be subdued for long, as it took on the character of a self-governing capital city (Barron, 2004). The Anglo-Norman kings maintained the split of powers between the commercial activities located in the walled City and the institutions of state located at Westminster, in particular the Chancery and the Exchequer responsible for justice and finance, respectively. It was in Westminster that Parliament began to meet on a regular basis. During the reign of Henry III, growing resentment at the conduct of government had led the magnates to demand greater power on the king’s council. To complement the council, Parliament emerged as the political forum in which the king sought consent more broadly on key matters of state such as taxation. These assemblies were initially dominated by peers and leading churchmen, but over time representation was widened to include knights and prominent townsmen (Prestwich, 2005, 98–99). Westminster was becoming the administrative heart of the kingdom. Meanwhile, in the City of London, political power became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a wealthy merchant oligarchy (Thrupp, 1962, 53–102). An interrelated group of leading families coalesced into

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London’s ruling class, from which its mayors and aldermen were typically drawn (Williams, 1970, 50–75). Though their wealth was derived from trade, these families became major landowners and engaged in conspicuous consumption and investment on a scale that matched the display of the landed aristocracy (Dyer, 1998, 205). They sat at the pinnacle of a non-feudal, civic and commercial power structure that began to rival the feudal power structure of church and state.

6.2   Commerce Rising Around 1300, medieval London seems to have reached a peak in population size and aggregate wealth, at levels not achieved again until the middle of the sixteenth century (Keene, 2000, 194–195). The decline and slow recovery in London’s fortunes during this time reflect the severity of the fourteenth-century crisis of feudalism, when the expansion of food production could no longer keep pace with population growth, leading to the Great Famine followed by the catastrophe of the Black Death. Towns and cities, just as much as the countryside, were ravaged by the effects of famine and plague. The impact of the Black Death on London was dramatic. By 1400 its population was probably only half what it had been a century before; there are frequent contemporary references to vacant or ruined tenements, but fewer references to a poor or destitute populace (Barron, 2000, 397). In fact, the decline of feudalism brought some benefits to the urban economy (Anderson, 1996, 205–209). Towns provided a refuge for discontented peasants to flee the countryside and join the urban labour force, while the monetisation of the rural economy stimulated trade, boosting the accumulation of wealth within towns and cities. This wealth helped to fuel London’s first wave of hegemonic civic building during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The golden age of monumental castle and church building had reached its end by 1300. As feudalism went into crisis, the next two centuries were marked by more modest levels of urban building that principally served non-feudal civic and commercial interests (Schofield & Stell, 2000). These buildings broadcast the message that mercantile wealth fostered civic pride (Coldstream, 2002, 171–173). A new urban landscape of power was emerging in the City, interacting with remnants of the former ancient Roman landscape. The Guildhall was the primary locus of the new civic and commercial landscape, surrounded by a constellation of over forty livery company halls (Schofield, 1995,

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44–49). This civic ensemble mirrored the role of St Paul’s as the primary locus of religious power, surrounded by its constellation of parish churches. London’s medieval Guildhall, built for the Corporation by master mason John Croxton between 1411 and 1429, was the third such building on the site (Barron, 1974, 15–24). It seems an unlikely coincidence that the site chosen to house the city’s government had been occupied over a thousand years earlier by the Roman amphitheatre, and reused in the Late Saxon period as a place of assembly where local courts were held (Blair, 2018, 407). The imposing presence of the medieval Guildhall can still be appreciated despite the damage it suffered in the Great Fire and the Blitz, and the attentions it has subsequently received from over-enthusiastic restorers. The hall was intended to be an expression of civic grandeur worthy of the greatest city in the land. It was the second largest structure in the medieval City after St Paul’s, and the second largest civic hall in England after Westminster Hall (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 300). Designed in the Perpendicular style, the English version of late Gothic, the building was lit by enormous tracery windows, and the walls decorated with elaborate tracery screens. Courts of justice sat on raised daises at either end (Barron, 1974, 25–33). Its original porch was embellished with statues of the four cardinal virtues (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance), a form of self-assertion by the city which finds parallels in the statuary on town halls in many Italian and Flemish cities (Schofield & Stell, 2000, 378). Leadenhall Market was the second hegemonic building erected by the City Corporation in the fifteenth century on the site of a monumental Roman structure. Built between 1440 and 1455, again by John Croxton, Leadenhall was a multi-purpose civic and commercial building comprising a market hall and granary with an attached chapel and grammar school. Unlike the Guildhall, nothing remains of the medieval structure, replaced by a Victorian market hall in the late nineteenth century. In its medieval form, the building consisted of four ranges around a courtyard, each of three storeys, with an arcaded ground floor and corner turrets enclosing spiral staircases to the upper floors (Samuel, 1989). As we have already observed, Leadenhall, like the Guildhall, was built on the site of a previous monumental Roman structure. It was erected directly over the north-east corner of the much larger Roman forum-­ basilica complex built thirteen centuries earlier. It appears that the market may have incorporated parts of the apse of the ancient basilica, which suggests that this most iconic element of the Roman structure could have

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been preserved after the remainder was demolished at the end of the third century (Brigham, 1990, 79). Again, it seems unlikely to be a coincidence that both Leadenhall complexes, each built on a courtyard plan and each directly related to the commercial life of the city, should have occupied the same site, even if they were built more than a millennium apart (Milne, 1992, vii). The Guildhall and St Paul’s acted as the landmark focal points in medieval London’s landscape of power, just as the forum and amphitheatre may well have done in Roman London. This commingled landscape, both civic and religious, acted as a theatre of spectacle for ceremonies intended to promote the ideology of the feudal order (Barron, 2000, 407–411). St Paul’s housed great councils of church and state, and was the destination for the diocesan processions that filled the streets at major feasts, especially during Whit Week when the city’s religious and civic leaders processed there, accompanied by a large part of the population. The route between the two separated centres of power, the City and Westminster, provided an extended stage for royal display. Monarchs made their entry into the City on the way to their coronation at Westminster Abbey, rode through it in triumphal processions to celebrate their real or imagined conquests, and employed it as a backdrop for pageantry to welcome royal brides and distinguished foreign visitors. Civic ceremonies in the capital were seemingly designed to promote a rather different, non-feudal ideology of oligarchic rule. Most important of these was the annual parade in which the newly elected mayor rode from the Guildhall to Westminster Hall to take his oath of office, accompanied by aldermen and liverymen. By addressing him as ‘lord mayor’ and having his ceremonial sword carried before him by his esquire, this civic dignitary was being invested with the aura of a feudal aristocrat. But these feudal trappings should not conceal the reality that this was a demonstration of mercantile, not aristocratic, wealth and power. In the post-medieval world of Tudor and Stuart London, the traditional ceremonies of royal entry and mayoral procession were given heightened hegemonic impact by transforming them into fully fledged theatrical performances (Manley, 1995, 212–293). Pageants were devised and speeches scripted by leading playwrights from the city’s newly emergent theatres; different performances were staged at key points along the ceremonial routes through the landscape of power. There are echoes here of the ideological function of public spaces in Augustan Rome.

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The theatricality of these royal and civic ceremonies drew on common traditions that created a symbiosis between the two competing, but interdependent, sources of power. This allowed their separate ideologies to mutate into a common mythology about the essence of London as a citizen community united under a benevolent monarchy. It is a mythology that survives to this day in the Lord Mayor’s Show and in the ceremonies surrounding state visits and coronations. Here is a vivid illustration of how the ideologies of a past world can be ritualised in an enduring myth of common identity. Such mythologies are a speciality of the British state.

6.3   Mercantile City As a new landscape of royal and aristocratic power emerged in Tudor London, it commingled with a very different landscape of mercantile power that had been evolving in the city over the previous two centuries. This hybrid landscape was a physical manifestation of the hybrid nature of the absolutist state, as it endeavoured to accommodate the rise of the bourgeoisie while maintaining the privileged status of the aristocracy. In so doing, absolutism was creating a post-feudal world that was proto-­capitalist in nature, laying the foundations for the modern nation state and creating an environment in which the forces and relations of capitalist production could germinate and develop. Just as absolutism acted as an intermediate form of state between the medieval and the modern, so there simultaneously developed an intermediate mode of production between feudalism and capitalism that has been termed mercantilism (Magnusson, 2015). This was an economic system founded on the ideological belief that regulation by the state was essential for trade to be profitable, allowing wealth to accumulate in the form of merchant capital. Though the circumscribed powers of the absolutist state meant that it was ‘more often than not unable to control economic life’ (Stern & Wennerlind, 2014, 15), the purpose of state intervention was clear. It was to facilitate the growth of national wealth, thereby setting in train a process of ‘previous’ or ‘primitive’ accumulation which Smith and Marx identified as a precondition for capitalist accumulation (Thomson, 1990). As Marx remarks, ‘primitive accumulation plays approximately the same role in political economy as original sin does in theology’ (Marx, 1976, 873). In other words, it was not integral to capitalism but rather its point of departure.

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Mercantilist governments endeavoured to intervene in the workings of the economy in order to encourage the growth of domestic trade and industry, to the mutual benefit of both the state and private merchant and manufacturing interests. ‘The result was a robust synergism of state and commerce under the auspices of mercantilist principles’ (Katznelson, 1992, 181). The state expanded its power and wealth through the imposition of customs and excise duties on trade. It furthered the merchant interest by removing internal barriers to domestic trade, stimulating overseas trade and restricting foreign competition. It furthered the manufacturing interest by encouraging the establishment of domestic industries and restricting industrial production in overseas colonies. Absolutist states competed aggressively with each other through protectionism, in the belief that a favourable balance of trade was a means of enhancing both national wealth and state power. In England, mercantilism reached its highest state of development during the seventeenth century (Magnusson, 2015, 174–177). Governments implemented a series of measures to regulate overseas trade, with the aim of protecting both the import of cheap raw materials from the nation’s colonial possessions and the domestic production of manufactured goods for export. Tariffs were imposed on imports from non-colonial sources to render them less competitive. Overseas trading monopolies were established in the form of chartered companies to manage the exploitation of colonial markets; principal among them was the East India Company, established in 1600 to control trade with the Indian subcontinent. Rates of profit of 100 per cent or more were commonplace for such ventures (Dobb, 1963, 192). Furthermore, the Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1660 awarded English ships a monopoly in the carriage of both colonial trade and a substantial slice of the import trade from Europe. By this means the world’s largest merchant fleet was constructed, both to carry the nation’s trade during peacetime and to provide men and ships for the Royal Navy in times of war. Trade was the primary motor of economic development in mercantilism, driven by a burgeoning growth in consumer demand. While some of this growth in demand was attributable to population increase, an important component derived from the growing prosperity of the landowning gentry, who were enjoying rising rents and agricultural prices, and of the urban bourgeoisie, who were enriching themselves through the very expansion in trade that they controlled. The result was an expansion in

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demand for luxury goods such as wine and fine textiles that had previously been the preserve of the aristocracy. Governments sought to satisfy this demand by encouraging the domestic manufacture of luxury goods (Lubbock, 1995, 70–86). As habits of conspicuous consumption spread down the social pyramid, the foundations of a consumer society were laid (Peck, 2005). Not only was the volume of trade increasing, but the range of goods traded was being transformed by global exploration and the first wave of colonisation (Clay, 1984b 103–182). New trading routes were established to India, Africa and the Americas. England benefitted particularly from the colonisation of the Americas, as it shifted Europe’s economic centre of gravity towards the Atlantic seaboard (Davis, 1973). New export markets were opened up for domestic manufactures, while novel and exotic commodities such as sugar, spices, tobacco and cotton fabrics were imported for home consumption. By expanding economically out of their geographical boundaries, England and the other nations of western Europe were able to accumulate vast power and wealth over the next three centuries of imperial expansion (Mann, 2012, 472–475). In combination, the spread of consumer demand, the opening of new markets and the availability of new commodities generated a commercial revolution in England during the seventeenth century (Brenner, 2003). The demands created by this commercial revolution led to a parallel financial revolution, in which a new system of credit based on tradable securities was constructed to fund the great expansion of trade (Wennerlind, 2011). Credit became more readily available, reflecting the growing willingness of the landed and merchant classes to lend their money at interest; innovations such as paper banknotes, cheques and bills of exchange were introduced; and new financial instruments such as joint-stock companies and deposit banking were developed (Quinn, 2004). These interlocking developments set the stage for the development of fully fledged commercial and financial capitalism during the eighteenth century (Neal, 1990). Given the close relationship between cities and trade, the pace of urbanisation further accelerated during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as the volume of trade multiplied, and the variety of traded goods proliferated. Lefebvre argues that a transformation of decisive importance occurred in western Europe during the sixteenth century. ‘The town overtook the country in terms of its economic and practical weight, in terms of its social importance; landownership lost its former absolute primacy’ (Lefebvre, 1991, 268). A mercantile city animated by markets and

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exchanges emerged to rival and eventually surpass the political city of palaces and churches (Lefebvre, 2003, 8–13). Towns were no longer isolated islands set within a feudal sea; they had become commercial hubs set within national and international networks of trade (Harvey, 2009, 258). The combination of urban mercantilism and national colonial conquest created the conditions for the development of the interdependent world economy that underpins modern capitalism. What happened in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries illustrates the dramatic shift from country to town that occurred during the era of mercantilism. At the start of the sixteenth century, up to 90 per cent of the national population lived in the countryside, and of the urban 10 per cent perhaps one-quarter, some 60,000 people, lived in London. By the end of the seventeenth century the proportion living in towns of any significant size had risen to nearly 25 per cent, and approaching half of these, some 575,000 people, were concentrated in the metropolis (Clay, 1984a, 165–213). London had become a city of European rather than just national importance. In the middle of the sixteenth century, it was only the sixth largest city in Europe; by the end of the seventeenth, it was the largest (Boulton, 2000, 316). It dwarfed all other English towns; Norwich, the next largest, had a population of just 30,000 in 1700 (Slack, 2000, 352). London’s spectacular growth derived from the dual role it had enjoyed since Roman times, as national capital and international entrepôt. The absolutist monarchy centred on Westminster and the community of international trading companies based in the City were mutually supportive, ensuring that the political city and the mercantile city grew in parallel. The merchant wealth generated by international trade helped to fund the growth of the absolutist state, while the power of the absolutist state supported the colonial expansion that fuelled international trade. The traders needed the royal government to protect their trading monopolies; the Crown relied on the City for loans and taxes to fund its conspicuous investment and military adventures (Brenner, 2003, 199–203). When Defoe undertook his great national tour in the early eighteenth century, he recognised the interdependence of the City and the West End (the Court) within the metropolis: ‘The city is the centre of its commerce and wealth. The Court of its gallantry and splendour…Between the Court and city, there is a constant communication of business to that degree, that nothing in the world can come up to it’ (Defoe, 1986, 306).

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However, despite the mutual benefits that Crown and City derived from their close economic relationship, it also contained a political contradiction. For the City was hostile to the rise of an absolutist monarchy which could threaten its ancient rights and privileges. This explains why powerful sections of the merchant community joined the citizens of London on the side of Parliament during the English Revolution (Brenner, 2003). London’s wealth was founded on its control of England’s overseas trade. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the nation’s combined exports and imports, and up to ninety per cent of its wool and cloth exports, passed through the metropolis (Clay, 1984a, 200). Monopolistic control of overseas trade fostered the formation of huge commercial fortunes by a few privileged oligarchs, leading to a starkly unequal distribution of wealth across the city as a whole. As in every period of London’s existence, great wealth coexisted with widespread deprivation and squalor. A national assessment undertaken in 1522 reveals that the richest five per cent of Londoners owned at least eighty per cent of the city’s wealth (Hoskins, 1976, 38). By the first half of the seventeenth century, personal estates worth over £100,000 or even £250,000 were being reported amongst the wealthiest City merchants, placing them on a par with the richest aristocrats in the country (Grassby, 1970, 227). Wealthiest of all was Sir John Spencer, a cloth merchant with trading interests in Spain, Venice, Turkey and North Africa, who left an estate worth somewhere between £500,000 and £800,000 when he died in 1610, making him almost certainly the richest man in the country after the king (Beresford & Rubinstein, 2007, 47). As their power and wealth grew, the merchant oligarchy increasingly employed hegemonic building and civic ceremony to celebrate their elevated status. Their aim was to glorify the City as a great mercantile exchange, the beating heart of the national economy and its overseas expansion, and themselves as its leading citizens, the financial if not the social equals of the nation’s great landowners. They employed hegemonic building in two forms. They built grand City mansions and country houses to signify their personal wealth, and imposing civic and commercial buildings to display their collective wealth. By the sixteenth century, the City oligarchs were feeling the need to enhance their dignity by trading in a prestigious exchange building similar to that enjoyed by their rivals in Antwerp. One of their number, Sir Thomas Gresham, royal agent for three Tudor monarchs, offered to

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provide such a building at his own expense, on condition that the Corporation donated the land. His investment drew upon the fortune he had accumulated from the family’s trading empire, which had already funded his construction of a grand City mansion on nearby Bishopsgate and country seats at Osterley in Middlesex and Mayfield in Sussex (Blanchard, 1997). Gresham’s investment in the exchange was no hubristic venture, however; the rents that he drew from the shops in the complex yielded him a more than sufficient return. Starting in 1566, Gresham had several properties cleared on Cornhill, close to the site of the old Roman forum, and employed the Dutch architect Hendryck van Paesschen to build a two-storey courtyard structure in a Flemish Renaissance style, modelled on the Antwerp bourse. The exchange was lined on the ground floor with covered Doric arcades where merchants could mingle, above were the shops behind a facade graced with larger-than-life statues of thirty English monarchs, and the whole edifice was crowned by a tall bell-tower topped with the figure of a grasshopper, the Gresham family crest (Saunders, 1997a). Gresham set great store by the royal statues, which became known as ‘the Kingdom’s Marble Chronicle’ (Gibson, 1997, 138–145). Over a century and a half earlier, Richard II had adorned Westminster Hall with statues of thirteen English kings, and it was Gresham’s intent to use a similar dynastic display to ‘invest his new building with an almost ecclesiastical dignity, dedicating its allegiance to God and the Crown and to the welfare of the nation’ (Gibson, 1997, 139). Here was a commercial building with hegemonic purpose seeking to draw political and spiritual legitimacy from its connections to two more ancient seats of power, the monarchy and the church. However, disputes concerning the form and appearance of the statues meant that their installation did not start until the 1620s. The fortunes of the Marble Chronicle reflected those of the monarchy itself. Under the Commonwealth, the statue of Charles I was removed; after the Restoration it was replaced and accompanied by one of his son Charles II. They survived for just six years before the whole exchange was destroyed in the Great Fire. Construction of the exchange was the City’s first excursion into classical architecture, just twenty years after the Duke of Somerset had built his pioneering palace on the Strand, and it introduced a sense of cosmopolitan sophistication into the City that it had hitherto lacked. Having previously persuaded Queen Elizabeth that an exchange would help to strengthen the economic foundations of her reign (Hollis, 2011, 75),

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Gresham was rewarded when the queen led a procession to view the completed building in 1571 and bestowed upon it the title of Royal Exchange. The royal visit gave an immediate boost to its fortunes. Fashionable London rushed to visit, ensuring that all the shops were soon let, greatly increasing Gresham’s rental income. The commercial success of the Royal Exchange prompted Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, to build a West End rival on the Strand some forty years later. Cecil’s New Exchange, like Gresham’s Royal Exchange, was a temple dedicated to the worship of conspicuous consumption that was gripping the wealthy population of the metropolis (Peck, 2005, 42–61). It offered a plethora of luxury goods from around the world, turning shopping into both a social activity and an entertainment, and in its ambition was the precursor of the great shopping emporia of the Edwardian age. The City Corporation protested that the New Exchange would siphon off part of the trade generated by wealthy West End patrons of the Royal Exchange, causing some City traders to move out west. Cecil ignored their protests, replying that all the City might suffer was ‘some little quill of profit to pass by their main pipe’ (Stone, 1973, 97). Cecil built the New Exchange between 1608 and 1609 on land immediately to the west of his mansion, Salisbury House. Whereas his own house was designed in the currently fashionable Jacobean style, the Exchange was more classical in appearance, signifying commercial modernity rather than aristocratic nostalgia. It seems to have been based on a design by Inigo Jones, one of his earliest, with a five-part façade articulated by centre and end projections, a two-stage tower over the central pediment, and a continuously arcaded ground floor, behind which were double galleries of shops. The inspiration was a design for a merchant exchange by the Italian Mannerist architect Serlio, but there were also features drawn from the work of Palladio (Summerson, 1993, 107). Despite also enjoying the prestige of a royal opening ceremony, this time led by James I, the New Exchange seems to have been a less successful venture than the Royal Exchange. In part, this was because it did not accommodate the meetings of wealthy merchants which were such a vital component of City life. It suffered economic decline towards the end of the seventeenth century, as fashionable society abandoned the Strand to move further west, and in 1737 was demolished and redeveloped for residential use (Stone, 1973, 104–109). Back in the City, the influence of Inigo Jones was also starting to be felt, with the rebuilding of the Goldsmiths’ Hall, completed in 1638. The

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medieval livery companies had been slow to embrace hegemonic building, being content to operate out of a standard courtyard house, typically donated by one of their wealthy members (Schofield, 2011, 118). But as their wealth increased, so did their desire for more prestigious premises to signify their importance within City society. The Goldsmiths were one of the oldest and richest of the livery companies, and chose the architect Nicholas Stone, working under the direction of Jones, to rebuild their headquarters on a grander scale and in the newly fashionable style of restrained classicism being perfected by the master (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 389). The resultant two-storey palace with courtyard was structurally sound enough to survive the Great Fire that broke out two decades later, one of the few buildings to do so. This cataclysmic event necessitated the rebuilding not only of the City’s churches but also of its civic and commercial buildings. A totally new landscape of power had to be created in the years that followed the Fire, as the City consolidated its position as a centre of international commerce and a springboard for global colonisation.

6.4   Commerce and Colonisation England’s mercantilist system evolved in the eighteenth century into an expansionary form of commercial and financial capitalism based on international trade, naval supremacy and imperial conquest. The growth of empire, trade and the economy were symbiotically linked. The genesis of the British Empire can be located in the broader movement of European expansion which began with the long-distance voyages of Portuguese and Spanish explorers during the fifteenth century (Andrews, 1984). The driving force for the movement was essentially commercial: to open up new trade routes, source new commodities and find new territories to plunder. As time went by, the impetus of the movement led to the establishment of permanent settlements and the crystallisation of colonial possessions. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Tudor and Stuart monarchs took an increasingly active part in the movement, creating a formidable alliance between London’s mercantile interests and England’s sea power which launched the nation on the course to build an oceanic empire. European colonial expansion ‘was not a pacific movement, but an acquisitive and predatory drive for commodities and for the profits to be made on the rich products of the outer world’ (Andrews, 1984, 5).

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Integral to the success of colonisation was the ruthless exercise of superior military force, based upon more technologically advanced weaponry and shipping deployed with more effective organisation. As with the expansion of the Roman Empire, the European colonies were occupied as sources of valuable land, plundered as sources of cheap raw materials, and exploited as sources of cheap labour through the systematic enslavement of conquered peoples. In contrast to the Roman Empire, however, the European empires of the early modern period were primarily exercises in economic rather than political power. What was being created was a ‘world system’ with an evolving capitalist core in western Europe dominating a periphery of pre-capitalist societies linked to the centre by relations of economic dependency (Wallerstein, 2011). Some ideological veneer of justification for imperial conquest was provided by the missionary project of converting the heathen to Christianity and the political project of creating places of refuge for persecuted minorities (Andrews, 1984, 31–33). The exploitation of conquered peoples was also justified by the commonplace view that they were a racially inferior species (Blackburn, 2010, 12–15). But the most powerful justification stemmed from the ideological force of nationalism, which intensified as the nations of western Europe engaged in a hegemonic struggle over the shares of global trade and colonial spoils (Wallerstein, 2011, 244–289). Through a succession of wars with its European rivals, first the Netherlands and then the old enemy France, England emerged as the world’s most aggressive and expansionary imperial power. Its hegemony derived from global control of the seas by the Royal Navy (Brewer, 2014, 29–42). So vital was the Navy to national prosperity that from the mid-­ seventeenth century it became the largest single item in government expenditure (Mann, 2012, 457). English power was sustained by the formation of a new form of ‘fiscal-military state’, based upon a formidable government machine organised to fund its military and colonial adventures through radical increases in taxation and public debt (Brewer, 2014, 64–134). The foundations of the fiscal-military state had been laid during the financial revolution of the seventeenth century, which created the conditions for the City of London to become the world’s leading financial centre. The ascent of the City was reinforced by a set of key institutions which were established towards the end of the century. An embryonic insurance market was operating in Lloyd’s Coffee House by 1688; the Bank of England was established by royal charter in 1694; organised dealing in

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securities started in Jonathan’s Coffee House in 1698, precursor of the future Stock Exchange. This financial infrastructure enabled London to overtake Amsterdam as Europe’s leading financial centre by 1780 and go on to become the pre-eminent centre of global trade and finance by the end of the French Wars (Cassis, 2012, 7–24). London’s strength as a financial centre derived from the diversity and interconnectedness of its institutions. Its principal strengths were its banks and insurance companies, together with its commodities and securities markets, all located close to the world’s busiest port. The first large insurance companies, such as Royal Exchange Assurance and London Assurance, were established in the early eighteenth century (Supple, 1970, 6–51). As the century progressed, a growing number of private deposit banks became established in the City (Joslin, 1954). The Stock Exchange grew rapidly after its formal establishment in 1773, trading principally in the government securities which funded Britain’s ballooning national debt (Michie, 1999, 31–34). By expanding and strengthening the tax base, the government had been able to boost its revenues from three to four per cent of national income in 1680 to ten to eleven per cent by 1720 (O’Brien, 1988, 3). One of the most lightly taxed states in Europe had become one of the most heavily taxed. But although tax revenues grew thereafter in line with national income, they were insufficient to meet the extraordinary demands of England’s military machine. Government borrowing was therefore essential to meet the funding shortfall, requiring the creation of a capital market geared to the issue of innovative new instruments of public debt (Dickson, 1967). As war followed war during the eighteenth century, the volume of national debt mounted inexorably, requiring the Bank of England to play a vital role in guaranteeing its integrity to maintain investor confidence. By 1818, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, it had reached a peak of £843 million, double the size of national income (Barras, 2016, 27). Funded by this debt, the power of the English fiscal-military state enabled it to assemble a great mercantilist empire that combined global trade and imperial conquest (Cain & Hopkins, 2016, 73–115). When the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763, ending the global Seven Years War, its string of military successes placed Britain at the head of the largest empire in the world, stretching from Canada to India (Baugh, 2011). Imperial conquest opened up multiple trade routes that acted as a crucial driver of growth for the British economy during the eighteenth

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century (Zahedieh, 2014). Over the century as a whole, trade expanded twice as fast as national output, growing fivefold in real terms, and the share of export trade destined for non-European markets grew from fifteen per cent to seventy per cent (Deane & Cole, 1967, 44–49, 75–87). This rapid expansion of overseas trade provided an invaluable boost to the primitive accumulation of merchant capital, accelerating Britain’s transition to a fully capitalist mode of production in the nineteenth century. The growth of trade was also of direct benefit to the London economy. Much of it was funnelled through the port of London, supporting both the powerful merchant community and a raft of trades and industries based upon the goods passing through the port (Morgan, 2000, 91–93). Here a distinction should be made between the nation’s colonies of conquest, principally in the tropical and semi-tropical zones, and colonies of settlement, principally in the temperate zone (Patnaik & Patnaik, 2021, 115–125). Colonies of conquest such as India were subjugated and deindustrialised, their craft producers driven out of their traditional occupations in order to create markets for the sale of British goods. Colonies of settlement such as North America and Australia were cleared of their indigenous peoples, occupied by British migrants and industrialised by English capital. Triangular flows of trade were established, whereby Britain sold manufactured goods to the colonies of conquest, which exported primary commodities to the colonies of settlement, which in turn exported their products back to Britain. The whole system was funded by an economic surplus appropriated from the subject economies through taxation and exported to the settler economies in the form of development capital. The most dynamic component of English colonial trade in the eighteenth century was the Atlantic economy, integrating the home nation with the fast-developing North American colonies (Hancock, 1995). And the most profitable component of the Atlantic economy was the triangular trade which supplied the vital commodity of slaves to the sugar plantations of the West Indies and, to a lesser extent, the tobacco plantations of the American southern states. English manufactured goods were exported to Africa to exchange for the slaves; English ships transported the slaves from West Africa to the New World plantations; their produce was shipped for consumption back in Britain (Morgan, 2007, 54–83). Sugar was the most valuable and profitable of the plantation crops, enabling the formation of an extremely wealthy West Indian planter class (Dunn, 2000). Many of these men were absentee proprietors, owners of several plantations, who

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preferred to base themselves in London, at the centre of the Empire, rather than in the Caribbean periphery (Morgan, 2007, 46–50). It is an uncomfortable truth that the Atlantic slave trade was integral to the whole process of European imperial expansion, as it had been for the expansion of the Roman Empire nearly two millennia before. Slavery supplied a demand for cheap labour in both economic systems; the main difference was that Roman slavery principally served the core economy of Italy, whereas European slavery served the colonial economies of the Americas. When England established itself as Europe’s leading imperial power, it inevitably took command of the largest share of the slave trade, carrying forty per cent of the six million slaves transported from West Africa to the American colonies over the course of the eighteenth century (Blackburn, 2010, 383). The British establishment—monarchy, church and government—all supported the slave trade, and families of the utmost respectability, such as the Quaker Barclays of banking renown, were directly involved in the trade (Williams, 2022, 35–45). The plantation economies of the New World that were dependent on slave labour made an important contribution to the process of primitive accumulation that preceded Britain’s industrialisation. They not only fed the available pool of investment finance but also helped to create new colonial markets for manufactured goods (Blackburn, 2010, 509–580). It has indeed been persuasively argued that the Britain’s triangular trade with West Africa and the West Indies lent a vital impulse to the Industrial Revolution (Williams, 2022). Beyond these economic imperatives, the legacy of slave ownership shaped the whole culture of the Victorian age, funding the foundation of new schools and universities, religious and philanthropic institutions, clubs and societies. One such institution is the Tate Gallery, for which both the building and the initial collection of British art were donated by Henry Tate, whose family fortune was derived from sugar (Hall et al., 2014, 50–57). On the other side of the world, a different form of colonial dependency had been developing, whereby the British state effectively subcontracted control over its largest and wealthiest colony to a private trading monopoly administered from London. For India remained under the control of the East India Company, more than a century after its foundation, Company profitability seemed assured, especially as the growing British fashion for tea-drinking made this its most valuable export crop. The Company had successfully embedded itself in the financial and political life

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of the nation, paying handsome dividends to its shareholders in the City and beyond, cultivating close links with the political class in Westminster, and acting as a major source of loans and tax revenue to government (Lawson, 1993, 73–79). It was during the Seven Years War (1756–1763) that the Company was transformed from a trading venture into a political power. Under the military leadership of Robert Clive, it put an end to French interests in the subcontinent and assumed sovereign power over Bengal, the wealthiest of the Indian kingdoms (Keay, 1991, 296–327). During the 1760s, the Company was effectively running Bengal as its own imperial fiefdom, exercising military control through its own private army and raising enormous sums from taxation of the local population. However, a venture supremely successful as a trading company was ill-­ equipped to act as a quasi-government. The costs of so doing brought the Company to the edge of financial ruin by 1772, forcing the government in London to assert control over its political and diplomatic functions in exchange for a large loan to stave off bankruptcy (Dalrymple, 2020, 215–235). This experiment in privatised colonialism proved a great success in terms of wealth accumulation, but a total failure in terms of imperial governance. Enormous individual fortunes were made from commerce in the eighteenth century, particularly by leading figures in the City of London (Rogers, 1979, 438–442). Fortunes of £100,000 or more were not uncommon, and the wealthiest left estates with values approaching £1 million. Most spectacular was the wealth accumulated by men involved in colonial trade and imperial conquest, especially the traders and administrators of the East India Company and the plantation owners of the West Indies. These nouveaux riches burst into London society, buying large houses and entertaining lavishly, to be reluctantly acknowledged by the established aristocracy for their wealth if not their social status (Thorold, 2001, 128–133). Robert Clive, conqueror of Bengal, returned to England in 1760 boasting a fortune of £300,000 and an annual income of £28,000 (Lawson, 1993: 94). This he employed to burnish his credentials as a gentleman by purchasing estates in Shropshire, Surrey and Ireland, and leasing a house in Berkeley Square (Dalrymple, 2020, 140). William Beckford, owner of no less than 13 West Indian sugar plantations and some 3000 slaves, is said to have been the first business millionaire in British history when he died in 1770 (White, 2013, 166). He broadcast his wealth by building a fine

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Palladian mansion at Fonthill in Wiltshire, at the enormous reputed cost of £240,000 (Wilson & Mackley, 2007, 241), though he chose to keep a lower profile in London, living for nineteen years in Soho Square at a rent of just £68 a year (Rudé, 2003, 55). Some wealthy men of commerce chose not to live in London but rather base themselves in grand country mansions located outside, but conveniently close to, the city. One such was James Brydges, who became one of the wealthiest men in England through his lucrative post as army paymaster-­ general during the War of Spanish Succession (1702–13). Retiring at the end of the war, he set about building himself a lavish Baroque mansion at Cannons in Middlesex, described by Defoe as ‘the most magnificent in England’ (Defoe, 1986, 341). Another was Richard Child, who inherited a considerable fortune from his father Sir Josiah Child, who had been Governor of the East India Company. In 1715 Child commissioned Colen Campbell to build him a Palladian mansion at Wanstead in Essex that is considered to have been one of the finest of the genre (Summerson, 1993, 297–301). Neither of these great houses have survived. Shortly after Brydges’s death in 1744, the indebtedness of his son caused the estate at Cannons to be broken up, the house demolished and the contents scattered (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 297). Wanstead House only survived until 1822, when family extravagance forced the sale of the contents and the demolition of the building (Stutchbury, 1967, 30). The fate of these two houses illustrates a wider point. The hereditary aristocracy hold on to their estates tenaciously, because the imperative of family legacy is integral to their ideology, whereas the dynastic pretensions of wealthy bourgeois families tend to die out within two or three generations (Barras, 2016, 198). As commercial and financial capitalism developed during the eighteenth century, the bourgeois interest became increasingly intertwined with the aristocratic interest (Rogers, 1979). Aristocrats and gentry invested in commercial ventures to supplement their rental income, merchants and financiers invested in land to further their social and political ambitions, and it became acceptable for the two classes to intermarry. Land still remained the dominant and most prestigious source of national wealth, and the aristocracy retained their pre-eminent position as the richest and most powerful class in society, but it was a society becoming more capitalist in nature and more bourgeois in ethos. Indeed, it has been argued that the convergence of landed and commercial interests in Britain during the eighteenth century led to the

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formation of a very particular form of rentier economy termed ‘gentlemanly capitalism’ (Cain & Hopkins, 2016, 42–61). It was a system in which the accumulation of wealth by the propertied classes was driven by the global expansion of the British Empire. Underlying its formation was an emergent bourgeois ideology based on the idea of progress (Spadafora, 1990). This was an idea that animated much of the philosophy of the Enlightenment movement that was sweeping across Europe and acquiring a particular national identity in Britain (Porter, 2000). Linking together past, present and future, desirable progress became an overarching virtue in all spheres of social life, and it provided the ideological justification for every form of commercial enterprise, in both the domestic economy and the colonial empire.

6.5   City of Enterprise Just days after the Great Fire burned through London in 1666, Christopher Wren drew up a plan for the reconstruction of the City (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 66–68). He envisioned a Baroque city of great public buildings set within a formal armature of rond-points linked by radiating avenues: ‘the avenue is the most important symbol and the main fact about the baroque city’ (Mumford, 1966, 421). In rebuilt form, St Paul’s and the Royal Exchange were to act as the religious and commercial foci of the new landscape of power. There are echoes here of the geometrical layout of Imperial Rome, although Wren’s vision was principally influenced by the grandiose developments being undertaken in Paris to glorify the all-­ powerful French monarchy. Here is another example of the periodic English desire to emulate French architecture that has manifested itself ever since the Conquest (Peck, 2005, 340–345). But Wren’s vision was not to be realised; London was never to become a Baroque city in the manner of Paris, Rome and Vienna. It was a vision judged to be too alien, too absolutist for post-revolutionary England, just as homely Hampton Court could not compete with the oppressive magnificence of Versailles. Furthermore, in order to execute the plan, it would have been necessary to pool and redistribute all the private property in the City, a course of action far too protracted and interventionist to appeal to the merchant oligarchy that ran the Corporation. Wren did, of course, leave the memorable legacy of a new St Paul’s surrounded by a constellation of fifty-one rebuilt parish churches. However, these individually classical buildings were set within the City’s medieval

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network of crooked streets, carefully recreated after the Fire. The result was a composite landscape in which the new sat rather uncomfortably within the old, emphasising the qualities of tradition and continuity so important to the English psyche. The first priority of the City Corporation after the Fire was to rebuild the Royal Exchange, the hegemonic symbol of the city of enterprise. The same desire to protect the city’s commercial function had motivated the leaders of Roman London over a millennium and a half earlier, when in the immediate aftermath of the Boudican revolt they focussed their rebuilding effort on the port. The new exchange was re-opened within three years of the Fire, to a design by Edward Jerman, a former City Carpenter favoured by the Corporation. For this replacement exchange to be built so quickly was considered a triumph for the City. By demonstrating its unwavering commitment to remain the nation’s supreme trading centre, ‘it restored the confidence of Londoners in themselves and of foreign merchants in the City’ (Saunders, 1997b, 134). In other words, its hegemonic purpose was restored. The new exchange reproduced the arcaded courtyard plan of its predecessor but displayed a more emphatic entrance facade, fronting onto Cornhill. At its centre was a triumphal arch rising through two storeys, surmounted by an extravagant three-stage tower echoing the bell tower which had crowned Gresham’s exchange (Summerson, 1993, 189). The whole edifice employed an eclectic mix of architectural devices, both Jacobean and classical, typical of a style developed by master craftsmen in the City that has subsequently become known, rather condescendingly, as Artisan Mannerism (Summerson, 1993, 142–156). Given their symbolic importance to the exchange, it was imperative that the Marble Chronicle of royal statues be restored after the Fire (Gibson, 1997, 145–168). Pride of place was given to two new statues of Charles I and Charles II, flanking the ceremonial entrance on Cornhill, but again disputes delayed the replacement of the statues within the courtyard. In 1684, Grinling Gibbons, later to become royal Master Carver, sculpted a large statue of Charles II in the heroic garb of a Roman Caesar, to be erected in the centre of the courtyard. In the same year, the Corporation adopted a plan to produce twenty-four new statues for the exchange, each funded by a different livery company. However, after the overthrow of Charles’s brother James II and the installation of a new constitutional monarchy under William and Mary, the City’s zeal for the

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erection of royal statues grew weaker. By 1708 only fourteen had been completed, although in subsequent decades they were supplemented by figures of William and Mary, Anne and the first four Georges (Roscoe, 1997). Once more the fortunes of the Marble Chronicle reflected those of the monarchy itself. Apart from his monumental achievement in resurrecting the City’s churches, Wren was responsible for rebuilding one of its most important public buildings. The Custom House on Lower Thames Street had been regulating and taxing flows of trade through the port of London since at least the fourteenth century, and within five years of its destruction in the Fire it was operating again in Wren’s new building. This was a classical two-storey structure with a pedimented centre and projecting wings open to the ground floor, housing a large room for public business on the first floor (Summerson, 1993, 189). It was rebuilt to a similar design after a new fire in 1718, but totally destroyed and replaced after another fire in 1814. The other major component of the City’s landscape of civic power, its livery halls, was also almost completely destroyed by the Fire. Forty-four out of a total of fifty-one were burnt down. They were rebuilt under great financial difficulty because so much of the invested wealth of the livery companies had been lost. However, by relying on private benefactors and using local City craftsmen working in the Artisan Mannerist style, the larger companies endeavoured to present a confident new face to the world, by means of facades incorporating elaborate stone frontispieces that led into richly furnished interiors (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 374). Moving into the eighteenth century, a series of monumental civic and commercial buildings were constructed in the City, creating a whole new landscape of power for the city of enterprise. Instrumental in this transformation were two of the City’s most famous Clerks of Works—the Palladian George Dance the Elder (1735–1768) and his son, the Neoclassicist George Dance the Younger (1768–1815). One of the first of the new generation of hegemonic buildings was East India House in Leadenhall Street, built by Theodore Jacobsen between 1726 and 1729 as a headquarters for the Company at the height of its prosperity. It was one of the first great private office buildings to be purpose-­built in the City, and one of the earliest to be designed in the Palladian style that was becoming all the rage in the aristocratic West End (Abramson, 2005, 24–28). Between 1796 and 1799, it was rebuilt and enlarged by Henry Holland and Richard Jupp on a grander scale, befitting

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the importance of the place from which British India was administered. The façade was centred on a monumental hexastyle Ionic portico with carved pediment and life-size imperial statuary (Summerson, 2003, 174). However, the building was demolished a mere sixty years after construction, when the formal rule of India passed to the India Office of the Crown, the Company wound up and its assets passed over to the government. Outstanding among the new generation of City buildings were the Mansion House, built by George Dance the Elder between 1739 and 1752 as the official residence of the Lord Mayor, and the Bank of England, the first version of which was constructed between 1732 and 1734 by George Sampson. These two symbols of civic and commercial power emphasised the arrival of the Palladian style in the City. They joined the Royal Exchange to complete the trio of hegemonic buildings that look out over Bank Junction, where the medieval thoroughfares of Cornhill, Threadneedle Street, Poultry, Walbrook and Lombard Street converge. Situated at the very heart of the City, this hegemonic ensemble has been likened to that surrounding a Roman forum (Summerson, 1990, 196). The Mansion House was intended to act not only as the mayor’s residence but also as his courthouse and as a meeting place for polite City society. It was conceived by Dance as a palace in the Palladian style, but executed with a solidity that derived from the City’s preference for artisan robustness (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 317–321). In its original form it had a tall pilastered façade, fronted by a hexastyle Corinthian portico flanked by double flights of steps, and was crowned by two towering attics front and back. The pediment of the portico was carved by Robert Taylor, whose father was Master of the Mason’s Company. It carries an explicit hegemonic message: a female figure representing London, wearing a turreted crown and holding the City coat of arms and the wand of Liberty, is shown trampling Envy and receiving Plenty through the trade brought to the city by the river-god of the Thames (Jeffery, 1993, 80–85). To make the most of the constricted site on Walbrook, the accommodation was arranged over four floors, with an internal courtyard at first floor level to allow light to penetrate into the centre of the building. The interior displays fine Rococo wood carving and plasterwork, and richly ornamented ceilings (Jeffery, 1993, 141–159). It provides a triumphal processional sequence of rooms intended for grand entertainments, crossing the internal courtyard to reach a climax in the Egyptian Hall in which civic and state banquets are held (Photograph 6.1). The hall has colonnades of double-height Corinthian columns along each side and is based

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Photograph 6.1  Mansion House, Egyptian Hall 1739-52 (Source: Matt Crossick/Alamy Stock Photo)

on a reconstruction of Vitruvius’s Egyptian Hall by Palladio, re-­envisaged by Lord Burlington in his York Assembly Rooms (Jeffery, 1993, 185–203). When the Mansion House was under construction, the Bank of England was already occupying its first purpose-built premises in Threadneedle Street. Its architect George Sampson had also employed an imposing Palladian design to emphasise the importance of the institution as guarantor of the national debt. There was a front block with Ionic columns and pilasters on a rusticated ground floor, and two enclosed courts in line behind, separated by the main public banking hall. The spaces within the building were carefully segregated to accommodate the Bank’s various functions, reinforcing the sense of order and reliability it wished to project. Like the Royal Exchange, statuary was deployed to symbolise national identity, with figures of William III and Britannia celebrating both its establishment under the constitutional monarchy and the imperial conquests it helped to underwrite (Abramson, 2005, 46–56). Following Britain’s triumph in the Seven Years War, its enhanced status as the world’s leading imperial power placed increased demands upon the

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Bank’s operations, requiring a commensurate increase in the number, size and grandeur of its offices. This phase of its expansion was undertaken between 1764 and 1788 by the Palladian Robert Taylor, who early in his career had carved the Mansion House pediment as well as the figure of Britannia in Sampson’s Bank (Abramson, 2005, 66–78). Taylor added twin single-storey colonnaded wings to the exterior of the Bank and remodelled the interior to include an impressive Court Room to house meetings of the Bank’s governing body, the Court of Directors. This room was proportioned according to Vitruvian principles and lent the requisite sense of authority by entrance alcoves leading into the main space through arcades of Corinthian columns. Iconographic friezes representing agriculture, fishing and industry were introduced to signify the Bank’s importance to the nation’s economy. Most spectacularly, Taylor created a new east wing containing a suite of four elegant banking halls arranged around a great domed rotunda that acted as the principal exchange for brokers trading in government securities. The rotunda was copied from the Pantheon in Rome. Here one of the most famous and best-preserved buildings in Imperial Rome was being used as a hegemonic symbol in the financial centre of Imperial Britain. The French Wars provided a further impetus to the growth of the Bank, prompting another phase of expansion. This was undertaken by John Soane, the most original of England’s Neoclassical architects, whose work on the Bank between 1788 and 1827 is considered to have been his masterpiece. Soane’s most famous contribution was to rebuild Taylor’s fast-decaying Rotunda and its surrounding banking halls (Abramson, 2005, 101–116). He transfigured these elegant Palladian rooms into much more strikingly austere Neoclassical halls, employing ‘far and away the most original architectural language in Europe at that moment’ (Summerson, 1993, 435). Each hall was crowned with a broad, side-lit dome supported on plain arches leading into barrel-vaulted side bays like a Roman bath-house or Byzantine church (Photograph 6.2). To give the halls the sober yet imposing character deemed appropriate for a central bank, surface decoration was restricted to an irreducible minimum, allowing the structural elements of arches, vaults and dome to flow into each other as one uninterrupted space (Summerson, 2003, 167–171). Soane also extended the Bank north to Lothbury, creating a new Lothbury Court with a grand entrance based on the Arch of Constantine in Rome. To reinforce the imperial messaging, the whole court was laid out like a Roman forum, incorporating female figures of the four continents encompassed by the British Empire.

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Photograph 6.2  Bank of England, Consols Office 1792-1823 (Source: London Metropolitan Archives/Heritage Images/Alamy Stock Photo)

Soane further surrounded the whole expanded complex with a massive windowless screen wall, creating the impression of a mighty fortress (Abramson, 2005, 125–140). This impression is no accident. During the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in June 1780, part of a rising tide of popular protest against worsening economic inequality, a mob attacked the Bank as a symbol of the forces causing their distress. This singular event prompted the Bank’s Directors to call for better security, to which Soane’s screen wall was the eventual response (Abramson, 2005, 83–87). Two decades after the wall was completed, a balustraded firing platform was erected around the parapet, as a panic measure prompted by the enormous Chartist demonstration of April 1848 in support of political reform (Abramson, 2005, 200). The Bank stands today like a citadel behind this wall, defending the hegemonic heart of the City, expecting public consent for its exercise of financial power, but hinting at coercion if consent is ever withdrawn. While work on the Mansion House and the Bank was proceeding, the government of the City continued to be run from the medieval Guildhall, situated just a short distance away on Gresham Street. However, once

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George Dance the Younger had taken over from his father as City Clerk of Works, he was commissioned to give the ancient building a makeover that would satisfy the prevailing taste for classicism (Summerson, 1993, 418–419). In 1777/8 he added a new Council Chamber with a top-lit dome that influenced the design of Soane’s later banking halls. In 1788/9 he added a new porch to the front of the building, incorporating an eclectic mixture of Gothic, Indian and classical motifs which refer back to the City’s ancient past and point to the most important current source of its mercantile wealth. Meanwhile, more new buildings were springing up across the City to augment the civic and commercial landscape of power (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 91–97). These included a Corn Exchange (1747–50), an Excise Office (1769–75), a Coal Exchange (1770) and the first Stock Exchange (1801–2). The first private bank premises were built along Lombard Street, in the shadow of the Bank of England (Booker, 1990, 6–13). As the wealth of the City continued to accumulate, many of the livery companies, such as the Skinners, Drapers, Goldsmiths and Fishmongers, rebuilt their halls in a manner that was architecturally more ambitious and decoratively more opulent. Towards the end of the long eighteenth century the Customs House was rebuilt yet again (1825–8) and a massive new General Post Office constructed (1824–9), both by the architect Robert Smirke in the newly fashionable Greek Revival style. In addition to its panoply of monumental civic and commercial buildings, the City displayed a much more brutal exercise in the architecture of domination. Just as its Norman landscape of power had been dominated by the Tower, so its Georgian landscape was overshadowed by Newgate Gaol. This was developed for the Corporation between 1769 and 1778 by the younger Dance, in a stark Neoclassical form so powerful the building has acquired the dubious distinction of being seen as the architect’s masterpiece (Summerson, 1993, 417–418). Its great blind walls presented ‘the most terrifying display of rusticated stone in English architecture’, connoting a ‘rhetoric of incarceration [that] still haunts the imagination’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 92, 292). Those walls provided the backdrop to a theatre of the macabre: public hangings could attract an audience of over 30,000, and a considerable fee could be charged for a room with a good view of proceedings (Porter, 1994, 289). After over a century of coercive use, Newgate was demolished in 1902 to make way for the Central Criminal Court on Old Bailey.

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6.6   City of Conquest If the City was the paymaster of the fiscal-military state, Westminster was its operational headquarters. When fire ravaged the City in 1666, national government was still operating out of Whitehall Palace, home of the Tudor and Stuart monarchs. During the seventeenth century, several plans were drawn up to modernise the palace in order to make it more suitable for housing the administrative functions of the state. With the exception of Inigo Jones’s Banqueting House, none of these projects ever reached fruition. Jones was commissioned by Charles I to produce an ambitious plan for the rebuilding of Whitehall in a classical form appropriate for the seat of government in a great European state (Summerson, 1993, 126–128). Around 1638 Jones produced a plan for a vast rectangular palace centred on an oblong court surrounded by three smaller courts. The already existing Banqueting House was to be incorporated into one corner of the centre court, and repeated three times in the other corners to maintain the symmetry of the whole. At nearly the same time, Jones produced a second, even more ambitious, plan for a site further west in St James’s Park, which necessitated the abandonment of the Banqueting House. This plan shows more clearly the influence of Vitruvius and Palladio. Its colonnaded great court was conceived like a Roman forum, surrounded by a royal chapel, council chamber and basilican hall equivalent to the temple, curia and law court in the Vitruvian model. To the east of this public complex there was to be a circular court flanked by two square courts housing the private royal apartments. The whole scheme was an architectural representation of absolutist government under divine authority, even larger than the palace of El Escorial built some fifty years earlier for the Spanish monarchy. Though further work was later done on these plans by Jones’s pupil John Webb, nothing was built. Even after the Restoration, the concept would have appeared far too grandiloquent for English taste or political sensibilities. However, when in 1698 fire destroyed most of the old palace, leaving the Banqueting House as the only survivor, the future of Whitehall once more became a pressing concern. Following the fire, the Office of Works under Wren produced two alternative plans for rebuilding the palace, differing principally in the way in which the Banqueting House was to be incorporated (Summerson, 1993, 255–257). The more striking of the two made the Banqueting House the

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central feature of the whole design. Its appearance was to be emphasised by a giant Corinthian portico attached to its river front, and a pair of flanking circular stair-towers added to either side, employing the same giant order. To each side of the towers there were to be projecting wings running towards the river, fronted by magnificent temple-like facades. The emphatic use of a giant order in this scheme was inspired by Bernini’s design for the Louvre in Paris, which had been rejected in favour of designs by French architects. Here was another grandiloquent vision, comparable to the Jones-Webb design in spirit but executed in a Baroque rather than Palladian version of classicism. And like the Jones-Webb design, it was never built. Parliament was loath to allocate money for the rebuilding, fearing it would signify a return to the absolutist monarchy displaced by the revolution of 1688 (Downes, 1966, 43–46). The subsequent development of Whitehall as the seat of national and imperial government proceeded in a typically British fashion, eschewing the grandiose in favour of the practical and the particular. The result was ‘a remarkable mixture of the resplendent and the makeshift, a testimony both of the continuity and the recurrent parsimony of the British state’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 232). Defoe complained of Whitehall in 1725 that ‘all the offices and places for business are scattered about’ rather than being concentrated in one great building ‘suiting the majesty and magnificence of the British princes, and the riches of the British nation’ (Defoe, 1986, 323). Compared to equivalent public spaces in Paris, the hegemonic impact of the Whitehall landscape of power is more subtle and domestic, but better suited to the ideology of a constitutional monarchy. During the eighteenth century, the public buildings erected in Whitehall were intended to house the institutions of the fiscal-military state, and in particular its twin pillars of the Admiralty and the Treasury. They provided the base from which the nation’s political and military leaders directed their campaigns of colonial expansion and imperial conquest. The oldest of these buildings to have survived is the Old Admiralty, constructed between 1723 and 1726 by Thomas Ripley, Comptroller to the Office of Works (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 250–253). It is a three-­ storeyed structure of brick, with a giant Ionic portico and a deep forecourt flanked by projecting wings. Within is a Board Room lined with carved panelling, incorporating garlands and nautical trophies, that is attributed to Grinling Gibbons. This is where the exercise of British naval power was masterminded.

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In 1760 the Admiralty building received a notable facelift when Robert Adam added to its Whitehall front a screen of ten Tuscan columns set against a blank wall, terminating in end pavilions. A contemporary observer noted that the building was ‘A clumsy pile, but properly veiled from the street by Mr Adam’s handsom skreen’ (Foreman, 1995, 55). The complex was expanded in 1786–8 with the addition of Admiralty House, official residence of the First Lord of the Admiralty, to a design initiated by Robert Taylor and completed by his pupil Samuel Cockerell. A decade after work started on the Admiralty, construction commenced on a bespoke Treasury building designed by the Palladian William Kent (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 258). There are two main storeys above a basement floor, the whole front is rusticated, and the most prominent embellishment is a four-column Ionic portico with royal arms carved in the pediment. Of the state rooms inside, the most impressive is the Board Room, with a deeply coved ceiling, lavish friezes and an elaborate chimney-­ piece. Here is where the financial affairs of the fiscal-military state were settled during most of the eighteenth century (Foreman, 1995, 46). Admiralty House and the Treasury block overlook Horse Guards Parade, laid out over the site of Henry VIII’s tiltyard in Whitehall Palace. Some thirteen years after his Treasury building was completed, work started on another of Kent’s projects, the Horse Guards building, which provides the centrepiece for the whole panorama of the parade ground. Built between 1750 and 1759, it housed the headquarters of the British army and the barracks of the Household Cavalry, who have provided protection for the monarch since the Restoration. It was the base for the Duke of Wellington when he was Commander-in-Chief of the army. Horse Guards is an outstanding example of Palladian design with more than a hint of Baroque extravagance in its strongly articulated façade (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 254–255). A seven-bay centre block is flanked by set-back five-bay wings, which terminate in projecting three-bay angle pavilions (Photograph 6.3). The centre block itself is similarly articulated, with a projecting three-bay centre and projecting one-bay angle blocks. The skyline is just as dynamic, with pediments over the angle pavilions, square extensions over the angle blocks and a clock tower emphasising the centre of the whole composition. An arched carriageway and flanking foot passages link Horse Guards Parade to Whitehall. Overall, the building seems to have been designed with more of an eye to picturesque effect than practical function. ‘The central drive-through has an arch so

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Photograph 6.3 Horse Guards 1750-9 (Source: David South/Alamy Stock Photo)

uncomfortably low that Hogarth, no lover of the Burlington gang, gleefully painted a coach emerging with a headless driver’ (Summerson, 2003, 110). The parade ground itself was, and still is, the principal theatre of military display for the British state. It is ringed by a number of military monuments and trophies, and stages regular ceremonies, such as the daily Changing of the Guard by the Household Cavalry and the annual Trooping the Colour to mark the monarch’s official birthday. Formalised though these ceremonies are, to the delight of tourist audiences, they are also a reminder of the military might that made London a city of conquest as well as a city of enterprise. Hegemonic building for military purposes was not confined to Whitehall. Though Wren’s plans for Whitehall never came to fruition, he designed two military hospitals, at Chelsea and Greenwich, that were in their own way showcases of Britain’s ascendant imperial power. As well as hospitals for the wounded, they were to act as retirement homes for army and navy veterans, in recognition of their crucial contribution to the

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nation’s military successes. Those veterans fortunate enough to reside in these hospitals led a comfortable but heavily regulated existence with strict rules of dress and behaviour (Hollis, 2011, 126–127). They were living testimony to the munificence of the fiscal-military state. Chelsea was the earlier of the two hospitals, built between 1682 and 1691. Drawing on Webb’s unrealised plan for Greenwich Palace, it was laid out around a great courtyard open to the Thames. Side courtyards were then added to the plan. The centre block facing the river contains the hall and chapel, separated by an octagonal vestibule. The side wings stretching down towards the river contain the dormitories for the pensioners (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 562–565). Wren’s design evokes a spirit of monastic austerity. As the only accentuating motif, he employed the Doric order, the plainest of the classical orders, for the porticoes and colonnades. The otherwise plain brick facades give the building a barracks-like appearance which would have been deemed appropriate for its military function. Despite its plainness and simplicity, it is a building that influenced the design of many public buildings during the following century (Summerson, 1993, 221–223). Greenwich Hospital was a grander enterprise, and its development a much more protracted affair than that of Chelsea due to recurrent shortages of funding (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 259–265). When William and Mary decided to abandon Greenwich Palace in favour of Hampton Court, they determined that it should be developed as a naval hospital on the pattern of Louis XIV’s Hôtel des Invalides in Paris. Wren was commissioned to produce plans which were finalised in 1699. When completed in 1752, the construction work had taken over fifty years, but the result is perhaps the most formal and stately procession of buildings to be found in London, and indeed in the nation as a whole. The first pensioners arrived in 1705, and numbers built up to a peak of nearly 3000 at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Wren conceived a Baroque ensemble of four monumental rectangular blocks, with two pairs symmetrically arranged either side of a north-south axis running down from the Thames and ending in the centre of Jones’s Queen’s House (Photograph 6.4). This was Baroque planning on a continental scale, but constrained by Queen Mary’s insistence that the view from the Queen’s House to the river be kept open (Downes, 1966, 49). Seen from the river, the result is a vista of receding facades culminating in the distant Queen’s House. The north-west building incorporates Webb’s mid-seventeenth-century King Charles Block and is matched by

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Photograph 6.4  Greenwich Hospital 1699-1752 (Source: Michael Wald/ Alamy Stock Photo)

an opposing new Queen Anne Block. Directly to the south, the opposing King William and Queen Mary Blocks comprise quadrangles enclosed by colonnades of coupled columns, a motif derived from the Louvre, and each block is crowned by a towering dome. The former block contains the great hall, the latter the chapel. Some of the more extreme Baroque features of the design may have been introduced by Nicholas Hawksmoor, Wren’s younger colleague, who was clerk of works and later Deputy Surveyor on the project (Summerson, 1993, 273–276). The interiors of the Greenwich Hospital are generally utilitarian, apart from the two main rooms reserved for formal ceremonies—the chapel and the Painted Hall. The hall is a very Baroque creation, divided into a vestibule, main hall and upper hall, each separated by flights of steps framed by giant columns and pilasters. The rooms are famous for their murals by James Thornhill, considered the finest example of Baroque painting in the country. Their hegemonic purpose is to honour the central role that the Royal Navy played in the projection of imperial power.

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In the main hall, the central ceiling shows the hospital’s benefactors, William and Mary, attended by the four cardinal virtues accompanied by Concord, Peace and Liberty. In a gesture of overt political propaganda, there crouches at William’s feet the Sun King Louis XIV, the grandest monarch in Europe and signifier of Arbitrary Power. At the far end of the hall, a British man-of-war sails up the Thames filled with trophies taken from the nation’s enemies. Thornhill’s later paintings in the upper hall add Anne and George I to the royal ensemble, together with allegorical figures representing the four continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and America paying obeisance to the British Crown. Altogether, it is a display of triumphalism of the highest order. Victory in the Seven Years War increased the demands on the world’s most powerful navy, requiring a greater physical presence in London than that provided by the Admiralty building alone. The Navy Office, the civil administration arm of the Admiralty, had previously been located in the City, but the decision was taken to move it, along with some other government offices, into new purpose-built offices at Somerset House, a short distance to the east of Whitehall along the Strand. The site to be redeveloped was occupied by the Renaissance palace that had been built by Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, in the middle of the sixteenth century. The architect chosen for the redevelopment was William Chambers, one of the leaders of the Neoclassical movement who was acting as Comptroller to the Office of Works. His scheme was constructed between 1776 and 1801 in a style that links Somerset House back to Kent’s earlier public buildings in Whitehall. The main entrance to the complex is set within the nine-bay Strand Block, passing through a Doric columned vestibule to enter a vast rectangular courtyard. The courtyard is closed by three continuous ranges, each range treated as a three-storey palazzo. Crossing the courtyard along its main north-south axis leads to the columned Seamen’s Hall, which gives access to a long Thames frontage (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 318–325). Despite the abundant use of giant orders, the building has a distinctly domestic flavour that is typical of British architecture of the period. ‘It is very evidently the work of a man unfitted for, or at least unaccustomed to, monumental design in the grand manner’ (Summerson, 1993, 389). In the French manner, there is sculpture with a hegemonic purpose throughout the building. The north façade of the Strand Block carries an attic with standing figures of the four cardinal virtues (as also found on the

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Guildhall porch and the Greenwich Hospital ceiling) surmounted by the arms of the British Empire supported by Fame and the Genius of England. The block’s south façade displays emblematic figures of the four continents (also used at Greenwich Hospital and later by Soane in the Bank of England). The main focal point of the courtyard is a monumental bronze statue of the then current monarch George III, leaning on a rudder, flanked by a lion and the prow of a Roman ship, with a reclining figure of Father Thames below. Relocated to Somerset House, the Navy Office acted as the engine of imperial conquest, funding and supplying the rapidly expanding Royal Navy (Hunt, 2009, 108–110). But the Navy Office was not the only occupant of Somerset House. Premises in the Strand Block were occupied by three learned societies under royal patronage—the Royal Society, the Royal Academy and the Society of Antiquaries. Not only did their presence help to justify the splendour of the building, but it also reflected a fundamental transformation that was underway in British society. These were quintessential Enlightenment institutions, part of a broader movement that was encouraging academic study of the sciences and arts, and thereby providing intellectual foundations for the Industrial Revolution that was to lead the country into a new age.

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Rogers, N. (1979). Money, land and lineage: The big bourgeoisie of Hanoverian London. Social History, 4(3), 437–454. Roscoe, I. (1997). ‘The statues of the sovereigns of England’: Sculpture for the second building, 1695-1831. In A.  Saunders (Ed.), The Royal Exchange (pp. 174–187). London Topographical Society publication no. 152. Rudé, G. (2003). Hanoverian London 1714–1808. Sutton Publishing. Samuel, M. (1989). The fifteenth-century garner at Leadenhall, London. Antiquaries Journal, 69(1), 119–153. Saunders, A. (1997a). The building of the exchange. In A. Saunders (Ed.), The Royal Exchange (pp.  36–47). London Topographical Society publication no. 152. Saunders, A. (1997b). The second exchange. In A.  Saunders (Ed.), The Royal Exchange (pp. 121–135). London Topographical Society publication no. 152. Schofield, J. (1995). Medieval London houses. Yale University Press. Schofield, J. (2011). London 1100–1600: The archaeology of a capital city. Equinox. Schofield, J., & Stell, G. (2000). The built environment 1300-1540. In D.  M. Palliser (Ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain: Volume 1 600–1540 (pp. 371–393). Cambridge University Press. Slack, P. (2000). Great and good towns. In P. Clark (Ed.), The Cambridge urban history of Britain, volume II 1540–1840 (pp.  347–376). Cambridge University Press. Spadafora, D. (1990). The idea of progress in eighteenth-century Britain. Yale University Press. Stern, P. J., & Wennerlind, C. (2014). Introduction. In P. J. Stern & C. Wennerlind (Eds.), Mercantilism reimagined: Political economy in early modern Britain and its empire (pp. 3–22). Oxford University Press. Stone, L. (1973). Family and fortune: Studies in aristocratic finance in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Oxford University Press. Stutchbury, H.  E. (1967). The architecture of Colen Campbell. Harvard University Press. Summerson, J. (1990). The Victorian rebuilding of the City of London. In J.  Summerson (Ed.), The unromantic castle and other essays (pp.  193–216). Thames and Hudson. Summerson, J. (1993). Architecture in Britain 1530–1830. Yale University Press. Summerson, J. (2003). Georgian London. Yale University Press. Supple, B. (1970). The Royal Exchange Assurance: A history of British insurance 1720–1970. Cambridge University Press. Thomson, R. (1990). Primitive capitalist accumulation. In J. Eatwell, M. Milgate, & P. Newman (Eds.), Marxian economics (pp. 313–320). Macmillan. Thorold, P. (2001). The London rich: The creation of a great city, from 1666 to the present. Penguin.

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Thrupp, S.  L. (1962). The merchant class of medieval London. University of Michigan Press. Wallerstein, I. (2011). The modern world-system II: Mercantilism and the consolidation of the European world-economy, 1600–1750. University of California Press. Weber, M. (1958). The city. The Free Press. Wennerlind, C. (2011). Casualties of credit: The English financial revolution, 1620–1720. Harvard University Press. White, J. (2013). London in the eighteenth century: A great and monstrous thing. Vintage Books. Williams, E. (2022). Capitalism and slavery. Penguin. Williams, G. A. (1970). Medieval London: from commune to capital. Athlone Press. Wilson, R., & Mackley, A. (2007). The building of the English country house 1660–1880: Creating paradise. Continuum. Zahedieh, N. (2014). Overseas trade and empire. In R. Floud, J. Humphries, & P. Johnson (Eds.), The Cambridge economic history of modern Britain, volume I: 1700–1870 (pp. 392–420). Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Imperial Capital

7.1   Industrial Revolution The 1770s marked a decisive turning point in British economic and political history. The first applications of steam-powered technologies in manufacturing industries began the process of industrial revolution that completed the nation’s transformation into the world’s first fully developed capitalist economy (Mathias, 2001). The American War of Independence inflicted its first major defeat on the hubristic fiscal-military state, forcing it to surrender the most dynamic component of its colonial empire and seek fresh territories to rebuild the Empire anew (Simms, 2008). The failure of the East India Company to manage the country’s most valuable colony meant it had to be brought under much stricter state control (Lawson, 1993, 116–125). From this point, Britain was to enter its climactic age of industry and empire that within a century would elevate it to the status of the most powerful nation on earth (Hobsbawm, 1999). Prior to the 1770s, the economy had continued on a broadly similar growth trajectory to that followed during the seventeenth century. Slow population growth was accompanied by slightly higher real output growth resulting from improvements in agricultural productivity. The resultant modest increase in living standards meant that those on the lowest incomes could afford better food and clothing, whilst those with higher disposable incomes could acquire more household goods (Porter, 1991, 214–225).

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A century of agricultural improvement, colonial trade and financial innovation had made Britain the richest and most productive of the great powers (Maddison, 1991, 35–40). However, between 1771 and 1831 the nation experienced a fundamental social and economic transformation. It was the first phase of an Industrial Revolution that converted Britain from a predominantly rural economy based on agriculture to an increasingly urban economy based on manufacturing. The outcome of this transformation was the establishment of industrial capitalism and the formation of a capitalist state. Technological innovation in manufacturing produced a surge in labour productivity, which lifted real output growth to an average rate of 1.5 per cent per annum, at least twice the rate of growth achieved in any previous historical era (Broadberry et al., 2015, 412). There was a corresponding surge in the rate of population growth, such that Britain’s population doubled in just sixty years, from around eight to sixteen million, due to rising fertility rates and, to a lesser extent, declining mortality rates (Wrigley, 2004).This growing population clustered in the nation’s rapidly expanding industrial towns: whereas just 17.5 per cent of the population lived in towns with over 10,000 inhabitants in 1750, that proportion rose to 50 per cent by 1850 (Wrigley, 1987, 176). The Industrial Revolution was the culmination of a process of change that originated in the earlier revolutions that had established agrarian, commercial and financial capitalism during the era of aristocratic hegemony. The agricultural revolution aided the accumulation of vast landed estates by the aristocracy, the commercial revolution generated spectacular trading fortunes for the merchant class, and the financial revolution yielded great riches for the financier class. This concentration of wealth drove the process of primitive accumulation that created the preconditions for the emergence and maturing of industrial capitalism. It is worth stressing that this was not an inevitable process, but rather resulted from a specific combination of historical circumstances (Wood, 2017). Several causal factors combined to launch the Industrial Revolution, and the British economy was the first to industrialise because it enjoyed a particularly favourable combination of those factors, both domestic and international (A’Hearn, 2014). Domestically, the close relationship between Britain’s agricultural and industrial revolutions meant that rising agricultural productivity both released surplus labour to work in manufacturing and provided the food supply necessary to feed a rapidly growing industrial workforce (Jones,

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1974, 97–110). The expansion of trade, integration of markets and refinement of consumer tastes generated by the commercial revolution created the consumer demand necessary to sustain the mass production of manufactured goods (McKendrik et al., 1982). In particular, the rising prosperity of the bourgeoisie created a demand not only for exotic colonial imports but also for new types of luxury manufactured goods (Berg, 2005). The banks which were formed during the financial revolution provided liquidity and credit to support new trading ventures and fund industrial investment (Murphy, 2014, 334–338). State promotion of infrastructure investment in roads and canals acted as another spur to industrialisation, helping to cut production costs, rationalise distribution methods, reinforce economies of scale and integrate markets (Szostak, 1991, 3–33). Internationally, the system of mercantilist regulation that had been erected in the seventeenth century boosted the growth of infant industries through the expansion of trade which took place during the eighteenth century (Davis, 1979). Colonial expansion and imperial conquest created new markets for domestically produced manufactured goods, thereby increasing investment in manufacturing industry with multiplier effects throughout the economy (Hobsbawm, 1999, 26–28). The repeated military defeats inflicted on the nation’s main competitors left the British economy able to exploit the global supremacy which had been won by its fiscal-military state (O’Brien, 1994, 215–216). Underlying these economic, social, political and institutional factors was a great tide of revolutionary thought that propelled the rise of capitalism and the modernisation of society. Three main intellectual currents were flowing: the religious revolution arising from the Reformation, the political revolution unleashed by the English Civil War, and the scientific revolution that fuelled the Enlightenment. According to Max Weber’s controversial thesis on The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 2009), first published in 1904–5, a crucial force for social and economic change was the triumph of the Reformation in north-west Europe. Protestantism was attractive to the rising bourgeois class because it was far more flexible than Catholicism (Hill, 1991, 91). Its doctrine of ‘individual salvation, unmediated by a hierarchy of priests or estates, in which hard work and asceticism were moral virtues’ was more sympathetic to the rationalist spirit of capitalist enterprise than the preordained rigidity of the social order espoused by Catholic doctrine (Mann, 2012, 465). Weber argued that this individualistic work

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ethic helped to transform the social relations of production by exalting the pursuit of profit and the accumulation of wealth, and that this ethic was strongest in the more radical, ascetic branches of Protestantism such as Puritanism (Weber, 2009, 81–97). In the political sphere, whilst the English Revolution was not a bourgeois revolution, its outcome ‘was the establishment of conditions far more favourable to the development of capitalism than those which prevailed before 1640’ (Hill, 1986, 95). The constitutional monarchy established in 1688 allowed capitalist relations of production to flourish in a manner that would have been impossible in the absolutist monarchy that preceded it. The revolutionary settlement established an institutional framework which secured property rights and constrained the confiscatory powers of government (North & Weingast, 1989). Locke’s emphasis on the fundamental importance of the rule of law and the protection of private property rights was a vital ideological support for the establishment of capitalist enterprise. He saw private rather than common ownership of property as the key to profitable improvement of the economy (Wood, 2012, 273–278). This concept of improvement morphed into the idea of progress, which became a touchstone of bourgeois ideology. The technological innovations which transformed the economy during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries originated in the scientific revolution that had occurred a century earlier. Led in Britain by men such as Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, advances in scientific knowledge were achieved across a whole range of disciplines, creating a pool of inventions with long-term economic potential. The elevation of scientific enquiry and experimentation above religious faith and dogma, which had originated with humanist philosophers such as Francis Bacon, provided one of the intellectual supports for the Age of Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution could not have taken place without an Industrial Enlightenment that inspired artisans, inventors and entrepreneurs alike with belief in the possibility of progress through the pursuit of ‘useful knowledge’ (Mokyr, 2009). Technical progress in the methods and machinery of manufacturing was the motor of capitalist ascent. It was during the nineteenth century that capitalism crystallised into a fully developed mode of production based on manufacturing industry (Dobb, 1963, 255–319). There were two aspects to the process: the transformation of wealth into capital and the transformation of work into labour-power, a commodity to be exchanged in the market like any other.

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It is these fundamental changes in the social relations of production that are the defining characteristics of capitalism (Wood, 2017, 35–37). The capitalist economy described by Smith, Ricardo, Mill and Marx is a world of capitalists owning the means of production and workers labouring with those means of production, creating value to be realised in the sphere of exchange. Part of the value that the workforce produces provides for their subsistence; part provides a surplus which is monetised as the owners’ profit. This stark vision was set within the industrial world of the factory, highlighting that it was industrialisation which had completed the transformation of every aspect of economic life into an infinity of exchanges undertaken within competitive markets. The classical political economists did recognise the role of landowners in producing the food supply for the industrial workforce, but they had less to say about the commercial world of the trading house or the financial world of the bank (O’Brien, 2004). Embedded within the triadic structure of capitalists, landowners and workers was a set of antagonistic social relations, as each class sought to maximise its share of the income from production in the form of profits, rents and wages. There is a fundamental contradiction within the class struggle between capitalist and worker for their shares of the value realised in production. On the one hand, in the sphere of production, the living standards of the workforce should be kept as low as possible to maximise profitability; on the other, in the sphere of exchange, the workers should have sufficient purchasing power to consume all the goods that they have produced. Industrial capitalists found a resolution to this contradiction by increasing the productivity of labour through investment in technological innovation (Mokyr, 1990, 81–148) and expanding the scale of their operations through adoption of the factory system (Berg, 1994, 189–207). By these means they were able simultaneously to grow the economy, expand their markets, accelerate their rate of capital accumulation and enhance their rate of profit. Productivity, profitability and progress marched hand in hand. Here we can discern the defining ideology of capitalism. At its core are productivity and profitability: ‘the advance of productivity for profit seems to overtake the improvement of humanity as the main criterion of progress’ (Wood, 2012, 311). Productivity delivers profit, and profit delivers the bourgeois ideal of progress—that which is most productive is most

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profitable; that which is most profitable must be pursued, that which is unprofitable must be discarded to further the progress of history. The forum in which productivity is determined and profitability calculated is the self-regulating, ‘free market’, operating through the price mechanism and open to competing private interests. The impersonal judgement of the market is sacrosanct, and the role of the state is confined to facilitating its operation in the interests of society as a whole. In this idealised world, there is no hint of the hegemonic power of the capitalist class (Poulantzas, 1973, 214). It is a world in which the actual social relations between human beings are governed by apparently autonomous transactions in the commodities they produce, including their own labour. Marx called this inversion of reality ‘the fetishism of commodities’ (Eagleton, 2007, 84–89).

7.2   Capitalism Triumphant As the industrial economy reached maturity, so the power of the landed aristocracy finally began to wane, and a new ruling class emerged at the apex of English society. A composite capitalist class formed a ‘power bloc’ out of the different fractions of capital that had evolved during the previous two centuries. The ancient landed elite was relegated to just one of three interests, alongside the established commercial and financial elite based in the City of London and the new industrial elite based in the manufacturing towns of the Midlands and North (Rubinstein, 1977). Each of these fractions operated as a distinct entity within the new social formation, and their economic and political interests remained antagonistic enough for only one to succeed to hegemonic primacy (Poulantzas, 1973, 296–303). Whilst economic development was driven by the revolutionary forces of industrial production, social development was driven by class relations that were both long established and newly formed. The competition for leadership of the ruling class was a battle of ideology rather than wealth; it pitted the aristocratic values of the old landed society against the bourgeois values of the new industrial society (Perkin, 2002, 218–270). In England, the long eighteenth century of aristocratic hegemony ensured that the ascendancy of the bourgeoisie was circumscribed by the continuing power and influence of the landed interest (Anderson, 1987, 21–25). As the radical Richard Cobden observed in 1849, ‘we are a servile, aristocracy-­loving, lord-ridden people, who regard the land with as much

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reverence as we still do the peerage and baronetage’ (Thompson, 2001, 14). The same can still be said today. Nevertheless, during the nineteenth century, the bourgeois ideology of progress did win the battle of ideas within the ruling class, to become the dominant ideology of capitalism (Abercrombie et  al., 1980, 105–109). Aristocratic languor became bourgeois diligence; thrift replaced indulgence; innovation supplanted tradition. However, leadership of the ruling class passed not to the industrial bourgeoisie but rather to the financial elite in the City of London. ‘When agrarian property lost its weight it was not industry but finance which became the hegemonic form of capital, in a City socially and culturally in many ways closer to the wealth of estates than of factories’ (Anderson, 1987, 57). The Victorian industrialists may have built the world’s richest and most productive economy, but the spoils of leadership were seized by City bankers and merchants, leaving the industrialists to settle for a subordinate role within the ruling class. We must again return to the particular nature of British capitalism to find the explanation for why it was financial rather than industrial capital that took up the leadership of the capitalist class. During the eighteenth century, the City of London had established a uniquely powerful position within the national economy through its funding of international trade and colonial expansion. This role was further strengthened during the nineteenth century as the City became the primary hub of global trade and investment. Even when operating on an international scale, industrialists could not match the power and influence accumulated by the nation’s financiers, as they marshalled vast flows of capital around the world economy. As a measure of their economic success, probate records show that the financial and commercial bourgeoisie in London were far more numerous and wealthy than the industrial bourgeoisie in the Midlands and North (Rubinstein, 1977). The hegemonic position of the City within the national economy was translated into political hegemony as well. The City interest became synonymous with the national interest, able to control state policy through the close working relationship that had been established between the Bank of England and the Treasury (Cain & Hopkins, 2016, 149–164). As the financial elite took over their hegemonic role, they absorbed elements of the long-established aristocratic ideology into the dominant ideology of the bourgeoisie. This was a process made easier by the close interconnections between the top echelons of landed and business society (Wiener, 2004, 11–24). A composite capitalist class led by the financial

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interest exercised cultural hegemony through a composite ideology that was predominantly bourgeois but respected the continuing prestige of the landed interest. Such was, and still is, the nature of gentlemanly capitalism. It is important to note, however, that the gentleman capitalist was a businessman who adopted an aristocratic lifestyle, not the reverse. Cobden observed the phenomenon with his typical acerbity, noting in 1863 that the bourgeoisie ‘as a rule seem only to desire riches that they may be enabled to prostrate themselves at the feet of feudalism’ (Thompson, 1994, 144). The cultural model of the gentleman has been honed over many centuries of hegemony by the landed elite, and the aspiration to acquire gentlemanly status has become deeply engrained in English society. In Victorian England, the production of gentlemen became a national industry, through the medium of the public schools and ancient universities (Mason, 1993, 161–174). Here they were educated to govern an empire, enter a profession or run a bank—but not to lead an industrial revolution (Thompson, 2001, 122–142). In a society susceptible to gentlemanly values, ‘The more a career or a source of income allowed for a life-style similar to that of the landed class, the higher the prestige it carried and the greater the power it conferred’ (Cain & Hopkins, 2016, 47). Amongst the bourgeoisie, it was the bankers and other financiers inhabiting the City of London who enjoyed the highest status and accumulated the greatest wealth. The richest of the rich were the partners of the elite merchant banks that occupied the pinnacle of City society (Cassis, 1994, 197–201). Financiers provided essential support for the landed elite, investing capital for the prudent and providing loans to the profligate (Cannadine, 1994, 41–44). They similarly worked closely with the institutions of the state, funding the national debt and underwriting colonial expansion. Yet even the mightiest of these bankers could rise from relatively modest beginnings. Nathan Rothschild started as financier to the Manchester cotton trade, the Barings were originally in the west-country cloth industry, and the Grenfells began as Swansea copper smelters (Daunton, 1989, 138). The shift in hegemonic control from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie took place against a background of growing social unrest. During the first phase of industrialisation, real wages had been falling while business profits were rising. The increasing hardship of the working class led to frequent riots and strikes, requiring the state to adopt more coercive measures of social control.

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Pressure for the reform of the country’s social and political institutions was also growing, inspired in part by the example of the French Revolution. Radicals reviled the established order as ‘Old Corruption’, a parasitical patronage system in which power and wealth were distributed to the favoured few through nepotism, bribery and sinecures (Rubinstein, 1983). Mass demonstrations culminated in the Peterloo Massacre of August 1819 in Manchester, when cavalry charged a crowd of over 60,000 demonstrators, killing 11 and injuring more than 400. Thereafter the pressure for reform became inevitable, culminating in the Reform Act of 1832 (Turner, 1999, 110–124). This landmark act was the first of a series of social and political measures that were slowly and reluctantly implemented by government to widen the franchise and reform the state. Another great wave of protest during the 1840s was unleashed by the Chartist movement, the closest England came to a popular uprising since the Civil War (Chase, 2007). The movement supported a radical programme of political reform that went far beyond the modest improvements introduced in the First Reform Act, and though it failed to achieve a sweeping transformation of British democracy, it forced electoral reform back onto the parliamentary agenda. The result was a further widening of the franchise in the Second Reform Act of 1867–8 and the Third Reform Act of 1884–5 (Machin, 2001, 42–105). As industrial capitalism became established, the conditions were created for the emergence of modern society and the modern nation state (Wood, 2017, 176–181). It was a society based on sustained economic expansion, declining population growth, rising living standards, improving educational attainment and rapid institutional and technological change (Wrigley, 2010, 211–235). The fiscal-military state which had built Britain’s empire was transformed into what can be termed an ‘industrial-­ capitalist state’, capable of managing the nation’s ascent to global economic supremacy. As Marx and Engels famously declared ‘The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’ (Marx & Engels, 2002, 221). Four vital and interdependent functions, both consensual and coercive, were undertaken by the Victorian state to regulate capitalism in the interests of the ruling class (Jessop, 2002, 18–22). It acted as a support for economic growth, a source of political legitimation, an instrument of social control and a guarantor of physical security (Dryzek & Dunleavy, 2009, 92–98). These remain central functions of the state to this day.

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Economic support facilitates the accumulation of capital, for example by regulating the labour market, educating the workforce, investing in infrastructure and protecting private property rights. Political legitimation sustains the hegemony of the ruling class, through measures such as the provision of basic social facilities and the mitigation of extreme poverty. Social control is maintained both through coercive measures to contain unrest and consensual measures such as the extension of democratic rights to contain the forces of radicalism. The function of physical security is to maintain the integrity of the state by employing the threat or deployment of military force to confront its external enemies. As these new forms of state intervention evolved, the size of the Victorian state expanded inexorably (Pugh, 2022, 84–86). Increased intervention required an expanded government machine run by a professional civil service (Evans, 2019, 376–384). It also meant increased levels of government expenditure, a growing proportion of which was funded by progressive forms of direct taxation such as income and inheritance taxes (Daunton, 2007, 460–464). Ideological justification for increased state intervention was sought in the classical economics of Adam Smith and his successors, and in the moral philosophy of John Stuart Mill. The classical economists believed that the state should intervene to ensure the efficient operation of competitive markets, for example by combating the monopolies so central to former mercantilist doctrines (Smith, 1999a, 210–217). Free trade became ‘an essential part of the ideology of a mature Capitalism’ in Britain (Dobb, 1963, 193). Mill was concerned with another aspect of freedom, the liberty of the individual. His credo On Liberty, first published in 1859, was that ‘the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others’ (Mill, 1974, 68). Such a philosophy seeks to place limits on the authority of government, within which it is legitimate for the state to protect the rights and welfare of individuals while placing upon them the obligation of sharing the responsibilities and costs of maintaining that protection. Mill’s benign vision, of an autonomous and neutral state acting in the interests of the individual in a classless society, was the antithesis of Marx’s apocalyptic vision of capitalism, in which the accumulation of misery by the working class is the other face of the accumulation of wealth by the capitalist class, operating with the protection and support of the bourgeois state.

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This was the intellectual climate in which Britain reached the pinnacle of its global power during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Whilst the first phase of the Industrial Revolution had been driven principally by the mechanisation of the Lancashire cotton industry, the second phase comprised a far more broadly based wave of steam-powered factory production, spread across the nation’s industries and regions. For this was the age of steam. Diffusion of steam engines had been slow during the first phase of industrialisation, but further improvements to the technology accelerated its application during the second phase. By 1870, steam was the source of ninety per cent of Britain’s power generation, and the economy was functioning with a power output more than twenty times greater than that generated a century earlier (Crafts, 2004, 342). Successive revolutions in transport technology were a key driver of industrialisation and urbanisation (Barras, 2016, 155–170). Each revolution reduced the cost and increased the speed and reliability of transporting goods and people, accelerating the circulation of capital within the economy and thereby increasing the profitable scale of production (Harvey, 2006: 376–80). Turnpike roads and canals provided the impetus for the first phase of industrialisation, whilst a massive surge of investment in the new railway system drove the second phase (Cain, 1988, 97–103). Starting in 1830, when Stephenson’s Liverpool and Manchester Railway opened, over 15,000 miles of track had been laid down by 1880. Construction of the railway network created great demands on the coal, iron and steel and engineering industries. Since it was built entirely by private capital, it transformed the nation’s capital markets (Reed, 1975). Reinforcing the positive feedback between industrialisation and urbanisation, the reduction in transport costs increased the aggregate size at which cities could function effectively, by weakening the ‘tyranny of distance’ (Bairoch, 1988, 11). The railways captured the Victorian imagination like no other creation of the Industrial Age (Freeman, 1999). They acted as a cultural metaphor for the times. During the railway mania of the 1840s, Turner painted Brunel’s Great Western Railway in Rain, Steam and Speed, and Dickens wrote about Stephenson’s London to Birmingham Railway in Dombey and Son. Both were giving expression to the commonly held view that the world had changed for ever—both for better and for worse. If the railway network was a catalyst for increasing the profitable scale of production, the factory system was the means by which scale economies could best be realised. The system offered a mutually reinforcing set of

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technological and organisational benefits, by breaking complex manufacturing processes down into a sequence of simpler tasks. This entailed the integration of production, the installation of steam-powered machinery, the division and specialisation of labour, the deskilling of tasks, the strict supervision of the workforce and the implementation of quality control (Geraghty, 2007). Through these means, the factory system became the very embodiment of industrial capitalism and the bourgeois ideal, enshrining new relations of production between capitalist and worker that transformed work into labour-power while revolutionising the forces of production to ensure higher rates of productivity and profitability. The dynamic of the system led inexorably to the concentration and centralisation of capital as successful firms grew in size, capturing the available economies of scale, while smaller, less profitable firms were swallowed up by their larger, more profitable competitors (Payne, 1967). This truly was ‘the age of capital’ (Hobsbawm, 1997), but despite adhering to an ideology that extolled the virtue of competitive markets, it was a capitalism becoming increasingly monopolistic in nature. By 1870, Britain had reached her zenith as a global industrial power. She was the richest nation in the world, with national product per capita some thirty per cent higher than that of the United States and seventy per cent higher than that of Germany or France (Maddison, 2007, 185). She produced one-fifth of the world’s manufacturing output, around twice as much as the United States and three times as much as Germany (Bairoch, 1982, 275). Her imperial reach meant that she accounted for over forty per cent of the world’s manufactured exports, twice as much as Germany and ten times as much as the United States (Pollard, 1989, 15). And sitting at the heart of this great capitalist economy was the largest and most modern city in the world.

7.3   City of Capital After its spectacular growth during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the rest of the country began to catch up with London during the eighteenth. Over the course of the century London’s population grew by around 67 per cent, from 575,000 to 959,000 (Schwarz, 2000, 650), whilst over the same period the population of the nation as a whole grew by 71 per cent (Broadberry et  al., 2015, 29). Growth was particularly strong in the newly industrialising towns and cities of the Midlands and North. Whereas in 1700 the second largest urban centre in England after

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London was the old-established cathedral city of Norwich, by 1801 it was the rapidly growing industrial city of Manchester (Ellis, 2000, 679). However, during the nineteenth century, the growth of London accelerated once more. Her historical dual role as national capital and international entrepôt reasserted itself again, this time as commercial and administrative centre of a global empire. Between 1801 and 1851 the population of the metropolis more than doubled, from 959,000 to 2,363,000, and then nearly doubled again to 4,536,000 by 1901 (Ball & Sunderland, 2001, 42). Furthermore, by 1901 suburban expansion had swelled the population of the Greater London area as a whole to 6,507,000. From being the largest city in Europe in 1700, London had become the largest in the world by 1870, twice as large as Paris and New York and four times larger than Berlin (Chandler & Fox, 1974, 371). Though the locus of the Industrial Revolution was in the cities of the Midlands and North, London played a pivotal role in the formation of British capitalism. Intellectually, it had become a vibrant centre of Enlightenment culture and science, providing an environment in which capitalist innovation and ideology could flourish (Porter, 2000, 34–40). Economically, it was by far the largest and wealthiest consumer market in the country, providing the pool of demand necessary to stimulate the mass production of manufactured goods (Porter, 1994, 186–188). Socially, the financiers in the City of London were manoeuvring to assume the vanguard position within the emergent capitalist class, destined not only to control the domestic economy but also lead a global empire. Following the defeat of France in 1815, London rapidly consolidated its dominant position as the world’s leading financial centre. Its supremacy enabled the City to operate in a world of its own creation (Kynaston, 1995). Crucial to its continuing success were the merchant banks, led by Barings and Rothschilds, which specialised in financing international trade and issuing loans to foreign governments (Chapman, 2006, 16–38). The House of Rothschild seized the leading role in the issue of foreign loans, enabling it to hold sway over the world of international finance for the rest of the century (Ferguson, 2000). There was an increasing concentration of capital in the City as the Victorian age proceeded. Two sectors of business in particular drove this concentration: railway companies and commercial banks. The vast scale of the capital requirement for railway construction, both at home and abroad, boosted the growth of capital markets, to the extent that the railway mania of the 1840s was instrumental in the London Stock Exchange becoming the largest in the world (Michie, 1999, 63–66). At the same time, the

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banking industry was being revolutionised by the establishment of commercial joint-stock banks, which could accumulate far greater capital reserves than private banks by virtue of the deposits collected through their branch networks (Collins, 1988, 64–88). As the global economy became more integrated, the international operations of the City of London expanded in scale and reach. Revolutions in communications technology played a major role in this expansion. Introduction of the international telegraph in the 1860s and the telephone in the 1880s transformed the cost and speed of exchanging financial information and executing transactions, facilitating the integration of previously separate national markets (Garbade & Silber, 1978). In parallel, the development of continental railway networks and global steamship routes speeded the distribution of goods and people around the world, expanding trade and opening up previously undeveloped markets (Findlay & O’Rourke, 2007, 378–387). The overall effect of these technological innovations was to further accelerate the circulation of capital, increasing the productivity and profitability of production (Harvey, 2006, 376–380). Victorian London was by no means just a city of government, trade and finance. As industrialisation proceeded it also developed as a great industrial city in its own right. The process by which industrialisation created the archetypal capitalist city has been termed ‘the urbanization of capital’ (Harvey, 1985, 185–226). Urbanisation and industrialisation became fused in a single dynamic of capitalist development, whereby the city became the principal location for the generation of the economic surplus and the accumulation of capital. It acted as the nucleus of industrial production, accommodating both its labour force and its means of production within the fabric of the built environment. A new landscape of industrial power sprang up, formed by canals and railways, factories and mills, warehouses and docks, smoke and steam (Trinder, 1982). A great wave of public building was also unleashed by the growing demands of the industrial state. In the new landscape of power, town halls, assembly rooms and court houses stood alongside factories, mills and railway stations as symbols of the modern age. Capitalism generated a great increase in the number and type of hegemonic buildings, reflecting the scale and diversification of investment in the urban built environment. The capitalist city became identifiable as a city of monuments (Olsen, 1986, 289–292). While industrial landscapes totally dominated the new manufacturing towns and cities of the Midlands and North, in London the industrial

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commingled with the older religious, civic and commercial landscapes that had formed in the metropolis during previous centuries. Yet so prodigious was the growth of industrial London, it inevitably overran large parts of those former landscapes (Davis, 2000, 125–135). The sheer size and connectivity of London ensured that, in addition to its roles as national capital, international entrepôt and global financial centre, it boasted the largest manufacturing economy in Britain. Its vast consumer market, enormous and diverse labour force, and central position in the nation’s transport networks all encouraged the growth of a multiplicity of consumer goods industries, in contrast to the heavy industries that concentrated in the Midlands and North (Ball & Sunderland, 2001, 55–66). Whilst the majority of these manufacturing enterprises were small, giant companies employing thousands of workers flourished in sectors such as armaments, shipbuilding and railways. Such giant establishments tended to concentrate close to the river, canals and docks through which their goods could be transported. Infrastructure investment in canals, docks, shipyards and railways was a particularly important component of London’s industrial development, because it not only served the requirements of the city’s manufacturing industries but was also a vital support for the nation’s control of global trade and its exercise of imperial power. The symbiotic relationship between industry and empire meant that expansion of the Empire meant expansion of the Navy, which in turn meant expansion of London’s docks and shipyards. In their heyday, the dockyards of Deptford and Woolwich were the greatest industrial enterprises in the world. According to the pamphleteer William Shrubsole in 1770 ‘They set the great wheels of commerce and war in motion, without which the pulse of civil society would stand still’ (Hunt 2009, 108). Even Engels, while principally concerned with documenting the wretched living conditions of the English working class, could not help being impressed by the hegemonic impact of the approach to industrial London. In 1844 he wrote ‘I know nothing more imposing than the view which the Thames offers during the ascent from the sea to London Bridge. The masses of buildings, the wharves on both sides…the countless ships along both shores, crowding ever close and closer together…all this is so vast, so impressive, that a man cannot collect himself, but is lost in the marvel of England’s greatness before he sets foot upon English soil’ (Engels, 2009, 68).

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The hegemonic buildings of the Industrial Age embody most acutely that struggle between modernity and tradition that has been a persistent theme in English culture. The clash between these opposing positions unleashed a culture war in which the traditionalists gained the ascendancy until well into the twentieth century (Mordaunt Crook, 1987, 98–132). The modernists were the engineers, working with new materials such as steel and glass to produce innovative new built forms. The traditionalists were the architects, reviving past styles to clothe modernist structures with ornament of time-honoured acceptability. Their mission was to conceal the bourgeois ideology of economic progress within an aristocratic mythology of national identity. They sought to evoke the presence of the pre-industrial past in the industrial present. Engineers were the revolutionaries of the Industrial Age, and men such as Brunel and Telford were its revolutionary heroes (Rolt, 2010). Not only did they create the infrastructure of the industrial economy, they also developed new technologies that transformed building design and created a whole new functionalist aesthetic (Hitchcock, 1987, 169–190). The structural advances they made were as radical as those achieved by the Gothic master masons six centuries earlier. Gothic cathedrals had remained unchallenged since the thirteenth century for their technical audacity, their breath-taking luminosity and their unique synthesis of form and function. But revolutionary new engineering structures built from metal and glass proved to be the secular equal of the old cathedrals in terms of lightness of structure combined with brilliance of illumination. Iron and then steel replaced stone as the structural material, while clear plate glass replaced stained glass as the translucent medium. These were the materials used to construct a whole new generation of monumental buildings such as railway stations, market halls, exchanges, shopping arcades and exhibition halls (Dixon & Muthesius, 1985, 94–119). The apotheosis of iron and glass construction was the Crystal Palace, built to house the Great Exhibition of 1851  in London’s Hyde Park. Designed by Joseph Paxton and built by the engineers Fox and Henderson, a vast uninterrupted exhibition space was created, elegant in form and filled with natural light. Echoing the cathedrals of old, it comprised a tall central nave, galleried aisles and an arched transept. Its total internal area was nearly three times that of St Paul’s. Built from modular iron and glass units, the main structure was erected in the incredibly short time of five months, and the whole building completed within eight months (Beaver, 1986).

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7.4   Cultural Reaction Though much public acclaim was lavished upon the Crystal Palace, it can now be seen as ‘the high-water mark of educated opinion’s enthusiasm for industrial capitalism’ (Wiener, 2004, 28). It was despised by the traditionalists in Victorian society, who refused to see it as a work of architecture at all. Their views reflected a growing reaction against the Industrial Age and all its works. This cultural reaction can be traced back to the Romantic poets at the start of the nineteenth century, and followed through the increasingly hostile views of writers such Trollope and Dickens as the century progressed. A ‘counter-revolution of values’ was unleashed, drawing an unfavourable contrast between the new materialism of the self-made industrialist and the supposedly timeless values of honour attributed to the idealised English gentleman (Wiener, 2004, 27–40). High priest of the revivalist counter-revolution was the architect Augustus Pugin (Frazer Lewis, 2021). His manifesto Contrasts, published in 1836, was not only an argument for the revival of Gothic as an architectural style, it was also a polemic against the Industrial present and a hymn of praise to the Medieval (and Catholic) past. To illustrate the point, Pugin illustrated his text with a landscape of an idealised medieval town, bedecked with soaring church spires, and then another with the same town submerged under industrial development, featuring a gas works, a prison, a lunatic asylum and, worst of all, a Socialist Hall of Science (Pugin, 2013). Following in Pugin’s wake came the architectural critic John Ruskin, who in The Lamp of Memory, first published in 1849, asserted that the first duty of national architects was to render their buildings historical, ‘for it is in becoming memorial or monumental that a true perfection is attained by civil and domestic buildings…as their decorations are consequently animated by a metaphorical or historical meaning’ (Ruskin, 2008, 4). As a reaction to the harsh industrial world springing up around them, Victorian architects sought inspiration in visions of imagined pre-­industrial worlds. Early in the nineteenth century, there had been two main strands within revivalist architecture, each representing a different form of historical nostalgia. The more rationalist classical tradition had evolved into Greek Revival, while the more romantic medieval tradition had crystallised into Gothic Revival (Summerson, 1993, 471–497). The debate about which of these strands better captured the spirit of Englishness, a debate which had started as far back as the sixteenth century, evolved into a full-blown ‘Battle of the Styles’ during the Victorian

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era (Mordaunt Crook, 1987, 102). Revivalism became increasingly eclectic, with a medley of Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean and Renaissance variants entering the mix. In the spirit of the age, leading architects such as Charles Barry were content to work in any of these proliferating styles. The language of architecture became a discordant chorus of many tongues. However, under the influence of Pugin and Ruskin, it was the Gothic Revival that increasingly fired the imagination of English architects, in the growing belief that this offered the truest expression of national traditions (Lewis, 2002). At first, the style was principally adopted for ecclesiastical buildings, but over time it became equally favoured for secular architecture. In the 1850s, there began the age of High Victorian Gothic, led by men such as George Gilbert Scott and Alfred Waterhouse, who applied the style to the design of every type of monumental building (Muthesius, 1972). It was during this period that hegemonic building in Victorian London reached a climax. As the century drew to a close, there was yet another revivalist switch in fashion, as architects tired of High Gothic and rediscovered the merits of English Baroque. During the chauvinistic Edwardian era, this evolved into a particularly bombastic style in the ‘Grand Manner’, designed to proclaim the magisterial power of Imperial Britain (Bremner, 2022). Despite the divergent cultural divide between them, Victorian engineers and architects had to work in tandem. They were two professions split apart by capitalism’s relentless drive to specialise labour, and they coexisted in a fraught relationship of ‘sibling rivalry’ (Saint, 2007). But it was their combined skills that were required to meet the growing technical demands of construction, the increasing specialisation of building types, and the ever more demanding requirements of public and private clients wanting trophy buildings delivered within strict budgets. It was often the case that the contribution of the engineer was hidden behind traditional façades. The aesthetic reaction against the pure lines of industrial structures meant that they had to be decorously clothed in ornamental stone or brick to deliver their hegemonic message (Dixon & Muthesius, 1985, 106–108). The outward form of such structures had to conform to the canons of medieval or classical taste, so that they appeared not to be means of capitalist production but rather public buildings with a religious or civic purpose. This cultural contradiction is most clearly displayed in the great termini built around inner London by competing railway companies during the Victorian and Edwardian eras (Saint, 2007, 110–118).

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The typical form of these termini was an entrance building of historical design, accommodating ticket office, waiting room, buffet and passenger concourse. In almost every case there was an accompanying grand hotel in a similar revivalist style. Behind the architect-designed entrance buildings stretched vast engineer-designed train sheds, with frameworks of iron arches supporting glass roofs designed to protect and illuminate the platforms, passengers and trains. Each improvement in construction technology allowed the engineers to increase the span of their shed roofs, culminating in the seventy-three-metre span of the shed at St Pancras. Built for the Midland Railway by the engineer William Barlow between 1866 and 1868, it is ‘one of the outstanding surviving examples of Victorian functionalism and daring’ (Cherry & Pevsner, 2002, 365). Though railways were one of the engineering wonders of the Industrial Age, architects reverted to their classical and medieval style books to celebrate the achievement. The first such project was one of the most extraordinary. Between 1833 and 1838 Philip Hardwick, a pioneer of railway architecture, built a monumental Greek Doric entrance to Euston Station, the terminus of Robert Stephenson’s London and Birmingham Railway, which was the first competed trunk line into London. Hardwick’s entrance comprised a central propylaeum (gateway) flanked by two pavilions, providing a startling reference to the ancient buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. This was a hegemonic association of ideas formed at the highest cultural level (Cherry & Pevsner, 2002, 361). More mixed messaging is apparent at Paddington Station, constructed between 1850 and 1854 as the terminus of Brunel’s Great Western Railway. Brunel’s awesome train sheds are flanked by rather nondescript buildings designed by Matthew Wyatt in a revivalist melange that is ‘a vague Dixhuitième on the ground floor, and a still vaguer Venetian on the upper’ (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 682). Standing in front of the station is the Great Western Hotel, built at the same time by Philip Charles Hardwick (son of the Euston architect). This combines the aristocratic influences of the French Renaissance with Baroque motifs, yet broadcasts an overt celebration of bourgeois progress in the figures of Peace, Plenty, Industry and Science that adorn the central pediment. The adjacent stations of King’s Cross and St Pancras reveal a very different balance of power between engineer and architect in their respective designs (Mordaunt Crook, 1987, 117–119). King’s Cross was built in 1851–2 by that relatively rare composite creature, the engineer/architect Lewis Cubitt. His station was the terminus for the great Northern Railway

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built by the (unrelated) civil engineer William Cubitt. True to his engineering roots, Cubitt’s austere Neoclassical façade is functional rather than associational, with two enormous arched windows directly mirroring the shape of the arrival and departure sheds behind. ‘Here there is no irrelevant Renaissance detail, only grand scale and clear expression of the arched spaces behind’ (Hitchcock, 1987, 187). In total contrast, at St Pancras, Barlow’s great train shed is fronted by the Midland Grand Hotel, built in an exuberant High Victorian Gothic by George Gilbert Scott between 1868 and 1874 (Photograph 7.1). ‘Such a drastic divorce of engineering and architecture could hardly be expected to produce a co-ordinated edifice’ (Hitchcock, 1987, 267). This monumental structure presents itself as a fantasy palace, with an irregular skyline that starts with a clock tower in the manner of Big Ben, moves through a series of turreted stepped gables and culminates in a massive tower keep with pavilion roof. It is one of the largest and most spectacular neo-Gothic structures anywhere in the world. Yet within that medieval shell is a structure that was built with the latest engineering technology of the time,

Photograph 7.1  Midland Grand Hotel, St Pancras Station 1868-74 (Source: Infrequent Flyer/Alamy Stock Photo)

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incorporating wrought-iron beams and girders, a pneumatic postal system and revolutionary hydraulic lifts (Parissien, 2014, 100). During the Victorian era, revivalist architecture shaped the hegemonic buildings of commercial as well as industrial London. The focus of such building remained the City, the financial heart of the city of capital. Here, older civic buildings were being renewed or replaced, and a new generation of office buildings were being developed to reinforce the landscape of commercial power, pouring ever more financial and symbolic capital into this tightly confined space (Black, 2000). The most important civic project of the time in the City was the rebuilding of the Royal Exchange after it was destroyed for a second time by fire in 1838 (Photograph 7.2). Again City opinion demanded it be rebuilt as quickly as possible to restore its hegemonic function. The competition held to choose the architect was won by William Tite, who completed construction in 1844 (Port, 1997). The new exchange was much larger than its predecessors, while retaining the previous features of an arcaded courtyard and ornamental tower. The competition specified that the style

Photograph 7.2  Royal Exchange 1841-4 (Source: Ida Pap/Alamy Stock Photo)

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should be some form of classical, and definitely not Gothic. However, at this point in time, the classical revival was already dissolving in the eclectic mix of styles. Consequently, while the Corinthian portico on the main west façade is still essentially classical, the sides of the building display Baroque and Rococo influences, with giant pilasters, decorated windows and garlanded entrances (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 329–331). A clear indication of how the City was embracing the modern age is provided by the sculpture adorning the third exchange. Gone is the parade of English monarchs that were so important to its founder, Thomas Gresham, and were replicated and augmented in the second exchange. Homage to royalty is confined to the courtyard, where there stand statues of Elizabeth I and Charles II (a copy of the Gibbons statue of 1684), formerly accompanied by statues of Victoria and Albert that are now held in storage. In contrast, around the exterior of the building it is the merchant interest that is promoted. The pediment of the west portico displays a programme celebrating the extent and wealth of the British trading empire. Groups of figures from every corner of the globe cluster around a crowned figure of Commerce standing ‘in the very heart and centre of the great mart of the world’ (Leith, 1997, 338). It faces the similar pediment on the portico of the Mansion House, carved a century earlier with the same hegemonic message expressed in a more allegorical manner. A statue of Gresham himself is set against the east tower of the exchange, while standing on its north side are figures of two eminent City merchants and benefactors: Richard Whittington and Hugh Myddelton. No longer principally a celebration of the City’s loyalty to Church and Crown, the exchange now asserts its own power and wealth as the commercial centre of capitalist and imperialist Britain. Despite this apparent shift in allegiance, Queen Victoria was moved to emulate her predecessor Elizabeth and formally open the rebuilt exchange in October 1844. The City Corporation was prepared to make unashamed use of the new iron and glass technology to rebuild a series of markets and exchanges during the Victorian era. This included the three great markets of Smithfield (1866–7), Billingsgate (1874–1878) and Leadenhall (1880–1). Most spectacular was the (now demolished) Coal Exchange by the City Architect James Bunning (1847–9). Concealed within a conventional Italianate shell was a fully exposed iron and glass rotunda, encircled by richly ornamented galleries with panels depicting the mining industry and the plants that had formed the precious coal deposits (Hitchcock, 1972,

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320–324). Here science, engineering and industry converged in a classic Victorian tribute to progress. Meanwhile, the City economy was undergoing rapid modernisation, as British capitalism matured and London consolidated its position as the world’s leading financial centre. Demand soared for customised office buildings to accommodate the dynamic growth of financial and business services (Summerson, 1990). Commercial banks and insurance companies competed to acquire the most prestigious locations and build the most impressive headquarters offices, ‘both to house their various operations and to serve as architectural expressions of their wealth, respectability and reliability’ (Olsen, 1976, 120). In keeping with their status as the aristocrats of gentlemanly capitalism, the private banks adopted a lower profile, preferring to operate out of discrete premises of more domestic appearance (Black, 2000, 355–357). As with railway stations, Victorian architects clothed their office buildings in revivalist garb, but relied on the engineer to support the traditional exterior with a modern, technically innovative, internal structure. Cast iron skeletons supporting brick or masonry vaults were introduced from an early date as a form of fireproofing. Over time, the iron skeleton became the predominant structural feature, with the walls reduced to little more than masonry cladding, anticipating the curtain-wall construction of later Modernist office towers (Hitchcock, 1987, 327–334). Classicism was the preferred style for the first generation of Victorian City offices, pioneered by the London and Westminster Bank for their Lothbury headquarters across from the Bank of England (Black, 2000, 358–361). Leading the way during the 1830s was Charles Cockerell, who designed a succession of financial headquarters buildings (Hitchcock, 1972, 345–72). He employed a solemn Grecian style considered to provide financial institutions with ‘the best means of achieving representational monumentality’ in their hegemonic messaging (Hitchcock, 1987: 109). However, during the 1840s a more lavish Italian palazzo style came into favour among the new breed of joint-stock banks. ‘The philosophy of banking was moving away from the private bank virtues of solidity and reserve…the trend was now towards competitiveness, growth and ostentation’ (Booker, 1990, 65). The culmination of the trend towards ever more ostentatious classicism was the head office of the National Provincial Bank on Bishopsgate, designed by John Gibson and finished in 1865. The façade is divided vertically by giant Corinthian columns and topped by a

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massive cornice. The upper level displays a sequence of six sculpted panels depicting the Arts, Commerce, Science, Manufactures, Agriculture and Navigation, while allegorical statues rise above the cornice, representing some of the nation’s key industrial and trading cities. Within is a monumental and richly appointed banking hall, with friezes illustrating the role of banking within the national economy (Black, 2000, 368–370). The whole composition connotes the wealth and power of British capitalism under the hegemonic leadership of the City of London. Moving through the 1860s, City financial institutions, like every other type of public and private organisation, became caught up in the fervour of High Victorian Gothic revivalism. The closer Britain got to the peak of its industrial and imperial power, the greater the turmoil and upheaval of contemporary life, and the stronger the prevailing ideology of progress, the greater seemed to be the nostalgia for a return to a mythological pre-­ industrial past. The most spectacular example of the application of High Victorian Gothic to a City office building is the Prudential Assurance Building on Holborn, started by the leading Gothicist Alfred Waterhouse in 1879 but not completed until 1906 (Photograph 7.3). As befitted the company’s status as the City’s largest insurance company, Waterhouse’s Prudential Building was far larger than any office building previously erected in the City. Like Scott’s Midland Hotel, this overwhelming pile of bright red brick and terracotta presents itself as a fantasy palace. It is laid out in tall ranges around two courtyards, with a long gabled front pierced by lancet windows and centred on the seemingly mandatory turreted tower with pyramid roof (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 518). As the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian, Gothic was passing out of fashion and classicism was making a re-appearance, this time in the form of neo-Baroque. It was a style that produced some large and florid office buildings, particularly in the Finsbury area on the edge of the City. Between 1899 and 1903 Finsbury Circus was redeveloped to house what appears to be a collection of French Renaissance and Baroque palaces, providing behind their facades ranges of office chambers on a scale not previously seen in the City. Such increases in scale were only possible because the technology of Edwardian office-building was undergoing radical innovation, using new construction techniques imported from the United States. In particular, the use of steel-framed and reinforced concrete structures, together with the introduction of electric lighting and hydraulic lifts allowed for the

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Photograph 7.3  Prudential Building 1879-1906 (Source: vincent abbey/Alamy Stock Photo)

creation of taller and deeper buildings (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 121–122). The divide between the aesthetic appearance and technical reality of such buildings was growing ever wider. Monumental commercial buildings embracing innovations in building technology were also starting to appear in the West End, led by the retailing sector (Dixon & Muthesius, 1985, 138–141). From the mid-­Victorian period onwards, shopping arcades of iron and glass construction became the fashion, while large plate glass windows revolutionised the appearance of shopfronts. But it was department stores that took retailing to a new level, and they demanded a new generation of buildings to reflect their economic and social importance. Their aim was to transform the mundane activity of shopping into a social experience that was exciting for the shopper and profitable for the retailer. The two most majestic examples are Harrods on Brompton Road, built between 1894 and 1911 by Charles Stephens, and Selfridges on Oxford Street, built between 1908 and 1928 by a team of American architects led by Daniel Burnham.

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Harrods is remarkable for its long Baroque frontage, faced in pink terracotta with Art Nouveau features. The central block is emphasised by a grand arcade topped by a pediment, above which rises a large dome, elevating the appearance of the building to that of a public monument (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 539). The interior boasts a lavish food hall decorated with bucolic scenes of rural life, contrasting with the first public escalator installed in Britain. Selfridges is a more monumental but less flamboyant structure (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 465–467). Above the glazed ground floor runs a colonnade of colossal Ionic columns, rising through three floors to a richly decorated attic topped by a balustrade. Between the columns are cast-iron panels that conceal the building’s steel frame. Equal in magnificence was the new generation of grand hotels, designed to awe and delight wealthy visitors to the metropolis. In a telling sign that French culture still exercised a strong hold on the British imagination, these hotels were typically designed in a florid imperial style that imitated their Parisian counterparts. The Russell by Charles Fitzroy Doll (1898–1900) presents itself to Russel Square as an inflated château in red brick and terracotta; the Ritz on Piccadilly by Charles Mewès (1903–6) followed the arcaded design of his earlier version on the Place Vendôme; the Waldorf on Aldwych by A M and A G R MacKenzie (1906–8) has French pavilion roofs. Yet despite its revivalist splendour, the stone facades of the Ritz concealed the largest non-industrial steel frame erected in London up to that point (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 559). These great department stores and hotels symbolise the luxury and excess of the city of capital at the start of the twentieth century. But the city of capital was also the city of empire; London was not only the commercial centre of the world’s leading capitalist economy, it was also the administrative centre of the largest empire the world had ever seen. The hegemonic buildings of Victorian and Edwardian London were built to celebrate the power and wealth of the Imperial state as well as the British economy.

7.5   Imperial Hegemony The unique trajectory followed by British capitalism has been attributed to the hegemonic role played by finance rather than industrial capital in the nation’s economic development. That hegemonic role was won because of a second, and closely related, aspect of Britain’s economy—that it was the

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motor of a vast imperial economy held together by a multilateral trading system orchestrated in the City of London. It was this global role that guaranteed the supremacy of the City and shaped the trajectory of the nation’s economic ascent and decline. When the British and Prussian armies won final victory over the French at Waterloo in 1815, Britain was left unchallenged as the world’s greatest military and economic power. This enabled it to assemble a second colonial empire of unprecedented size to compensate for the loss of its American colonies (Hyam, 2002). Furthermore, beyond this formal empire, there stretched a vast ‘informal empire’, not under the nation’s direct rule but tied to it by flows of migration, trade and investment (Gallagher & Robinson, 1953). Maintenance of peace was essential to the survival of this interdependent system. A global Pax Britannica was sustained by the deployment of the nation’s unrivalled naval and commercial power to pursue a foreign policy which combined isolation from Europe with territorial consolidation in the formal empire and trade protection in the informal empire (Chamberlain, 1988). Victorian Britain was a global hegemon (Arrighi, 2010, 48–59). She controlled the wealthiest economy and the most extensive empire in the capitalist world system (Wallerstein, 2004, 23–41). But this world system was more than just an expression of military and economic power; it was also a political and cultural entity held together by a common ideology (Darwin, 2009, 1–20). The very idea of empire became deeply embedded in the cultures of Britain and the other imperial powers of western Europe (Said, 1994). Though imperial conquest was by its very nature a coercive process as far as the colonised population was concerned, it provided a powerful hegemonic tool for generating consent amongst the colonising population by stimulating their sense of patriotic pride. Cultural legitimacy was conferred upon the British Empire by frequent reference to the classical discourse on the Roman Empire (Hagerman, 2013). Just as the Georgian ruling class had identified themselves with Republican Rome, so the Victorian ruling class identified with its imperial successor. The essence of Britain’s imperial enterprise was the quest for economic gain. But like every imperial power before and since, it felt the need to shield that economic imperative within a cloak of ideological justification. A recurrent motif of that ideology was the ‘civilising mission’, a paternalistic application of the Enlightenment ideal of progress in which an advanced nation bequeaths the benefits of their civilisation to a more

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backward people (Pomeranz, 2005). In this idealised vision, the conqueror bestows upon the conquered its more advanced economy, its more progressive political system, its superior culture and its one true religion. In reality, the imperial relationship is an exploitative one, founded upon an innate sense of the conqueror’s racial superiority. From this perspective, the British Empire has recently been described as ‘one of the biggest white supremacist enterprises in the history of humanity’ (Sanghera, 2021, 170). And like all great empires, its success depended as much upon the threat or deployment of coercive force as it did upon the exercise of consensual rule (Elkins, 2022). India provides a stark example of the true nature of imperial rule. Famously described as ‘the brightest Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire’ by Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, this vast territory held over two-thirds of the total population of the empire. After decades of misrule by the East India Company, the whole territory descended into violence and anarchy during the Mutiny of 1857 (David, 2003). In ‘probably the bloodiest episode in the entire history of British colonialism’ (Dalrymple, 2020, 391), the insurrection was suppressed with extreme violence, the territory taken under direct control of the Crown, and the Company finally dissolved (Lawson, 1993, 159–162). The economic history of India is controversial. On the one hand, some argue that British rule did bring important benefits, in particular the reduction of famine and the development of an indigenous capitalist class (Roy, 2019). Others argue passionately that the story of British rule is not one of ‘enlightened despotism’ but rather one of plunder and impoverishment. There is no doubt that the British economy grew enormously at India’s expense, principally through the deindustrialisation of the subcontinent. ‘Britain’s Industrial Revolution was built on the destruction of India’s thriving manufacturing industries’, and in particular its textile industries (Tharoor, 2017, 5). When the East India Company took control of Bengal in 1757, the Indian economy was over five times larger than that of Britain, whilst when independence was granted in 1947, the British economy was the larger of the two despite having a population less than one eighth the size (Maddison, 2007, 114). The benefits that imperial rule grants to the occupier and the costs it imposes on the occupied cannot be denied. By the end of the Victorian era, the British Empire had reached the zenith of its extent and power. With a total population of over 450 million, the formal Empire contained one quarter of the world’s total

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population (Searle, 2004, 241). The multilateral trading system that bound the formal and informal empires together operated through a regime of free trade rather than mercantilist protectionism (Daunton, 2007, 201–230). Other developed economies in Europe could participate in the system as they wished. Less developed economies, for example, those in Latin America, were integrated into the informal empire through commercial treaties, concluded either willingly or through coercion. Underdeveloped economies, such as those in Africa, which lacked the necessary market institutions to participate in the informal empire, were a target for annexation into the formal empire. ‘British policy followed the principle of extending control informally if possible and formally if necessary’ (Gallagher & Robinson, 1953: 13). Britain derived multiple benefits from its global trading system. The nation’s commercial and financial interests enjoyed great profits from their control of trade, while its manufacturing interests obtained preferential access to new markets and cheap sources of raw materials. Sterling functioned as the international currency, with exchange rates fixed relative to the gold standard (Eichengreen, 2008, 15–42). Trade was insured and financed in the City; investments were made with British capital; goods were transported in British ships; trade routes were protected by the Royal Navy. Britain was not only the ‘workshop of the world’, she also acted as its ‘clearing house’ (Ingham, 1984, 40). One of the most remarkable features of the British imperial system was the extent of the overseas investment flows that it generated during the Late Victorian and Edwardian period. ‘Never before or since has one nation committed so much of its national income and savings to funding capital formation abroad or derived so much of its income from overseas assets’ (Edelstein, 1982, 3). By 1913, British overseas investments totalled more than £4 billion, amounting to one-third of total national wealth (Matthews et al., 1982, 128–129). In the years immediately preceding the First World War, more British capital was invested abroad than at home. As a result, at the outbreak of war, over forty per cent of all foreign investment in the world economy was British-owned, equal to the shares of France, Germany and the United States combined (Maddison, 2007, 101). This enormous volume of overseas investments was spread around the globe (Daunton, 2007, 244–262). The majority of the assets were held as portfolio investments, in the form of foreign government stocks and securities in public

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utilities, especially railways. Relatively little of the direct investment went into overseas manufacturing. According to the English economist John Hobson, whose study of Imperialism was first published in 1902, this great surge in British overseas investment can be interpreted as a manifestation of under-consumption, or over-accumulation, in the domestic economy (Hobson, 2005, 71–93). As capitalism becomes more monopolistic, profits are concentrated in ever fewer hands. The owners of capital cannot consume sufficient of their income to stop the volume of their savings expanding to exceed the volume of available investment opportunities at home, obliging them to seek investment outlets overseas to absorb their surplus capital. The empirical evidence provides some support for this argument—capital invested abroad tended to earn a higher rate of return than that invested at home, even when allowing for the greater risk (Edelstein, 2004, 196–204). For Britain, the attraction of overseas investment was intensified by three special factors. First, being the earliest nation to industrialise, it had advanced further in the accumulation of savings from the proceeds of industrialisation. Second, by the end of the nineteenth century, the returns on domestic investment were declining as the industrial economy reached maturity and productivity growth slackened. Third, the vast extent of the nation’s formal and informal empires presented a plethora of attractive overseas investment opportunities. This combination of circumstances created a positive feedback loop. With an increasing proportion of national savings directed abroad, a diminishing share was available for investment at home, thereby reducing the opportunities to boost future returns on domestic capital to the extent that they could match those earned overseas. The golden age of the British Empire was also a golden age for the City of London (Kynaston, 1996). Formidable indeed were the capital assets under its control; by 1911 they were worth almost £2 billion, equivalent to one year’s total output from the national economy (Broadberry, 2006, 193). Its international rather than domestic outlook was encapsulated in a famously remark by The Economist in 1911: ‘London is often more concerned with the course of events in Mexico than with what happens in the Midlands’ (Cassis, 2012: 84). That sentiment has remained true to this day. Diversity and interdependence remained the City’s greatest strength. Within the confines of the Square Mile was a close-knit community working through networks of personal contacts that relied on trust and reciprocal obligation. Interrelationships between firms were cemented by a system

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of overlapping directorships, with leading figures sitting on several boards. These interrelationships ensured that the cluster of institutions making up the City economy—merchant banks, commercial banks, investment trusts, insurance companies, stockbrokers and professional services—functioned collectively as an organism with greater power than the sum of its parts. This was financial capitalism at its most effective and powerful, capable of orchestrating the affairs of a global empire. Bankers were the aristocracy of this self-contained world, led by the merchant banking dynasties that were the very epitome of gentlemanly capitalism and the cornerstone of the City’s international operations (Cassis, 1994, 28–43). The competitive advantage derived from operating on a global scale created an oligarchy of the ‘Big Five’ merchant banks, with the early starters Barings and Rothschilds joined by Schröders, J S Morgan and Kleinworts (Cassis, 2012, 85–88). However, the merchant banks were facing growing competition for international business from commercial banks. This was a sector undergoing rapid centralisation of capital through mergers and acquisitions, as those banks which had originally been established in London came under competitive attack from provincial banks moving into the City. By 1913, there were nine British commercial banks amongst the twenty largest in the world, led by the commercial ‘Big Five’ oligopoly of Midland, Lloyds, Westminster, National Provincial and Barclays (Cassis, 2012, 90–93). Though the main business of these giant banks remained domestic loans, they began to play a more international role, opening foreign exchange departments, syndicating overseas loans and acting as London agents for foreign banks. Insurance companies were also drawn into more profitable international ventures by the inexorable expansion of Britain’s global financial system, causing them to invest an increasing proportion of their portfolios in foreign assets. As with commercial banking, this encouraged rapid centralisation of capital within the sector, leading to the emergence of large-­ scale composite offices offering the full range of insurance services (Supple, 1970, 309–348). The London Stock Exchange similarly became more global in its market reach. By 1913, the value of the securities listed on the exchange amounted to one-third of the world total, with a growing proportion being overseas stocks (Michie, 1999, 87–95). The great financiers of the City’s golden age formed a plutocracy that wielded extraordinary wealth and power. They operated in ‘an intricate world where business, social life and political intrigue all overlapped’ (Cain

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& Hopkins, 2016, 131). A mutually beneficial set of reciprocal relationships were forged between the wealth of the financial elite and the social status of the landowning elite: notable aristocrats acquired company directorships while leading businessmen were elevated to the peerage, many by purchasing their titles (Cannadine, 1996, 308–325). One such financier was Ernest Cassel, whose wealth and contacts made him a valued advisor to government and a prominent member of the entourage surrounding Edward VII. He was the quintessential Edwardian plutocrat, mocked by a disdainful aristocracy for his awkwardness on a horse, but embraced by a grateful monarch for his command of finance (Camplin, 1978, 198–213). Like their predecessors, the East India traders and West Indian planters, the nouveaux riches of Edwardian society were determined to flaunt their wealth and power (Cannadine, 1996, 341–370). They indulged in vulgar and ostentatious consumption while storming the heights of fashionable society; theirs was a world of lavish banquets, reckless gambling and relentless gunfire. Standards were set by the monarch himself. Like his distant predecessor, Elizabeth I, Edward VII demanded to be entertained at the height of luxury by his millionaire friends wherever his roving fancy took him (Camplin, 1978, 101–110). But their party was soon to come to an abrupt and savage end.

7.6   City of Empire During the Georgian era, Whitehall had developed as the administrative centre of Britain’s fiscal-military state, founded on the two most important departments of government, the Admiralty and the Treasury. During the Victorian era, the administrative demands of empire expanded enormously, requiring a commensurate investment in hegemonic building to house the great offices of the imperial state. At the same time, the cultural impact of empire was stretching far beyond Whitehall, as museums, galleries and educational institutions were founded to proclaim the civilising influence of British imperialism. London’s unique role as the metropolitan centre of a world empire reached its climax in the Edwardian era, when the landscape of imperial power was fully formed, providing a fitting theatre for the pomp and ceremony of a seemingly invincible nation (Driver & Gilbert, 1998). Though the hegemonic buildings of the imperial state were designed in a medley of revivalist styles, their chosen forms had the common historicist

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purpose of celebrating national and imperial identity by reference to a glorious past (Jones, 2011, 53–65). Their architects were driven by the idea that ‘a country’s architecture should be interpreted as its “history” in built form’ (Bremner, 2005, 712). The most overtly hegemonic celebration of Britain’s national and imperial identity was the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in the newly built Crystal Palace in Hyde Park (Auerbach, 1999). It was a triumphant celebration of the achievements of Britain’s industry and the diversity and wealth of its formal and informal empires. The aim of the spectacle, which attracted an attendance of over six million during its five-month duration, was to fill domestic visitors with pride and overseas visitors with awe. From cotton machinery made in Oldham to ivory carved in Bengal, the juxtaposition of products from Britain’s industries with exotic goods from its colonies and trading dependencies revealed how intertwined were industry and empire in the Victorian world. While many cultures and nationalities mingled in the great hall, they had one thing in common—they all were bound into the world system of the host nation. While the Great Exhibition came and went, construction work was slowly progressing on the reconstruction of the Palace of Westminster, burnt down in a devastating fire in 1834. William Rufus’s Great Hall had survived, but most of the rest was damaged beyond repair. The fire presented a great opportunity as well as a great loss. For traditionalists, the destruction of the palace was punishment for a legislature that two years earlier had passed what they believed to be the dangerously radical Reform Act. For progressives, the fire was a welcome opportunity to sweep away the ramshackle old buildings that were a physical embodiment of the Old Corruption (Cannadine, 2000, 13). The seat of national government for the last eight centuries required rebuilding at a point in time when Britain was approaching the pinnacle of its economic supremacy and imperial power. Here was a chance to create the most hegemonic of all the hegemonic buildings in the city of empire. In 1835, a competition was launched for the design of new Houses of Parliament, to be overseen by a select committee of the House of Commons (Fredericksen, 2000). In an era of stylistic eclecticism, it is remarkable that the terms of the competition stipulated that the new building must be in the ‘national style’ of Gothic, or perhaps Elizabethan. By identifying Gothic as the national style, the parliamentarians were seeking to recreate a building that symbolised the established social and political order, connoting the aristocratic hegemony and venerable authority

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that derived from its revered medieval past. It was intended to be ‘the very antithesis of the classical style, which had become associated in the popular patriotic mind with the rootless anarchy and national enmity of revolutionary France’ (Cannadine, 2000, 15). The competition attracted ninety-seven designs, all but six being Gothic. The winner was Charles Barry, who had already designed several secular buildings in a classical style, and several churches in Gothic. Barry paid the young Augustus Pugin to produce some of the drawings in his winning submission, ensuring that his designs were imbued with the requisite Gothic fervour. Barry supervised the construction work from its inception in 1840 to his death in 1860, but in 1844 recalled Pugin to help with the design of the interiors, and Pugin acted as Barry’s assistant until his early death in 1852 (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 214–216). For the new palace, Barry chose the Perpendicular variety of national Gothic. Its grid-like surface decoration could readily be used to clothe what Barry still envisaged as a classical structure while harmonising with the surviving Westminster Hall and nearby Westminster Abbey (Dixon & Muthesius, 1985, 155–158). Though he may have been a classicist at heart, Barry created a skyline of towers and turrets that is emphatically picturesque, the famous river frontage framed by two principal asymmetrical features, the Victoria Tower at the south end and the Clock Tower (Big Ben) at the north end. Where Barry allowed his classical inclinations to be expressed was in the disciplined regularity of the facades, and the symmetry of the ground plan laid out along a central north-south axis (Wedgewood, 2000). The result has been declared by Nikolaus Pevsner to be ‘the most imaginatively planned and the most excellently executed major secular building of the Gothic Revival anywhere in the world’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 53). Within Barry’s shell, Pugin created an extraordinary stage set on which to enact the theatre of state. It was a set meticulously constructed from sumptuously crafted stained glass, metalwork, tiles, wood carving, upholstery and furniture. The architects’ vision of government was determinedly elitist rather than democratic, and the building is designed for ceremonial pageant as much as political debate. The most opulent decoration is applied to the spaces used by the monarch during the state opening of Parliament. The House of Lords, containing the Sovereign’s Throne, is more richly ornamented than the House of Commons (though the Commons was largely destroyed by a bomb in 1941, and has been rebuilt in a much lighter and

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plainer style). The spaces accessible to the wider public are very limited. Overall, the new palace strongly echoes the old, when political power resided with monarch and aristocracy rather than the common people (Cannadine, 2000, 15). Equally traditionalist in tone is the messaging of the paintings and sculpture in and around the palace. They provide a showcase for the ideology and mythology of the British state as revealed by its history (Riding & Riding, 2000, 225–268). Around the exterior is a dynastic sequence of royal statues, from the Anglo-Saxon kings to Queen Victoria, as a repeated reminder that this was once a royal palace. Within the royal Robing Room are frescoes of the Arthurian legend, illustrating the aristocratic virtues of Hospitality, Generosity, Mercy and Courtesy. The Lords Chamber contains frescoes depicting medieval sovereigns chosen to represent the virtues of the three constituencies of the Lords, Chivalry, Religion and Justice. In the Prince’s Chamber are portraits of Tudor monarchs. In the Royal Gallery are patriotic scenes from the Napoleonic Wars, depicting the death of Nelson and the meeting of Wellington and Blücher after Waterloo. These were originally intended to be part of a much larger programme of British military exploits, stretching back to Boudica. Perhaps surprisingly, there is only one significant visual reference to the British Empire in the palace, and that is a fresco depicting its earliest origins in the embarkation of the Pilgrim Fathers for New England. Again, a larger programme of imperial paintings was planned but never executed (Cannadine, 2000, 19). As time has gone by, the progressive theme of parliamentary democracy has been allowed a growing presence in the palace. As part of the original scheme, the Lords Chamber contains statues of the Magna Carta barons, while the Peers and Commons Corridors display parallel scenes of the virtues and heroism of Parliamentarians as well as Royalists in the Civil War and the Glorious Revolution. Counterposed against the procession of royal statues around the exterior is a single statue of Oliver Cromwell, added in 1899 as a reminder that this is now the home of Parliament, not the monarchy. In the Norman Porch adjoining the Victoria Tower are busts of sixteen prime ministers who have sat in the Lords, while busts or statues of leading twentieth-century prime ministers are now to be found in the Commons Lobby. As was the norm in the High Victorian era, the vital contribution of the engineer was hidden away in the new palace. ‘Hidden iron reached its

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British apogee in the Houses of Parliament’ (Saint, 2007, 95). Iron framing was used extensively to support the towers and fireproof the walls and floors. Heating and ventilation systems were integrated into the structure, their vertical ducts concealed in roofline turrets. The Central Tower, rising over the Central Lobby, was added specifically to aid ventilation. Belying its medieval appearance, the building was ‘a triumph of industrial technology, making it the world’s first large modern building, where the architect was forced to consider the mechanical systems as a central part of his task’ (Lewis, 2002, 83). Despite the debt owed by the palace to modern construction techniques, there is no recognition at all in its iconography of the role of trade and industry in propelling Britain’s rise to global pre-eminence. For that, one must travel to the nation’s second city Manchester, where Alfred Waterhouse subsequently built a great Gothic town hall adorned with statues and murals that celebrated the city’s radical and scientific traditions and its pioneering industrial development (Archer, 1985). The contrast in hegemonic messaging between these two iconic buildings provides a perfect illustration of the split personality of British capitalism—forever looking back to its aristocratic, pre-industrial past whilst impelled to acknowledge its bourgeois, industrial present. As construction of the Palace of Westminster neared completion, another architectural competition was held for a major new office complex in Whitehall, intended to bolster the administrative capacity of the expanding imperial state. It was planned for this monumental building to accommodate the Home Office, Foreign Office, Colonial Office and India Office under one roof. Here was a new opportunity to create a hegemonic building that gave true expression to national and imperial identity (Bremner, 2005). Launched in 1856, the competition became a key episode in the Battle of the Styles between the Classical and the Gothic, the outcome determined by politics as much as aesthetics (Port, 1995, 198–210). As a sign of how attitudes had changed since the Palace of Westminster competition, only 19 of the 218 submitted designs were Gothic. Fears of association with revolutionary France had faded, and classicism once more seemed the most appropriate style to symbolise the global authority of the new Roman Empire. The competition brief went through several iterations, starting with a new Foreign Office building, to which was added a new India Office in 1858, following the imposition of direct rule over the territory, and then

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new Home and Colonial Offices in 1865–6. The juxtaposition of the Foreign Office with the India and Colonial Offices within the same building signalled that the nation’s formal and informal empires were united within the same British world system. The complex thus functioned as ‘a kind of national palace’ according to a chairman of the building committee (Bremner, 2005, 741). George Gilbert Scott was the eventual competition winner, though his designs had to go through as many iterations as the competition brief (Dixon & Muthesius, 1985, 161–163). His initial Gothic design for the Foreign Office was only placed third. The winning scheme was in a French Second Empire style, modelled on the much-admired New Louvre in Paris, that appealed to the Whig government of the day under Viscount Palmerston (Hitchcock, 1987, 228). However, in 1858 the Whig government was succeeded by a Tory government under the Earl of Derby, the addition of the India Office to the brief required new designs to be submitted, and Scott’s modified Gothic scheme met with the approval of a more conservative administration. But in 1859 Palmerston was back in office at the head of a new Liberal government, and demanded that Scott discard the Gothic and embrace the Italian Renaissance. Scott eventually obliged, and this is the style in which the complex was built between 1862 and 1875. As Palmerston’s successor, William Gladstone, remarked ‘desiring a classical Foreign Office, the British Government employed the best known Gothic architect of the day to erect it’ (Foreman, 1995, 80). In plan, the four offices of state were arranged around a vast quadrangle, each centred around its own internal courtyard (Photograph 7.4). The quadrangle is lined with sculptures representing the nations and peoples under the remit of the various offices of state, with the peoples of Asia lined up alongside the powers of Europe (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 266–270). Two of the four exterior facades, those facing King Charles Street and Whitehall, are symmetrical, comprising three principal storeys of round-­ arched windows. In the other two facades, facing Downing Street and St James’s Park, Scott allowed a degree of picturesque asymmetry to intrude. On the north side, there is a single polygonal bay, and on the west side, an Italianate tower. Plentiful sculpture adorns the facades. That of the India Office includes statues of eight governors-general, together with allegorical figures representing the principal rivers and regions of the territory. The ornate interiors of the offices were the work of Matthew Digby Wyatt as well as Scott. Most original is the India Office, the new command

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Photograph 7.4  Foreign Office 1862-75 and Treasury 1899-1915 (Source: A. P. S. (UK)/Alamy Stock Photo)

centre of imperial rule, which was decorated in motifs designed to evoke the culture of the subcontinent. It incorporates some furnishings brought from East India House in the City, helping to stress the continuity of British connections to India since the early seventeenth century. The Gurkha Stair, lined with statues of governors-general and military leaders, leads up to the glazed-over Durbar Courtyard, with galleried walls displaying scenes and figures that form an imperial narrative of Indian history. In the adjacent Council Chamber is a towering chimneypiece, taken from East India House in the City, that supports a relief of Britannia receiving riches from the Indies, with Asia and Africa behind. More traditional are the chief rooms that make up the Locarno Suite in the Foreign Office, with lavish décor and high vaulted ceilings. Most sumptuous of all is the State Stair: ‘Pax Britannica at its proudest, glowing with marbles, mosaic, granites and gilding’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 269). Its columned galleries, round-arched windows and shallow central dome are of Roman Renaissance inspiration. The dome is painted with figures representing twenty nations then represented at the Court of St

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James’s. The whole complex speaks of the wealth and power of the British state and the reach of its formal and informal empires. While the India and Colonial Offices are no more, and the Home Office has moved elsewhere, the building is still home to the latest, post-imperial manifestation of British overseas relations: the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. To accommodate the ever-expanding demands of the imperial state, three more monumental government buildings were added to the hegemonic ensemble in Whitehall during the Late Victorian and Edwardian eras. These were the Admiralty Extension (1888–1905), the War Office (1899–1906) and the New Government Offices (1899–1915). All three were designed in versions of the neo-Baroque style that by this time was displacing both Gothic and Renaissance as the favoured patriotic style for hegemonic buildings in the city of empire (Bremner, 2022, 49–57). Giant columns, heavy rustication and elaborate ornamentation provided the visual metaphor for global imperial power, thereby emphasising the symbolic link between the Roman and British Empires. The Admiralty Extension was the product of a grandiose plan to sweep away the old eighteenth-century Admiralty buildings and use the site to build a new combined Admiralty and War Office. Yet another competition was held in 1884, this time attracting 128 entries, of which only one was Gothic. To widespread surprise and dismay, the winning entry was submitted by Leeming and Leeming, an unknown architectural practice based in the Yorkshire mill town of Halifax (Port, 1995, 181–184). They employed a polite, domestic form of neo-Baroque known as the Queen Anne Revival, described witheringly by Sir William Harcourt, Gladstone’s Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, as a ‘bastard, provincial, Town Hall style’ (Mordaunt Crook, 1987, 206). It certainly seemed too tame for the headquarters of the most powerful military in the world. In fact, a headquarters in this form was never built. The construction of a new War Office was deferred and the old Admiralty buildings were retained (Port, 1995, 130–131). However, the scale of the remaining Admiralty Extension was massively increased during the course of construction, prompted by the burgeoning demands of the nation’s naval arms race with Germany. The Admiralty has long since been merged into the Ministry of Defence, and the latest occupier of the building is the Department for International Trade, representing global Britain in a different, less threatening guise.

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Construction of a separate War Office on the other side of Whitehall was begun a decade after work started on the Admiralty Extension, this time without a competition. Designed by the Glasgow architect William Young, it is a typical example of Edwardian Baroque, with a strong flavour of Wren (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 238–239). The two lowest storeys are rusticated, the main Whitehall façade has a centrepiece of ten recessed giant Ionic columns, and the corners are emphasised by turrets with stone domes. Set high up on the facades are allegorical figures representing the ideological supports for the exercise of British military force: Peace and War, Truth and Justice, Victory and Fame. Started in the same year as the War Office, the New Government Offices were the work of John Brydon, one of the leading exponents of neo-Baroque. They originally accommodated the Home Office, Health Department and the Boards of Education and Local Government, but are now occupied by the Treasury. Brydon’s offices sit directly opposite the Foreign Office and provide a telling contrast between the application of Victorian Renaissance and Edwardian Baroque to the design of monumental public buildings (Photograph 7.4). Compared to the Foreign Office, the Treasury Building is ‘more forceful, the relief is yet bolder and the sculptures…proportionately bigger’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 270). The centre of the principal façade facing Parliament Square is flanked by Wren towers crowned with stone domes, echoing those of the War Office, while the powerful Whitehall façade has a five-bay pedimented centre framed by square corner towers. The pediment displays the figure of Government, flanked by those perennial virtues of good government, Law and Order (Foreman, 1995, 123). Most spectacular is the large circular inner court, inspired by one of Inigo Jones’s unrealised designs for Whitehall Palace. It is more Palladian than Baroque, with blind arcading on the lowest storey and giant attached Ionic columns above. There is more than a hint here of the absolutist flavour of Jones’s Whitehall designs, as well as echoes of Italian and French prototypes (Mordaunt Crook, 1987, 210). It is a flavour that rather suits the most powerful and independent department of the modern British state.

7.7  The Expanding State As well as supporting a mighty domestic economy and a governing a great overseas empire, the Victorian state was expanding its involvement in every aspect of social life. Two aspects of its enhanced activities, the

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maintenance of social order and the promotion of cultural hegemony, illustrate the expanding role that monumental building played in the projection of state power. Three hegemonic buildings housing institutions of law enforcement were constructed in London during the Late Victorian and Edwardian period. These are the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand (1871–82), New Scotland Yard on Whitehall (1888–90), originally a headquarters for the Metropolitan Police and now parliamentary offices, and the Central Criminal Court on Old Bailey in the City (1900–7). It is perhaps a measure of the confidence of the Victorian state that none of these buildings employ an overt architecture of domination to advertise their purpose. Rather they offer the enlightened suggestion that the law is not an instrument of social control but rather one of social justice. The Royal Courts of Justice is the product of another of those controversial competitions so beloved by High Victorian administrators (Port, 1995, 216–225). Just eleven entries were invited from the leading architects of the day, including Barry, Scott and Waterhouse, and all submitted a Gothic design (Lewis, 2002, 149–152). The brief was complex, to create a multiplicity of interlinked rooms through which could freely circulate judges, barristers, defendants, witnesses, juries and spectators. The eventual winner was George Street, who created what has been judged to be ‘the greatest secular monument of the Gothic Revival in London after the Houses of Parliament’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 311). Street’s scheme employs an Early English version of Gothic to create a picturesque building that is disciplined if not symmetrical. The Strand façade comprises a sequence of linked blocks of varying profile, with a heavy tower crowned with a hipped roof at the east end, and a grand gabled entrance portal to the west, framed by polygonal turrets. The portal leads into a long vaulted Central Hall, decorated with mosaic floors and stained glass like a cathedral nave, within which eight spiral staircases rise to provide access to the first-floor courtrooms. Street’s design, creating the impression of a great medieval palace incorporating a glorious chapel, is intended to pay homage to ‘the antique majesty of English law’ (Port, 1995, 216). As it played out in the three branches of government, the Battle of the Styles had produced an English Gothic headquarters for the judiciary as well as the Westminster legislature, while the Whitehall executive was clothed in European Classicism. These were conscious choices by the Victorian state, balancing tradition with modernity, national identity with global power.

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Back in Whitehall, the Metropolitan Police were soon to acquire a new headquarters on New Scotland Yard, located in the very heart of government to emphasise the importance of the police force as the coercive arm of the state. Norman Shaw was a surprising choice of architect for the scheme, since he had made his reputation building country houses in a personal vernacular style that reflected a mixture of Gothic, Tudor and Classical influences. However, he had been moving towards a more grandiloquent style, making use of some of the Baroque motifs that were to animate the Edwardian Grand Manner. Shaw created a headquarters building in a composite style that has been described as ‘Franco-Flemish Renaissance with more than a touch of Scots Baronial’ (Mordaunt Crook, 1987, 208). It comprises a four-storey rectangular block with a central courtyard, built in grey granite and orange-­ red brick, with cylindrical corner turrets and ornamental gables (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 248). Its appearance was still sufficiently domestic to carry the intended message that Britain is anything but a police state. The Central Criminal Court on Old Bailey was built on the site of Dance’s celebrated but forbidding Newgate Gaol. Like the Royal Courts, its design was the subject of a limited competition which was won by Edward Mountford, one of the leading Edwardian architects in the country. Rather than the architecture of domination which Dance had so successfully employed, the new courthouse is an exercise in the architecture of display (Service, 1977, 149–151). On the main façade, the entrance is topped by a segmental pediment carrying figures of Truth, Fortitude and the Recording Angel, the last representing the judicial process. The whole edifice is crowned by an imposing dome, derived from those on Wren’s Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich, that carries the famous gilt statue of Justice. Within, a tripartite entrance hall faced in marble leads to an Imperial staircase that rises to a domed Great Hall, off which open the courtrooms. The architectural detail of the Hall is much indebted to the interior of St Paul’s Cathedral (Photograph 7.5). It contains sculptural representations of Mercy, Temperance, Justice and Charity, together with murals depicting the progression of law through the ages. To stress the imperial reach of English law, an Indian prince is shown appealing directly to the figure of Justice. In contrast to the veneration of ancient English common law evinced by the medieval Royal Courts, the lavish interior of the Old Bailey celebrates the law as a vital pillar of the imperial state at the height of its power and self-belief (Bremner, 2022, 151–162).

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Photograph 7.5  Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey 1900-7 (Source: PAUL GROVER/Alamy Stock Photo)

In contrast to the maintenance of social order, which has been a necessity throughout history, the modern state has chosen to invest increasing amounts of financial and symbolic capital in cultural and educational institutions that project a benign image of its wealth and power. The examples of Ancient Greece and Rome are constant reminders of how potent such a strategy can be. Contemporary institutions such as a famous museum or prestigious university are especially effective instruments of cultural hegemony. They are markers of the level of civilisation that a society has achieved, and the buildings that house them have particular hegemonic effect. London is home to a great variety of such institutions, and their number continues to rise as the metropolis has evolved from imperial capital to global city. Some of the first, but still most celebrated, examples were the creation of nineteenth-century imperial Britain, as it sought to clothe its economic and military supremacy with cultural virtue. In their foundation at least, three pre-date the Victorian era: the British Museum (1823–52), University College (1827–9) and the National Gallery (1833–8).

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The British Museum played a central role in the emergence of the Greek Revival movement in England. The movement grew out of the archaeological tradition of the Neoclassical, with its belief in pure forms, allied to a rationalist belief in the sublimity of Greek forms compared to Roman (Mordaunt Crook, 1995, 90–96). Impetus for the movement came from the ‘rediscovery’ of Greece by British antiquarians during the eighteenth century, culminating in Lord Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon sculptures from Athens and their transfer to London between 1801 and 1812. Elgin was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, at that time ruler of Greece, and claimed he had their government’s authority for the removal of the sculptures. His stated motive was to accelerate ‘the progress of taste in England’ (Mordaunt Crook, 1995, 37). In 1816, the government purchased the sculptures for the nation, and they became one of the star attractions in the newly established British Museum. In 1823, the government commissioned Robert Smirke to design a new building to house all the antiquarian collections that had been purchased by the acquisitive state in previous decades. Smirke had himself travelled in Greece and become one of the leaders of the English Greek Revival. His monumental design is a masterpiece of classical architecture, echoing the form of the Ancient Greek temples that had been stripped of so many of their treasures (Cherry & Pevsner, 2002, 288–296). The plan of the museum comprises a quadrangle of four ranges set around a large central courtyard, within which Smirke’s younger brother later added a circular Reading Room. The majestic entrance front is centred on an eight-column temple portico framed by two projecting wings, the whole composition wrapped in a continuous colonnade of forty-four colossal Ionic columns modelled on that of the Temple of Athena Polias at Priene in Asia Minor (Photograph 7.6). In the grandeur of its scale and the purity of its Greek design, the museum closely resembles two built around the same time in Germany, the Glyptothek in Munich and the Altes Museum in Berlin, as well as the contemporary internal reconstruction of the Louvre in Paris. Following their recent hostilities in the Napoleonic Wars, the three main nations of Europe were all seized by the same desire to express their humanism through institutions of learning. The sculpture on the pediment of the British Museum portico, showing the ascent of man from primitive savage to civilised scholar, is a visual metaphor for that sentiment.

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Photograph 7.6 British Stock Photo)

Museum

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As views of the British Empire have become more critical in recent years, so have attitudes to many parts of the British Museum’s collection. Much of it was assembled at a time when the nation was a global imperial power, imposing itself by military force in the formal empire and by economic power in the informal empire. There is a critical tradition, stretching back to Byron’s denunciation of Elgin as a vandal, that parts of the collection are really the booty gained from imperial plunder. Such views are likely to become more widespread as Britain moves further away from its imperial past. William Wilkins was Smirke’s rival for leadership of the English Greek Revival movement, and he contributed two monumental buildings to London’s cultural landscape. In 1826, he won a competition to design the building for a new university to be established in London, soon to become known as University College. His winning design envisaged a grand winged structure set around a quadrangle (Summerson, 1993, 477), but funds were only available to construct the central range, containing the hall, library and lecture rooms. It is fronted by a massive ten-column

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Corinthian portico, modelled on that of the Temple of Jupiter Olympus in Athens (Cherry & Pevsner, 2002, 271). Started six years after University College, Wilkins’s National Gallery is less impressively monumental than his college building, and is generally considered to have failed in its objective of providing the crowning visual effect for the newly developed Trafalgar Square (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 305). Despite a central eight-column Corinthian portico with prominent dome above, the profile of the building is long and low, divided into too many straggling sections. Overall, it lacks the impact required for so commanding, and quintessentially patriotic, a site (Summerson, 2003, 240–241). Moving into the High Victorian era, we come to the most ambitious phase of cultural and educational building in London’s history, concentrated within a small area of South Kensington lying between Kensington Gardens and Cromwell Road (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 486–499). Here was created a centre of learning and culture that encapsulates the bourgeois ideology of progress in intellectual form. Building started in 1856 and went on intermittently for the rest of the century in an eclectic mix of styles (Dixon & Muthesius, 1985, 172–175). The three most imposing buildings in the original hegemonic ensemble are the Albert Hall (1867–71), the Natural History Museum (1872–81) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (1860–1909). The site was purchased out of the proceeds of the 1851 Great Exhibition, and the whole scheme masterminded by Sir Henry Cole, one of the exhibition’s committee members. Cole operated under the influence of Prince Albert, who was so closely involved in the project that the whole area became known rather satirically as Albertopolis (Wilson, 2019, 265–268). After his death in 1861, a memorial was erected to Albert on the northern edge of the site in Kensington Gardens. The Gothic design by George Gilbert Scott has been described as ‘the epitome in many ways of High Victorian ideals and High Victorian style, rich, solid, a little pompous, a little vulgar, but full of faith and self-confidence’ (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 489). Constructed of marble, granite, bronze and glass mosaics, the monument comprises a seated figure of Albert set within a shrine surrounded by some 170 sculpted figures. These include friezes of great painters, poets, composers, architects and sculptors, together with groups representing the economy (Agriculture, Manufacture, Commerce and Engineering) and the world system of trade and empire (Asia, Europe,

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Africa and America). This allegorical display is as much a monument to the achievements of the whole nation as it is to those of one man. Directly opposite the Albert Memorial stands the Albert Hall, utterly different in appearance. The design is by Cole’s protégé Francis Fowke, a Royal Engineer, who was involved in much of the early development of Albertopolis (Saint, 2007, 136–138). The concert hall takes the form of a vast elliptical amphitheatre, monumental in scale but quite austere in profile. In essence, it is a domed brick cylinder, with four grand entrance porches, surmounted by a glass dome supported by wrought iron trusses. The only surface decoration is a terracotta mosaic frieze running around the top of the drum, representing the Triumph of Art and Letters. The overall impression of mass rather than ornament reflects the imprint of the engineer, placing it closer to Paxton’s Crystal Palace than to one of Scott’s Gothic creations. Fowke also won the competition to design the Natural History Museum, but died before his plans could be implemented. Alfred Waterhouse took over the commission, but instead of employing his usual Gothic motifs, he redesigned the building in a German Romanesque style. Despite its medieval appearance, the museum is totally symmetrical in plan and elevation, with its glazed central hall lined up on an axis with the Albert Hall, flanked by three parallel galleries to each side. The main façade is dominated by a pair of tall towers framing a grand arched portal, reminiscent of a cathedral front, and is terminated at either end by massive roofed pavilions. Structurally, the building sits on an iron frame, which would have pleased Fowke, covered over with terracotta slabs, which were Waterhouse’s favourite decorative medium. Here is yet another example of the modernist contribution of the engineer being concealed within an architect’s traditionalist shell: ‘To an extent Waterhouse stole the royal engineer’s clothes’ (Saint, 2007, 138). Though the Victoria and Albert Museum was the first of the Albertopolis buildings to be started, it was also the last to be finished. It was developed slowly and in a piecemeal fashion, taking on the form of an interlinked sequence of courts. Again, Fowke was responsible for the initial phase of development, conceived in an Italian Renaissance style, for which he created a plain iron framework upon which could be attached a wide variety of ornament in glass, terracotta, ceramics, mosaic and fresco. In 1891, a competition was held to add a whole new front section to the museum, comprising a façade, entrance hall and series of galleries opening off a central hall. It was won by Aston Webb, who was to become

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one of the leading exponents of Edwardian Baroque. His design for the front of the museum is an exercise in wilful eclecticism taken to extremes, employing Renaissance, Baroque and even Gothic motifs. The centrepiece of the façade is an extraordinary confection of a round-arched Gothic portico, set within a projecting Baroque frontispiece, and crowned by a ‘Wrenaissance’ cupola. The effect is indulgent but incoherent, which could be an epitaph for Edwardian Britain in all its plutocratic excess.

7.8  Grand Finale At the turn of the twentieth century, London was invested with an abundance of symbolic capital, in its buildings, monuments and statues, that celebrated the nation’s economic and imperial supremacy. Indeed, it could claim to be the symbolic, as well as the administrative, capital of the Empire. But these symbols were scattered about the city of empire in an uncoordinated manner (Schneer, 1999, 17–28). What was lacking was a formal armature of avenues and vistas tying the individual buildings and monuments together in the fashion of Imperial Rome. The Georgian builders of aristocratic London had achieved that effect to some extent, as had the builders of other imperial capitals such as Paris, Berlin and Vienna. Efforts to rectify the situation had begun early in the nineteenth century and reached a climax in the Edwardian era. The aim was to enhance the ceremonial heart of the metropolis by creating a sequence of grand vistas along the royal route from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament via the Mall and Whitehall. It is along this ceremonial route that the spectacle of monarchy is enacted, through processions of royalty to attend their weddings and funerals, their coronations, and the state opening of Parliament. This theatre of spectacle is both a physical manifestation and a symbolic representation of the British state as a constitutional monarchy. The programme of works had begun in the 1820s. The conversion of Buckingham House into the monarch’s official London residence was started by John Nash in 1825 and continued intermittently up until 1850. To the west, the transformation of Hyde Park Corner into a monumental western approach to the palace began in 1824, when Decimus Burton designed a Greek screen facing Hyde Park and a Roman arch dominating the central space. Dedicated to the Duke of Wellington, this arch was a conscious riposte to the triumphal arches erected by Napoleon across Europe (Hitchcock, 1987, 108). To the east, the creation of Trafalgar

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Square as proposed by Nash began in 1820, with the National Gallery added from 1833, and Nelson’s Column from 1839. The two great heroes of Trafalgar and Waterloo were celebrated at either end of the ceremonial route (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003). Then, in 1901, Aston Webb won a competition to upgrade the Mall as the central spine of the royal route, bringing the whole programme of hegemonic building to a climax (Bremner, 2022, 181–195). He provided Buckingham Palace with a grand new façade facing down The Mall, fronted by a large rond-point in the middle of which was to stand a suitably imposing memorial to the late Queen Victoria. The Mall itself was widened into a major thoroughfare, and at the far end terminated by Admiralty Arch, a colossal triumphal arch leading into Trafalgar Square. The whole scheme constituted as fitting a hegemonic ensemble as the British state could conceive, linking the nation’s victory in the Napoleonic Wars to the subsequent glorious era of her imperial queen. Surprisingly for such a patriotic ensemble, Webb’s composition has a strongly French imperial flavour—both the palace façade and the rond-­ point in front of it are in the Beaux-Arts mode that originated in Second Empire Paris (Sutcliffe, 1993, 79–81). For the mid-Victorian builders of London, ‘Paris stood for absolutism, uniformity, classicism, and centralization: the antithesis of what their own metropolis ought to be’ (Olsen, 1976, 53). Yet here was Webb repeating that, perhaps subconscious, tendency, for English builders and architects to seek French models for buildings of special national significance. However, the imagery used on the Victoria Memorial by Webb and his associate Thomas Brock was unambiguously British. ‘It represents symbolically the Queen-Empress presiding over her sea-girt kingdom’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 655). The crowning gilt figure of Victory, with Courage and Constancy at her feet, is surrounded by four stone sculptural groups. The enthroned Queen stares imperiously down the Mall, flanked by the eternal virtues of Truth and Justice, while to the rear, facing Buckingham Palace, the figure of Motherhood represents her ‘great love for her people’ (Smith, 1999b, 28–30). On the surround are bronze groups of Progress and Peace, Manufacture and Agriculture, Painting with Architecture, and Shipbuilding with War. Here is the essence of Britain’s confident self-­ image, as world leader in economic development, great patron of the arts, and unchallenged ruler of a benevolent empire. Thus aggrandised, the city of empire provided the setting for a sequence of lavish royal ceremonials that provided a visualisation of the power of the

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imperial state. But despite their carefully contrived appearance of ancient ritual, much of this pageantry was in fact an elaborate Victorian exercise in the invention of tradition (Cannadine, 1992). Prior to the 1870s, royal ritual had been surprisingly understated, in part reflecting residual fears that the monarchy might still exceed its carefully circumscribed powers. However, between the 1870s and 1914 there was a fundamental change in the public image of the British monarchy. As ceremonial head of the world’s most powerful imperial state, to celebrate the monarchy was to celebrate the nation and its empire. This required that old ceremonials be revived, such as the state opening of parliament, and new ones invented, such as the lying-in-state of the deceased monarch. A similar dynamic gripped monarchies right across Europe, setting in train a process of competitive emulation which ensured that each royal ceremonial was more elaborate than the last. In 1887, Queen Victoria celebrated her golden jubilee by processing from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Abbey escorted by Indian cavalry. A decade later, her diamond jubilee was organised to be a ‘festival of the British Empire’ celebrated by perhaps the most impressive military procession ever staged in London, with troops from across the Empire riding or marching from Buckingham Palace to St Paul’s. While the queen’s funeral four years later was a more private affair, with no state funeral in London, the coronation of Edward VII in 1902 was celebrated with another royal procession involving large contingents of British and Empire troops. Edward’s lavish state funeral eight years later, as well as George V’s subsequent coronation, saw the largest gatherings of European royalty ever assembled. Few of those attending would have foreseen that many of these royal families were soon to be deposed during the First World War and its aftermath. Paradoxically, such elaborate ceremonials conducted in a grandiose landscape of power can be said to reflect the underlying anxieties of Edwardian Britain, in the face of growing economic and geopolitical competition from rival powers (Bremner, 2022, 43–77). Analogies between the British and Roman Empires inevitably meant contemplating how great empires decline and fall (Driver & Gilbert, 1998, 24). Nothing better symbolises the febrile mood of the nation than the gigantic bronze sculpture of Peace descending on the Quadriga of War that was placed on top of the Wellington Arch in 1912 (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 658). Just two years later, the Quadriga of War was trampling all over Peace, as imperial rivalries descended into catastrophic conflict. Previous decades of

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hegemonic building in London had celebrated a world that had come to a shuddering end. When the war was over, so was the age of Britain’s industrial and imperial supremacy. She was no longer the world’s most powerful economy, having been caught and overtaken by the United States and Germany, and her ebbing power meant that the long and often violent process of dismantling the British Empire was about to begin.

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CHAPTER 8

Modern Metropolis

8.1   Supreme No More The Britain that emerged from the end of the Second World War was a very different nation from that which had entered the First World War just thirty years previously. That earlier war announced the end of Britain’s industrial and imperial supremacy, setting in train the linked processes of deindustrialisation and decolonisation that are still being played out today. The last century has seen the nation slowly and painfully adapt to its diminished role in the world, as it seeks to create a new post-industrial and post-colonial identity. This adjustment process has inevitably caused London to re-define its own particular identity, as it has moved from capital of the world’s largest empire and most advanced industrial economy to a global city, semi-detached from the rest of the nation and increasingly embedded within the myriad networks of international finance. Relative industrial decline began before the nineteenth century reached its end (Dintenfass, 1992). The thrust of British industrialisation began to weaken, while competition intensified from rival nations undergoing their own industrialisation. There was another wave of major innovations in new industries such as steel, chemicals, electric power and automobiles, but Britain was no longer in the vanguard of their application, as the mantle of global technological leadership passed to the US and Germany (Mokyr, 1990, 113–148). The consequence was that the US and Germany

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Barras, Monumental London, Palgrave Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38403-5_8

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achieved rates of domestic capital formation that were twice as high as that maintained in Britain (Floud, 1994, 25). In the case of the US, this higher investment in turn yielded rates of manufacturing productivity that were double those attained in Britain (Broadberry, 1997, 36). Britain was suffering from being the first industrial nation. While relative decline was inevitable for the pioneer, once other countries embarked upon a similar path, the rate of that decline was precipitate. By 1913, both the US and Germany had moved ahead of Britain in terms of total manufacturing output (Bairoch, 1982, 284). It was symptomatic of Britain’s loss of supremacy by this time that three of her four largest electrical engineering firms were wholly owned subsidiaries of foreign enterprises, and that the largest automobile manufacturer in the country was Henry Ford (Kennedy, 1987, 5). The early leader had been caught and then overtaken by the pursuing pack. The problem was that Britain’s manufacturing base was still dominated by industries such as cotton that had led the first phase of industrialisation, setting up a feedback effect whereby profitability could more easily be maintained by incremental improvements to established technologies rather than by investing in radical new technologies. The economy had become ‘path dependent’, locked-in to a particular trajectory of development which had inferior long-run growth potential compared to that which would have resulted from switching to a cluster of the newer technologies and industries (Kennedy, 1987, 16–57). There is also a cultural argument as to why Britain lost its industrial supremacy so rapidly. Because finance rather than industry had become its hegemonic form of capital, the dominant ideology of gentlemanly capitalism set greater store by financial and commercial enterprise, leaving the Industrial Revolution undervalued and incomplete. It is even suggested that the lure of entering the ranks of the landed gentry may have sapped the entrepreneurial drive of the nation’s industrialists, so that their animal spirits were diverted from business expansion to social climbing (Wiener, 2004). This ‘cultural critique’ of Britain’s relative industrial decline has been taken even further by suggesting it was a function of the nation’s economic exceptionalism. In essence, the argument is that ‘Britain’s was never fundamentally an industrial and manufacturing economy; rather, it was always, even at the height of the industrial revolution, essentially a commercial, financial, and service-based economy whose comparative advantage always lay with commerce and finance’ (Rubinstein, 1993: 24). On

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this argument, Britain did not so much suffer industrial decline, but rather underwent a redirection of national resources and entrepreneurial energies away from industrial capitalism back into the commercial and financial capitalism which had blossomed during the eighteenth century. Whilst this argument may be overstated, it is certainly true that in Britain there was a growing divorce between financial and industrial capital during the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, in contrast to the symbiotic relationship between the two which blossomed in Germany (Cottrell, 1980, 194–247). Here we should recall that there were two interrelated causes of the exceptional development path followed by British capitalism: financial hegemony and imperial domination. The operation of the British economy was dictated as much by the performance of its overseas investments as by the demands of its domestic industries, and it was the City of London which mediated between those potentially conflicting interests (Ingham, 1984). The much lower rate of domestic capital formation undertaken in Britain between 1870 and 1913, compared to the US and Germany, can be explained by the fact that while the rate of savings in the three economies was broadly similar, up to half of the British surplus was invested abroad, whereas nearly all of the American and German surpluses were invested at home (Pollard, 1989, 58). The export of British capital not only generated overseas income but also stimulated global trade, which was to the nation’s benefit as the world’s leading trading economy (Mathias, 2001, 293–305). At the peak of its power, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, British exports accounted for around 20 per cent of the global total, twice as much as Germany, France or the US (Pollard, 1989, 6). From then on, however, the pursuing pack began to close the gap in terms of trading performance as well as levels of industrialisation. This was in part because British exports became less competitive due to the greater productivity gains and product diversification achieved by its competitors, and in part because these competitors were pursuing protectionist trade policies, sheltering their infant industries behind high tariff walls (Harley, 2004, 172). By 1913, Britain’s share of global exports had dropped to around 13 per cent, a share then matched by Germany and the US. No other major economy locked onto a development path like that followed by Britain. As described by the Austrian-born economist Rudolf Hilferding in Finance Capital, first published in 1910, other economies such as Germany and the US were developing a form of capitalism defined

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by a fusion of industrial, commercial and financial capital under the direction of powerful investment banks: ‘Finance capital signifies the unification of capital’ (Hilferding, 1981, 301). In contrast, the semi-detached relationship between industrial and financial capital which characterises British capitalism meant, paradoxically, that ‘the capital of world finance never witnessed the world of finance capital’ (Anderson, 1987, 44). Following the First World War, as the dismantling of its empire began and the relative decline of its industrial economy intensified, the limitations of the British model of capitalism became more apparent. The established social and political order was overturned by the First World War (Searle, 2004, 777–838). It not only imposed an unimaginable human cost but also had severe economic consequences (Darwin, 2009, 319–328). When she entered the war, Britain had already been overtaken by two of the other combatants, the US and Germany, in terms of the overall size of her economy (Maddison, 2007, 261). To maintain the war effort, she became critically dependent on American credit, vast resources in money and manpower were drawn from the Empire, a substantial slice of the nation’s overseas investment portfolio had to be liquidated, and the national debt as a proportion of national income surged back to levels last seen during the Napoleonic War. However, despite its adverse effects upon the City economy as a whole, war yet again generated a massive increase in the business handled by the Bank of England to support the national war effort. And once again the Directors decided that the necessary response was yet another programme of rebuilding (Abramson, 2005, 205–225). This fourth incarnation of the Bank was built by Herbert Baker between 1921 and 1942. He expanded the available space by raising within the retained perimeter wall a multi-storey block styled in Edwardian Baroque. This was fronted by a vast pedimented portico looking out over Bank Junction, the financial heart of the nation and the Empire (Bremner, 2022 219–228). As the work proceeded it proved impracticable to retain the finest of the existing interiors, in particular Soane’s famous banking halls. Their demolition is considered to have caused ‘the worst individual loss suffered by London’s architecture in the twentieth century’. Baker did attempt a reconstruction of Soane’s halls, as well as Taylor’s Court Room, but the difference between Baker and Soane was ‘the gulf between talented professionalism and imaginative genius’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 276–277).

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Baker was an architect whose reputation rested on his imperial projects in India and South Africa, and it was his desire that the Bank building give expression to Britain’s national and imperial identity. Like each of the Bank’s preceding architects, he chose the current prevailing form of classicism to connote trust and security, and in particular to communicate the Bank’s status as a quasi-public institution rather than a commercial enterprise (even though it was not formally nationalised until 1946). Adorning the bronze entrance doors are images of lions, symbols of national identity, while six giant sculpted figures in classical form support the portico, symbols of imperial identity (Black, 1999a, 103–109). During construction, a mosaic floor from Roman Londinium was uncovered in the foundations, and this was re-laid in the new building to provide a direct link between the two imperial identities of the City, separated by nearly two millennia (Bremner, 2022, 225).

8.2   Deindustrialisation The inter-war period during which the Bank was under construction witnessed extreme economic turbulence. Post-war recovery generated a great consumer and credit boom during the 1920s, culminating dramatically in Wall Street Crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression of the early 1930s (Crafts & Fearon, 2013). The depression caused a huge contraction in world trade, an unprecedented fall in global output, severe price deflation and soaring unemployment. These shocks did, however, provide a stimulus for the wholesale rationalisation and modernisation of British industry (Pollard, 1992, 37–82). Old staple industries such as coal and textiles declined in the face of weakening overseas demand, while rising real incomes fuelled the expansion of new consumer goods industries. The automobile age took off, as motor vehicles were mass-produced in large assembly line plants using techniques pioneered in the US. A new generation of industries in sectors such as food and clothing were established, creating a decisive shift in the location of manufacturing from the traditional heavy industrial regions in the North and Midlands to new concentrations of light industry in the South and East. Across all sectors of the economy, there was a marked acceleration in the formation of large corporations; oligopoly was becoming the standard form of business organisation in Britain, as in all the major capitalist economies (Daunton, 2007, 104–120).

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Despite the modernisation of manufacturing industry, it was during the inter-war period that the deindustrialisation of the British economy began in earnest. It was the start of a fundamental structural shift away from manufacturing towards services, again a feature of all advanced economies. As societies became richer, their people spent an increasing proportion of their income on services rather than goods. A key factor in the long-term rise of the service economy in Britain has been the sustained expansion of the financial and business services industries based in the City of London. However, that expansion was only maintained by a difficult redefinition of the role of the City in the aftermath of the First World War, a war which was considered to have been ‘the worst thing that ever happened to the City of London’ (Kynaston, 2000, 10). It marked the start of the disintegration of the British world system, and the temporary retreat of the City from a primarily global to a more domestic role. There were three interrelated strands to the disintegration of British global hegemony: the loss of overseas markets, the contraction of foreign investment and the dismantling of Empire. Britain’s international trade was severely disrupted by the war, to the extent that exports as a share of GDP collapsed from 30 per cent in 1913 to just 12 per cent in 1918 (Mitchell, 1988, 453). Furthermore, in the aftermath of war, a weakened nation was forced to cede control of markets she had previously dominated, in particular Latin American markets taken over by the US and Asian markets taken over by Japan (Eichengreen, 2004, 318). Foreign investment suffered less severely than trade from the war, but its value also declined during the depressed conditions of the inter-war period (Daunton, 2007, 263–267). Nevertheless, despite capital exports shrinking as a share of national income, Britain remained the world’s largest overseas investor, still accounting for almost 40 per cent of global foreign investment in 1938 compared to a US share of just over one quarter (Maddison, 2007, 101). Even before the start of the First World War, the first hesitant steps had been taken in the protracted process of dismantling the British Empire and converting it into a Commonwealth of independent nations (Robbins, 1994, 109–114). The colonies of white settlement (Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand) had been granted the status of Dominions, enjoying a degree of self-government though still dependent on Britain for the conduct of their foreign and defence policies. In 1931, the old white empire finally came to an end, when the Statute of Westminster extended

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the principal of self-government to the external as well as the domestic affairs of the Dominions. However, though formally independent, they were bound into a Sterling Area trading bloc, protected by an ‘imperial preference’ system of discriminatory tariffs (Cain & Hopkins, 2016, 501–559). The British world system was kept alive for a little while longer. Only the white Dominions were covered by the Statute of Westminster, which was considered to be without implications for the remainder of the Empire. However, the special case of India could not be ignored. Even before the war, there had been agitation and unrest in the population, much of it deriving from religious animosities. British policy was to hold out the promise of self-government in the long term, while containing the pressure for independence in the short term. This strategy failed to suppress the unrest, which became channelled into a campaign of disobedience led by Mahatma Gandhi (Darwin, 2009, 462–469). It took a second world war for Indian independence to become unstoppable, and for independence movements subsequently to spread across Africa. Relative economic decline and the slow disintegration of the British world system combined to undermine the supremacy of the City of London during the inter-war period. Reflecting the shift in global hegemony, New York took over as the world’s leading financial centre, with the dollar supplanting the pound as the main international trading and reserve currency. The Great Depression marked a crucial turning point for Britain, as the gold standard which had underpinned its global trading system disintegrated (Ingham, 1984, 170–200). The once supreme global power was forced to devalue its benchmark currency, to the extent that sterling lost a massive 30 per cent of its value against the dollar (Eichengreen, 2008, 70–90). The accompanying slump in world trade, together with widespread loan defaults by overseas governments, did considerable damage to City interests (Roberts, 2008, 33). Contraction of their international interests forced the City’s commercial banks to become more inward-looking during the inter-war period (Kynaston, 2000). In particular, they provided more short-term support for established companies in the declining staple industries, but remained less inclined to supply them with long-term finance (Collins, 1995, 61–75). Nor did they favour extending risk capital to small and medium-­ sized companies or to the new technology-based firms which emerged during the 1930s. Though the gap may have narrowed for a while, there persisted that lack of integration between financial and industrial capital

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which has constrained the rationalisation of British industry ever since the late nineteenth century (Best & Humphries, 1986). Another wave of mergers led to further consolidation within the commercial banking sector (Wardley, 2000). By the early 1920s, the process of amalgamation had made the Midland the largest of the UK clearing banks, and indeed elevated it to the status of the largest bank in the world. The Big Five operated as a cartel, competing through level of service rather than price, principally by extending branch networks and broadening the range of financial products on offer (Collins, 2012, 203–212). Their huge asset base also allowed them a role as multi-national banks (Jones, 1993, 138–57). This was a sector that expanded rapidly during the 1920s boom but stagnated during the depressed trading conditions of the 1930s, as profits plunged and markets contracted. It was only after the Second World War that multinational banking became such a dominant force in the global economy. The further centralisation of commercial banking stimulated a new wave of hegemonic building that remodelled the financial landscape of power in the heart of the City. During the inter-war period, four of the Big Five (Midland, Lloyds, National Provincial and Westminster) built new City headquarters in a spiral of competitive emulation that was labelled the ‘Battle of the Bankers’ Palaces’ by one of London’s evening newspapers (Black, 1999b, 134). Fighting for their clients in this battle were some of the leading architects of the day, each employing a different variant of classicism that was still deemed the essential style for these cornerstones of the financial economy (Booker, 1990, 229–236). Each of these new headquarters was located as close as possible to Bank Junction, the pre-eminent City address. All were started during the booming 1920s, but none were completed before the onset of the depressed 1930s. First to begin building was the Westminster Bank, who commissioned Arthur Davis of Mewès and Davis to design their new headquarters on Lothbury. Between 1921 and 1932, Davis created a High Renaissance palace, with a triumphal entrance leading into a banking hall lined with Ionic columns (Black, 1999b, 138–140). Lloyds chose John Burnet, in association with Campbell-Jones and Smithers, to build their Cornhill headquarters between 1927 and 1930. It is styled in the Grand Manner, with a giant Corinthian colonnade rising through three storeys of the main façade (Black, 1999b, 135–137). The National Provincial building on Poultry was constructed by Edwin Cooper between 1929 and 1932.

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He employed a restrained Baroque style, incorporating much allegorical sculpture projecting a suitably dignified image, with Britannia accompanied by Mathematics, Truth and Wisdom (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 580). Overshadowing the National Provincial building on Poultry was the new Midland Bank headquarters. As befitted the largest of the Big Five, this was the most magnificent of the new generation of bank offices. It was designed in an Italian Mannerist style by Edwin Lutyens, the grandest of Grand Manner architects. Particularly notable was the ‘immensely impressive interior: very tall, and broader than anything previously seen in a City bank’, with a forest of green verdite columns offset against white marble walls (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 580). Lavish finishes and extraordinary security features meant that it took sixteen years to complete, between 1924 and 1939, making it probably the most expensive office building ever erected in the City in terms of its real unit cost (Barras, 2016, 346). The result conveyed ‘a sense of immeasurable authority and the deepest of deep pockets’ (Kynaston, 2000, 264). The 1920s boom encouraged large corporations in other sectors of the economy to build showpiece City headquarters for themselves. Outstanding among them is Britannic House on Finsbury Circus, another Italian Mannerist design by Lutyens for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, later British Petroleum. Slightly larger than the Midland Bank building, this Lutyens creation took just five years to build, between 1921 and 1925, less than a third of the time taken to complete the bank headquarters. The contrast in construction times is an apt illustration of how much more resources banks were prepared to invest in their monumental buildings than industrial enterprises, reflecting how finance rather than industrial capital had seized the hegemonic leadership of British capitalism. Final completion of the Midland Bank building coincided with the outbreak of another global conflict. The impact of the Second World War on the British economy was as severe as that of the First (Howlett, 2004). Though the human costs were somewhat less terrible for Britain, the destruction of the nation’s physical capital in the form of buildings, equipment and shipping was enormous. Despite receiving ‘lend-lease’ aid from the US worth over $20 billion, the national debt reached an unprecedented peak of two and a half times national income by the end of the war. Nevertheless, as one of the victors, Britain emerged from the war still the third largest industrialised economy in the world. The US was now the undisputed global hegemon, far larger than any other economy, while in second place defeated Germany had fallen back to be replaced by one of

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the other victors, the Soviet Union (Maddison, 2007, 261). This was the state of the world as the nation sought a new role for itself in the transformed global order, now under American rather than British control. The Second World War completed the disintegration of the British world system. In its aftermath, decolonisation gathered pace ‘with as much dignity as the pressures of nationalism and the need for economy would allow’ (Cain & Hopkins, 2016, 674). Most momentous was the granting of independence to India in 1947, precipitated by the vital contribution it had made to the British war effort (Darwin, 2009, 505–508). Thereafter, the process of decolonisation was to all intents and purposes over by the mid-1960s, although not without some bloody, but inevitably unsuccessful, struggles with nationalist movements along the way. The Empire had been transformed into a Commonwealth of Nations within the span of two decades (Robbins, 1994, 266–271). One of the most important factors hastening the process of decolonisation was the growing realisation by government policy-makers that Britain as a whole, and the City of London in particular, had more to gain by engaging with the emerging world of global finance rather than remaining penned into the Sterling Area trading bloc established in the 1930s (Cain and Hopkins 216, 672–674). The nation had become a net debtor in order to fund the war effort, liquidating much of its remaining foreign portfolio while accumulating massive debts overseas (Michie, 1992, 113–114). This marked a new departure for Britain in the field of international investment. As the post-war recovery gathered pace, so did flows of capital in both directions, in and out of the country (Pollard, 1992, 301–313). From being the principal source of overseas investment in her imperial pomp, the nation was becoming one node in the global network of international finance. The end of the Sterling Area in 1972 and the accession of the UK to the European Communities in 1973 were crucial events marking the transition of London from an imperial capital to a global city.

8.3  Redistribution of Power As well as undergoing fundamental economic restructuring, Britain experienced a great social and political transformation during the twentieth century. Through the process we have described as ‘punctuated hegemony’, both wealth and power were redistributed down through classes and communities, redefining the nature of capitalist society. The

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redistribution of power began during the Victorian era, while the redistribution of wealth started with the First World War. Both redistributions had important impacts on hegemonic building in London. As urban growth accelerated during the nineteenth century, there was a commensurate increase in the range and complexity of the functions performed by the state. The pressures on central government to devolve powers to the local level of government became overwhelming. A series of reforms were passed, redefining the division of powers between the two levels of government (Waller, 1983, 240–280). As local governments accumulated increased powers, so local communities were imbued with a growing sense of civic pride. To this sentiment their political leaders responded by commissioning the construction of monumental civic buildings, such as town halls, law courts and libraries, to proclaim the enhanced status of their towns and cities. With political power split between two separate levels of government, conflict between the central and local levels was inevitable. The conflict was played out through the division of powers and the sources of revenue, with the division of powers reflected in the split of fund-raising between local rates and central government taxes. Rates levied on the owners of land and buildings were the predominant source of local authority revenue, and as the activities of local authorities increased, so did the income they derived from rates—through increases in both rateable values and the rate levy. Altogether, during the final quarter of the nineteenth century, the population of England and Wales grew by 37 per cent, the rateable value of its landed properties by 61 per cent and the revenue from rates by 141 per cent (Waller, 1983, 257). The nation’s towns and cities were becoming wealthier as well as more powerful. Nowhere was the struggle between central and local government more acute than in London. The sheer size and diversity of the metropolis acted against the establishment of an effective municipal authority, as did the determination of the City Corporation to remain independent of any external control (Briggs, 1968, 319–326). Nevertheless, in 1888 the London County Council was established, becoming the world’s largest municipal authority at that time. This was followed in 1899 by a further devolution of power to 28 metropolitan boroughs, created as a counterweight to the metropolitan authority. Creation of the LCC dismayed establishment opinion, which feared that the new authority would turn out to be a wealthy and powerful rival to the national parliament (Waller, 1983, 53–65). These fears were

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seemingly confirmed when political control of the council was won by a Progressive alliance, raising the dreaded spectre of municipal socialism (Hunt, 2019, 365–380). London joined the vanguard of cities threatening the established order by seeking to recreate themselves as ‘embryos of the Collectivist State’, through programmes of public works, employee protection and social welfare (Pennybacker, 1995). The confrontation between metropolitan authority and nation state extended to their headquarters buildings. Right across the country, Victorian and Edwardian town halls had sprung up as monumental expressions of municipal authority, but it was not until 1912 that work started on County Hall, London’s hegemonic statement of metropolitan power. The chosen site was itself a political statement—on the south bank of the Thames in the poor borough of Lambeth, almost directly opposite the Palace of Westminster on the north bank of the river in the wealthy borough of Westminster. Furthermore, the building itself was designed on a scale that far surpassed that of any municipal building in the nation’s provincial cities (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 355–357). Not only was County Hall grandiose in scale, but it was also styled in an imperious Edwardian Baroque, reminiscent of the near contemporary Bank of England. Far from heralding a new egalitarian age of municipal socialism, it was a traditional statement of power expressed in a form easily recognisable across the river in the Houses of Parliament. Adoption of the Grand Manner may in part reflect the shift in political power within the LCC as a result of the 1907 election, which ejected the Progressive alliance and replaced it with a Conservative administration. The architect of County Hall was Ralph Knott, winner of a competition held in 1908. He created an enormous river front, over 200 metres long, centred on a giant concave Ionic colonnade flanked by rusticated pavilions (Photograph 8.1). This Baroque frontage earned it the nickname ‘Hôtel de Ville’ when the building was opened by George V in 1922, which would have been a further affront to the patriotic traditionalists in the Palace of Westminster (Survey of London, 1991, 70–91). Construction was interrupted by the First World War, the central section was completed in 1922, the whole river front was completed by 1933, further extensions were undertaken after the Second World War, and the whole building not completed until 1974. In 1965 the LCC was absorbed into a new Greater London Council, but this did nothing to lessen the confrontational nature of the city’s relationship with central government. Matters came to a head in 1986, when

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Photograph 8.1  County Hall 1912–74 (Source: riou jean-christophe/Alamy Stock Photo)

a left-wing Labour administration provoked the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher into abolishing the GLC, along with six other metropolitan councils (Porter, 1994, 364–369). The humiliation was reinforced by the decommissioning of County Hall as an administrative headquarters, just twelve years after its completion, leading to its eventual conversion into hotels, an aquarium, a mock dungeon and an ‘interactive fairytale experience’. The victory of the conservative state over the radical metropolis was complete.

8.4  Redistribution of Wealth The redistribution of political power in Britain which began in the nineteenth century has been overshadowed by the much more revolutionary redistribution of wealth which took place during the twentieth century. The changing distribution of national wealth is determined by the interplay of contrasting forces of divergence and convergence, the former widening the distribution, the latter narrowing it. Between 1920 and 1980

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the forces of convergence prevailed, leading to a dramatic levelling in the distributions of national wealth and income. One of the defining characteristics of capitalism is an underlying tendency to divergence, whereby the owners of the means of production are able to accumulate an ever-greater share of the wealth produced in society. In his ground-breaking study of Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the French economist Thomas Piketty attributes this phenomenon to what he calls the central contradiction of capitalism: that the rate of return on capital tends to exceed the rate of economic growth. In this situation, it follows that inherited wealth grows faster than output and income, so that owners of inherited wealth need only save a portion of their income from capital for the volume of capital to grow more quickly than the economy as a whole. ‘The entrepreneur inevitably tends to become a rentier, more and more dominant over those who own nothing but their labour. Once constituted, capital reproduces itself faster than output increases. The past devours the future’ (Piketty, 2014, 571). During the early stages of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of the capitalist class was all too apparent. Falling death rates and the migration of population to the towns created an industrial reserve army of labour which depressed the economic conditions of the working class. The growth in real wages failed to keep pace with the growth in labour productivity resulting from the establishment of new industries and technologies. Profits therefore accounted for a rising share of national income, facilitating the rapid accumulation of wealth by the new capitalist class. It has been estimated that the share of national wealth held by the top 1 per cent of the nation’s wealthy households increased from around 40 per cent of the total in 1700 to a peak of slightly over 60 per cent by 1875 (Lindert, 1986, 1145). However, as industrial capitalism matured, it generated countervailing forces of convergence that offset the underlying tendency towards the increasing concentration of wealth. Technological progress demands that the workforce acquires enhanced knowledge and skills, leading to an increase in the resources devoted to education and training. Investment in the human capital embodied in the workforce increases its productivity, feeding back to boost the rate of technological progress and thus the rate of output growth. As output growth moves ahead of population growth, growth in real wages can be sustained, squeezing profits and increasing labour’s share of national income. The modern form of capitalist economy has become established through the mutual reinforcement of

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technological progress, investment in human capital and rising real incomes (Galor & Weil, 2000). The virtuous circle of technological progress feeding workforce income growth has been augmented by social and political forces seeking to redistribute income and wealth from the owners of capital to the owners of labour. The growth of trades unions has armed the workforce with enhanced bargaining power to exert upward pressure on wages, while political pressures on the state have led to the implementation of progressive fiscal and social policies. The bourgeois ideology of progress, founded on individualistic profit-seeking, has taken on a more egalitarian and collectivist character. Indeed, the conflict between individualism and collectivism has become one of the defining ideological struggles within modern society (Abercrombie et al., 1980, 128–155). Ideologies that espouse the redistribution or even common ownership of wealth have a long pedigree in Britain (Phelps Brown, 1988). They can be traced back as least as far as the English Revolution, when sects such as the Levellers and Diggers briefly flourished (Hill, 2019). Egalitarianism animated radical movements such as Chartism that evolved in response to the exploitative nature of early capitalism (Belchem, 1996). The social and political reforms introduced during the Victorian era included egalitarian elements such as widening the electoral franchise and mitigating the extremes of poverty. During the twentieth century, egalitarian ideals underpinned the programmes of successive Liberal and Labour governments, as they undertook the conversion of the Victorian industrial-capitalist state into a modern ‘welfare-capitalist state’. Far from wishing to overthrow capitalism, the aim of progressive governments has been to create a more egalitarian and collectivist form of capitalism through a combination of redistributive taxation, welfare provision and social investment in housing, health and education. The levelling of wealth and income distributions in Britain during the twentieth century gained particular impetus from the two World Wars. A massive expansion of state activity and a substantial increase in taxation were required to wage each war, creating a peacetime political settlement with a strongly redistributive mandate. The Coalition government of David Lloyd George, formed during the First World War, extended the franchise to include women for the first time, increased income and inheritance taxes, brought in universal unemployment insurance and tasked local authorities with investing in public housing provision (Pugh, 2022,

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231–243). The social democratic Labour government of Clement Attlee, which achieved power after the Second World War, was even more radical, seeing through the reform of the public education system, the creation of the welfare state and the establishment of the National Health Service (Pugh, 2022, 375–390). In combination, these measures led to a remarkable transformation of social provision and personal taxation between the start of the First World War and the end of the Second. Spending on government social services, covering health, housing, education and social security, more than tripled from 4 to 14 per cent of GDP between 1910 and 1950 (Harris, 2014, 142). The top rate of income tax rose from 8.3 per cent in 1910 to 98 per cent by 1950, while the top rate of inheritance tax rose from 15 to 80 per cent over the same period (Piketty, 2014, 499–503). Despite these seemingly onerous levels of taxation, British capitalism enjoyed its most productive and progressive phase during the global economic boom that followed the end of the Second World War (Alford, 1996, 245–285). These were the ‘golden years’ (Hobsbawm, 1994, 257–286). The rate of domestic capital formation rose to double the historic average, with a surge of investment in new technologies, mass production methods and workforce training. Record levels of investment maintained record levels of growth in productivity, output and real wages (Barras, 2016, 118). The workforce was able to win a greater share of the wealth it was creating than ever before or since. Rising living standards generated sustained growth in demand for new consumer goods such as cars and televisions, and stimulated the growth of new industries such as electronics and pharmaceuticals. The new service economy was also expanding rapidly, led by major state investment in public services such as health and education, and by the growing demand for private financial and business services from both the household and corporate sectors (Gershuny & Miles, 1983). The great levelling in wealth and income distributions that had started after the First World War reached its climax during the long post-war boom. This was the era of the Keynesian welfare state (Jessop, 2002, 55–94). A political consensus was built on the goals of full employment, rising real incomes, expanding public services and the spread of wealth down through the social classes (Pugh, 2022, 390–394). Across all sectors of provision, spending on social services enjoyed a further increase from 14 to 25 per cent of GDP between 1950 and 1980. By the end of the boom, the distribution of wealth and income in Britain was more equal than at any point

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in its recorded history. The share of the top 1 per cent of income earners had fallen from around 20 per cent at the end of the First World War to a trough of just 6 per cent by the late 1970s, while the share of the top 1 per cent of wealth holders had shrunk by a similar proportion, from 60 per cent down to just under 20 per cent (Atkinson, 2015, 19; Atkinson et al., 1989, 318). While the Great Levelling transformed every aspect of life in Britain, it severely weakened the hegemonic imperative for monumental building in the public realm. Two World Wars, the Great Depression and a General Strike were the most dramatic events contributing to decades of political and social as well as economic turbulence. Under these conditions, the state had to devote its energies to the necessity of holding the social order together rather than the luxury of celebrating it in built form. Following its Edwardian climax in Whitehall and the Mall, central government did not undertake another monumental building project in London until the 1960s. Ironically, the mantle of hegemonic builder in the city of empire passed to the more radical local government of the LCC. ‘Notwithstanding its liberal and democratic credentials, the LCC did not refrain from exploiting the discourse of the imperial city’ (Driver & Gilbert, 1998, 20). The Council’s principal project was an ambitious exercise in urban planning to create a new north-south thoroughfare linking the historic east-west routes of Holborn and the Strand. The result, patriotically named Kingsway, comprised a broad tree-lined avenue modelled on the boulevards of Continental capitals, culminating in the Aldwych, a crescent that doubled back on the Strand. Plans were made as far back as 1898, and a limited architectural competition held in 1900, producing eight designs that were all in a classical Imperial style. But the Council lacked both sufficient resources and enough political will to adopt any of the grand unified schemes. Nevertheless, clearance began in 1900 and the road declared open in 1905, but the buildings along the route were not completed until 1935 (Schneer, 1999, 19–27). Aldwych is filled entirely with monumental buildings (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 330–333). Among them are two imperial government headquarters, perhaps surprisingly built when the process of decolonisation was starting to get underway. Australia House (1913–18) is by A M and A G R Mackenzie, architects of the nearby Waldorf Hotel. It is styled in Imperial Baroque, encased in pairs of giant Doric columns, with allegorical groups of stone figures representing The Awakening of Australia

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guarding the entrance, and a huge bronze group of Apollo rising from the sea set above. India House (1928–30) by Herbert Baker, architect of the Bank of England, tactfully eschews the Grand Manner and employs a more restrained classicism. Its interiors display distinctively Indian motifs and mural schemes by indigenous artists. While these two Aldwych buildings were monuments to the legacy of imperialism, a third housed an institution with a more modern hegemonic purpose, that of the mass media. Bush House (1920–35) by New  York architect Harvey Corbett is the climax of the Aldwych scheme. Originally built as a trade centre, it functioned as the headquarters of the BBC World Service between 1941 and 2012. And from Bush House it is only a short distance down the Strand to Fleet Street, home since the start of the eighteenth century to another, very different arm of the mass media, the newspaper industry. These media institutions have become vital instruments of hegemonic influence in modern society, greatly expanding the scope for the transmission of ideology (Thompson, 1990, 216–271). Their object is the manufacture of consent, communicating a discourse that promotes the dominant ideology of the ruling order, as it seeks to legitimise its power and maintain the status quo. In differing ways and to differing degrees, these agencies of the mass media employ the whole gamut of ideological strategies that can be used to promote the status quo. These include rationalisation of its supposed benefits, dissimulation as to its true nature, denigration of its competing ideologies and universalisation of its identity as the natural order of things. Founded in 1922, the BBC rapidly became a touchstone of the collectivist ideal in Britain (Hendy, 2022). As the embodiment of public service broadcasting, it promotes the status quo of an eternal Britishness through rationalisation and universalisation. In the perpetual quest for ‘balance’, it speaks to the nation and for the nation in measured tones that allow for differences of opinion but avoid the partisan or the polarising. The establishment of its World Service during the 1930s transformed the BBC from a national to a global broadcaster, revitalising British influence by substituting the soft power of cultural hegemony for the hard power of imperial conquest (Nye, 2004). In contrast, newspapers are more inclined to adopt strategies of dissimulation and denigration, in pursuit of an openly partisan agenda that in most cases promotes an ideology of competitive individualism. Through disinformation, omission and bias, their presentation of the news can

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sometimes fall little short of propaganda (Herman & Chomsky, 1994, 1–35). The power of the British press as measured by its circulation peaked in the boom years that followed the end of the Second World War (Thompson, 1990, 179), after which sales have declined in the face of growing competition from television and, more recently, social media. At the industry peak, Fleet Street accommodated the headquarters of most of the national newspapers, but during the 1980s cost pressures forced them one by one to move to more efficient, less expensive locations. Viewing themselves as modern institutions, media organisations have tended to favour the latest architectural fashions for their trophy headquarters. Because of its commercial origins, Bush House was not an avant-garde building, rather displaying a showy classicism with two huge Corinthian columns capped by an entablature framing the entrance, as if to a Roman baths. However, Broadcasting House on Portland Place (1928–32), the original purpose-built headquarters of the BBC, was designed by George Val Myer in an Art Deco style that made it one of the first Modernist buildings to appear in London (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 650). Within was a state-of-the-art ‘sound factory’ that enthused one national newspaper to describe the building as ‘the brain centre of modern civilization’ (Hendy, 2022, 102). Similarly, on Fleet Street, the two surviving newspaper offices demonstrate the industry’s penchant for Modernism, in its flamboyant Art Deco form. The Daily Telegraph building by Elcock and Sutcliffe with Thomas Tait (1928–31) is an extravagant Graeco-Egyptian pastiche, while the celebrated Daily Express building by Owen Williams (1930–3) is a far more distinguished example of the style (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 499–500). Williams was that rare creature in the tradition of Brunel and Telford, an engineer-architect who believed in the essential unity of the two disciplines (Yeomans & Cottam, 2001). The streamlined window bands, rounded corners, elevations of black glass and sensational entrance hall of his Express building make this one of the keynote buildings of early Modernism, which was to become the trademark architectural style of the Great Levelling and the collectivist post-war boom.

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8.5  Age of Modernism Modernism was a totally new form of architecture born out of the far broader cultural movement of modernity (Heynen, 1999, 8–14). It is a movement that originated in the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, inspired the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, drove the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century and created the conditions for the emergence of modern society in the twentieth century. The continuous upheaval and transformation that characterises modern capitalist society is the product of three centuries of revolution in every sphere of life (Harvey, 1990, 10–38). For both Marx and Weber, modernity and capitalism are two aspects of the same social process (Sayer, 1991). If machinery was the fundamental driver of capitalist development, its transformational power was the abiding symbol of modernity. The Modern Age was also the Machine Age. Rationality and progress are the animating ideas of modernity. Progress is achieved through a process which Weber called the rationalisation of society—of its economy, its state, its culture (Weber, 2009, 6–11). Rationalisation is achieved through the exercise of critical reason, challenging every assumption of the established order. Modernity is engaged in a perpetual struggle with tradition, creating a turbulent dynamic of ‘creative destruction’. It is a process that continuously revolutionises the economic and social structure from within, ‘incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one’ (Schumpeter, 1943, 83). The past must be destroyed in order to control the future. In the words of Marx and Engels, modern life is a maelstrom in which ‘all that is solid melts into air’ (Marx & Engels, 2002, 223). During the twentieth century, the modern movement transformed every branch of the arts, and its most visible manifestation was in building design and urban form (Pfammatter, 2008). Modernism finally achieved the fusion of building technology and building form that had eluded, or had been rejected, by Victorian and Edwardian architects. They had endeavoured to use revivalist styles to express national identity, forcing modern structures to fit traditional aesthetics. In contrast, Modernism was a universalising movement that fully embraced the bourgeois ideology of progress, creating a new aesthetic to suit the imperatives of technology. Modernism was motivated by the ambition to reshape the fabric and structure of the city in accordance with its vision of the ideal future city (Gold, 2013). Futuristic structures such as skyscrapers, factories and

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motorways inspired the architects of the movement. In pursuit of a collectivist ideology, the Modernists sought to further social progress by imposing rational order on the city, creating planned neighbourhoods structured around a road network designed to accommodate the automobile, urban symbol of machine power (Berman, 2010, 164–171). Within the armature of the Modernist city were conceived Modernist buildings in revolutionary new forms. The essence of the new architecture can be summarised in four principles: clear articulation of structure, transparency of interior spaces, use of modular proportions and standardised components, and the pre-eminence of proportion over decoration (Hitchcock & Johnson, 1995). This was the chosen aesthetic of the Machine Age. Elements of this credo can be traced back to the Neoclassicism of the late eighteenth century, with its preference for geometrical forms, plain surfaces and limited decoration, and to the engineering revolution of the nineteenth century, with its use of iron and glass to create structures in which volume is defined by line not mass, and ornament is minimal or non-existent (Frampton, 2020, 14–46). These functionalist ideals were seized upon by the American architects who launched the skyscraper revolution in Chicago and New York towards the end of the nineteenth century. Office towers were a new built form, a product of the growing financialisation of the capitalist economy, and they were a built form ideally suited to the Modernist belief in simplification of design and direct expression of structure in the interests of economic efficiency (Curtis, 1996, 40–51). Steel-framing, masonry cladding, rectangular floor-plates and tier upon tier of windows could be employed to create buildings with the most efficient and flexible layout of internal space for business use. ‘Form follows function’ was the dictum adopted by the First Chicago School led by its leading architect Louis Sullivan (Condit, 1964, 36). The result was buildings in the stark rectilinear forms that became emblematic of the Modernist movement (van Leeuwen, 1988). Since skyscrapers are located in the central business districts of major cities, where land is most expensive, there is a strong economic imperative to maximise the usable floor space on a given site. The response is to build as high as possible, with successive innovations in construction technology allowing each generation of office towers to be taller than the last. This dynamic has created a cycle of competitive emulation, whereby architects and their clients strive to build ever taller and more striking towers, in part for commercial profitability and in part for hegemonic supremacy.

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Chicago pioneered development of the first generation of office towers, following the Great Fire which destroyed much of its central business district in 1871 (Condit, 1964). Combining the skills of the architect and the engineer, the Chicago School employed steel-framing, deep foundations and the installation of lifts to construct office buildings that were substantially larger, taller and more functionalist than their predecessors (Saint, 2007, 182–192). By the start of the twentieth century, New York had taken over the lead from Chicago, building towers that were higher, yet paradoxically of a more traditional form, than those produced by the Chicago School (Landau & Condit, 1996). The architects of this first generation of New  York skyscrapers were seemingly unable to dispense with the trappings of revivalist styles, clothing their towers in a French Neoclassical or an even more incongruous Late Gothic garb. The frenzy of New York skyscraper building reached its climax in the 1920s boom. As the competitive fever intensified, the height of the city’s office towers rose in tandem with land prices: the higher the site value, the taller had to be the tower to make the scheme profitable. From 30 to 40 storeys in 1925, towers reached 40 to 50 storeys by 1930, with a dozen or so buildings exceeding 50 storeys. Three skyscrapers competed to become the tallest in the city, and therefore in the world, and all three were completed within a 12-month period in 1930/1 (Bascomb, 2003). The emphatic winner was the iconic 102-storey Empire State Building by architects Shreve, Lamb and Harmon. This new generation of skyscrapers were more decidedly Modernist in form, embellished with Art Deco design rather than revivalist ornament. Art Deco was a style more suited to the Machine Age (Davies, 2017, 166–173). It was an aesthetic created by the use of imaginative geometrical forms executed in modern materials. Streamlined facades of glass, steel and laminate wrapped around curved corners were the trademark look, as displayed in London’s Daily Express building. Dynamic decorative motifs such as chevrons, sunbursts and lightning bolts added further drama. The classic example is New York’s Chrysler Building by William Van Alen, with its elongated dome formed from tiered arches of triangular windows, encased in brilliant polished steel and crowned with a steel finial. More than just a new built form, the skyscraper became a powerful symbol of the dynamism of American capitalism (Taylor, 1992, 23–33). The vertical architecture of Manhattan’s skyline acquired a mythic quality, making it a recognised cultural symbol not just in America but across the world (Damisch, 2001, 100–118).

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While the US was embracing the skyscraper as the ultimate symbol of modernity, Modernism was taking off across Continental Europe, and in the process becoming a much broader international movement (Hitchcock, 1987, 419–485). Only Britain, with its cultural aversion to modernity, resisted its advance. Modernism espoused functionalism in its purest form with the emergence of the ‘International Style’ in the 1920s (Curtis, 1996, 257–273). The movement was gripped by the ideology of the Machine Age, the belief that through technology society could progress to a Utopian future. The goal of the new architecture was to create a rationalist language of universal architectural forms with clear functional purpose (Banham, 1980). The idea of a universal architecture implied that rather than there being a choice of distinct styles there were only differing degrees of success in achieving the ideal form. It was the antithesis of the cult of eclecticism which had predominated throughout much of the nineteenth century. In reality, however, there emerged several competing strands of Modernism, of varying degrees of ‘purity’ in their approach to form and ornament (Jencks, 1985). Pursuit of the functionalist ideal favoured built forms comprising geometrical arrangements of blocks of differing size and proportion. Each was articulated by a steel or reinforced concrete skeleton and bounded by a smooth skin of glass, tile and plaster into which windows and doors were seamlessly inserted. Internal spaces were ordered regularly but asymmetrically, with interconnecting rooms designed to accommodate a variety of functional requirements. Though the predominant form was rectangular, selective use was made of oblique or rounded forms where they were considered functionally appropriate (Hitchcock & Johnson, 1995). The three leading figures in the international Modernist movement were Le Corbusier in France and Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe in Germany (Hitchcock, 1987, 487–530). Le Corbusier produced a manifesto for the International Style in Vers une Architecture, first published in 1923, in which he summarised his philosophy in the famous dictum that ‘a house is a machine for living in’ (Le Corbusier, 1986, 95). He is best remembered for his distinctive houses and apartment blocks, rectilinear in form with flat roofs and continuous bands of windows, and for his wider urbaniste vision of idealised cities formed of geometrically ordered groups of residential towers set within a park-like terrain (Frampton, 2001).

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Gropius achieved lasting renown for establishing the Bauhaus, a school of applied arts in the tradition of the English Arts and Crafts movement but adapted to the contemporary demands of the Machine Age (Frampton, 2020, 132–139). His design for a new complex to house the school in Dessau (1925–6), comprising an asymmetrical arrangement of rectangular blocks fashioned out of glass and reinforced concrete, is one of the keynote buildings of the Modernist movement (Lupfer & Sigel, 2021, 36–43). Of the three leading Modernists, it was Mies, Gropius’s successor as director of the Bauhaus, who was to have the greatest impact on the future direction of commercial architecture (Frampton, 2020, 263–270). In 1937, he emigrated to the US, where he settled in Chicago, establishing what became known as the Second Chicago School. Mies recognised that a modern commercial building must accommodate a wide variety of business functions, and that these functions evolve more rapidly than built forms can be adapted to their needs. His solution to the problem was to reverse Sullivan’s dictum that form should follow function. ‘We do the opposite. We reverse this, and make a practical and satisfying shape, and then fit the functions into it. Today this is the only practical way to build, because the functions of most buildings are continually changing, but economically the buildings cannot change’ (Cohen, 2018, 126). That remains the underlying principle of commercial office design to this day. On the principle of ‘less is more’, Mies’s practical and satisfying solution was a rectangular steel and glass slab comprising a transparent glazed cage, lacking any surface decoration, enclosing a pure volume of space defined by tiers of open, unencumbered floors. Exterior walls are mere membranes, separating inside from outside; interior spaces are without character or content (Lefebvre, 1991, 147). The Modernists believed that such a building should be appreciated as an object in itself, without needing to attribute any subjective meaning to it (Bonta, 1979, 30–49). However, when the Miesian slab became the prototype for a vast number of office towers built around the world after the Second World War, it inevitably came to signify the hegemony of financial capitalism. The Modernist movement made relatively little headway in Britain during the inter-war period. Even before the First World War, modern construction techniques had become widely adopted, such as steel-framing, reinforced concrete and integrated heating and lighting services (Fellows 1995, 49–73). However, after the War, they continued to be applied predominantly to traditionalist building designs. The austere formalism of

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Modernism did not appeal to the English imagination. It was perceived as an architecture of extremes and became associated with totalitarianism, rather as the Baroque became associated with absolutism in the early eighteenth century. One ardent defender of classicism went so far as to label Modernism a ‘bolshevik’ style (Mordaunt Crook, 1987, 236–265), while Lefebvre ironically described it as ‘the dictatorship of the right angle’ (Lefebvre, 2003, 109). In London, Art Deco was chosen for a few landmark projects such as Broadcasting House and the Daily Express building, the style being admired as much for its dramatic decorative motifs as for its structural innovations (Schwartzman, 2013). Shell-Mex House on Victoria Embankment (1931–3) was designed by Milton Cashmore to provide Shell with a Modernist corporate headquarters to rival Britannic House, the classical building created by Lutyens for its competitor BP. One or two City office buildings took on a Modernist form, in particular the 11-storey Adelaide House by Burnet & Tait (1921–5), the first British building to emulate the office towers of Chicago and New York. Department stores such as Barkers and Derry and Toms, and hotels such as the Savoy and Claridge’s, employed Art Deco rather than classicism to beguile their customers and guests. The International Style was confined to a small number of houses and apartment blocks in middle-class suburbs such as Hampstead (Curtis, 1996, 331–335).

8.6  Post-war Collectivism It was during the immediate post-war era of reconstruction that Modernism finally achieved its apotheosis in Britain. The demand for urban renewal was met by the creation of a new town planning system designed to manage urban growth to meet economic and social needs (Hall et al., 1973). This ambitious objective was consistent with the radical political spirit of the times and with the collectivist ambitions of the Modernists to use urban development schemes as a means to achieve social progress. Modernism offered economic advantages as well as a Machine Age aesthetic. Simplicity of design combined with standardisation of components meant lower construction costs and greater scope to mass-produce buildings for the large-scale developments so desperately needed after the war (Ball, 1988, 23–6). In particular, lightweight steel frames supporting rectangular cladding and glazing panels provided a rapid construction technique of widespread applicability.

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The universalised nature of Modernist architecture ensured that it became the adopted style for both the individualistic trophy buildings of private capital, such as office towers, and the collectivist public buildings of the social democratic state, such as housing estates, schools and colleges, hospitals and civic buildings (Hitchcock, 1987, 555–576). For both the public and private sectors, it offered the attractive combination of cost control and functional flexibility, allied to a radical new architecture suited to the progressive spirit of the age. However, though these two types of hegemonic building may have been quite similar in appearance, they connoted very different forms of social and economic progress. Modernism announced its post-war appearance in London during the 1951 Festival of Britain, a cultural event organised the Labour government to promote recovery and renewal after a devastating war. Staged a century after the Great Exhibition of 1851, it was motivated by a very different ideology, offering the hope of a progressive future identity for the nation in the new post-war world rather than celebrating its achievement of industrial and imperial supremacy in the Victorian world. This was far too dangerous a vision for the incoming Conservative government under Winston Churchill that took office shortly after the Festival closed. They wanted no part of this ‘socialist-inspired experiment in social engineering’, instead looking to the forthcoming coronation of Elizabeth II as a far more appropriate celebration of national identity. Consequently, they ordered the whole venture to be dismantled as swiftly as possible (Turner, 2011, 226). London’s contribution to the festival was an exhibition located on the south bank of the Thames, close to County Hall and opposite the Houses of Parliament. It was intended principally as a showcase for the genius and inventiveness of British scientists, engineers, designers, artists and architects. The circular Dome of Discovery, the largest aluminium structure in the world at that time, was dedicated to scientific discovery, whilst the futuristic, cigar-shaped Skylon tower was an engineering marvel that came to symbolise the spirit of the Festival. The site was laid out as an informal cluster of buildings of varying heights and levels, loosely grouped around plazas of different size and linked together by elevated walkways (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 346). The objective was to illustrate the principles of urban design that were to be pursued in the post-war rebuilding of London and in the creation of the New Towns that were to ring the capital. The individual buildings on the site were mostly International Modernist in style, an architecture little

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seen in Britain before the war. The design of the exhibits, using Modernist motifs and strong primary colours, so caught the public imagination that it gave birth to a ‘Festival Style’ that shifted national taste into accepting a polite British form of Modernism (Feaver, 1976, 40–55). At the heart of the site was the one building to have survived from the exhibition, the Royal Festival Hall (1948–51). It was the first major British public building designed in the contemporary style and has remained one of London’s most enduring Modernist monuments (Photograph 8.2). Its designers were a group of young architects working for the LCC Architect’s Department, led by Robert Matthew and Leslie Martin. Externally, the Hall faces the river as a massive solid block with a curved roof, surrounded by glazed circulation spaces. Internally, circulation is remarkably intricate yet free-flowing, traversing a sequence of staircases, promenades, foyers and public rooms. The concert hall itself displays strong visual effects, created by tiers of projecting boxes and wooden ceilings shaped for acoustic advantage (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 346–348).

Photograph 8.2  Royal Festival Hall 1948–51 (Source: GRANT ROONEY PREMIUM/Alamy Stock Photo)

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During the 1960s, the Festival Hall was incorporated into a wider South Bank arts complex, developed as part of London’s transformation into a ‘city of spectacle’ (Harwood, 2015, 485–493). Between 1965 and 1968, the LCC Architects led by Leslie Martin designed a group of three public venues sited next to the Festival Hall—the Hayward Gallery, for art exhibitions, and the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room for music concerts. The three buildings are interconnected by elevated walkways, and faced by concrete cladding finished with the imprint of timber shuttering. The few windows that appear are of arbitrary shapes and placed in arbitrary positions. The totality has the appearance of a jagged mass of geometrical concrete forms piled one upon another. While the LCC Architects were completing work on that part of the complex, construction of the long-delayed National Theatre was getting underway on the other side of Waterloo Bridge. Denys Lasdun was the chosen architect, selected from among a group of 20 eminent British Modernists interviewed for the project. Completed in 1976, his building comprises three theatres of differing sizes, set within a roughly square shell. The frontage to the river is dominated by a three-level terrace, while a dramatic cluster of rectangular towers and turrets punctuate the skyline. Continuing the style of the earlier phase of the complex, the exterior walls are finished in shuttered concrete and are almost windowless. The overall impression is of a rather forbidding castle keep. Concrete finishes continue within the interior, which is structured on several levels with foyers, bars and restaurants fronting on to each of the theatres (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 351–354). The whole South Bank complex is a prime example of the strand of Modernism known as Brutalism, a post-war movement inspired by Le Corbusier’s later work that favoured heavyweight structures displaying exposed surfaces of concrete, brick and timber (Clement, 2018). Ever since the South Bank buildings were completed, they have provoked extreme reactions (Hyde, 2019, 66–78). Here is the voice of one critic: ‘Who would guess that these gloomy bunkers were built to celebrate the pleasures of the senses?’ (Esher, 1981, 110). But for an advocate of the style the complex offers ‘a masterclass in Massive Brutalist concrete’ (Clement, 2018, 114). What can perhaps be agreed is that these buildings are an early example of modern architects designing buildings to capture the attention and shock the observer, a tendency that has become commonplace in the era of Postmodernism. Their hegemonic message seems

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to be less about the patron that commissioned them and more about the architects that designed them. Leaving aside their work on the South Bank, the LCC Architect’s Department played a much broader role in the collectivist rebuilding of post-war London (Gold, 2007, 44–47). At the height of its powers in 1956, it had a staff of around 3000, including more than 750 qualified architects, making it arguably the world’s largest architectural practice. Separate departments concentrated on planning, housing and schools. Radical young architects were attracted to the Department by its distinctive culture of high standards and innovative ideas applied to the exercise of architecture as a public service. Furthermore, the substantial resources at the command of the LCC provided the opportunity to work on ambitious and innovative projects. The greatest concentration of effort was in the working-class East End of the city, which presented the most challenging legacy of slum housing and had suffered the heaviest bomb damage during the War (Cherry et al., 2005, 89–92). Under the aegis of the LCC Architects, Modernism became a socially progressive movement, with the vision of building the ‘just city’ (Powers, 2007, 52–87). A great wave of public building was unleashed, both by the LCC and by the individual London boroughs. Through the planned development of large-scale public housing estates and the widespread provision of modern school buildings, a new landscape of collectivist power was created across inner and suburban London, countering the dominant individualistic ideology of capitalism. It was the first serious attempt to use the hegemonic power of metropolitan social democracy to build the infrastructure of a socialist city. One of the first and most famous of the LCC housing estates was the Alton Estate, Roehampton in the borough of Wandsworth (Harwood, 2015, 67–70). Planned and built between 1951 and 1958, it pioneered the principle of mixed development, with informal groups of buildings of different height and size interspersed with open parkland spaces to achieve a high site density (Photograph 8.3). Terraces of houses and maisonettes are mixed with tower blocks of up to 11 storeys. Five massive concrete slabs on stilts, widely spaced within a landscaped field, are the visual highlight of the scheme and the most potent symbol of its modernity. They were inspired by Le Corbusier’s high-rise apartment blocks and by the landscaped housing schemes favoured by Swedish Modernists.

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Photograph 8.3  Alton Estate Roehampton 1951–8 (Source: Heritage Images/ Alamy Stock Photo)

The Roehampton estate was planned to accommodate a population of 9500, equivalent to a whole new town neighbourhood, requiring the provision of schools, shops and community buildings to serve the residents. ‘Roehampton exemplifies better than anywhere else in London that idealism that characterized so much post-war planning, the marriage of economic, rational buildings with sensitive grouping and generous landscaping, of social purpose with aesthetics’ (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 689). However, in pursuing this grand ideal, some of the realities of everyday life, such as distance to shops and family isolation in tower blocks, were not given enough consideration. These failings formed part of the charge sheet that eventually brought down the Modernist project. Several of the London boroughs launched their own post-war slum clearance and housebuilding programmes, particularly in areas where the LCC was less active (Harwood, 2015, 58–65). Furthermore, there was a growing sense that the LCC’s large-scale, mixed development model was not the only, or indeed necessarily the best, solution to the post-war housing crisis. Because the boroughs rarely had their own architect’s departments, they tended to commission private architects to design their

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schemes, which led to some more varied and innovative solutions (Cherry & Pevsner, 2002, 72–76). Many of these schemes were influenced by the Brutalist aesthetic (Harwood, 2022, 50–71). What had made Roehampton an outstanding scheme was the availability of an especially large, undeveloped suburban site to work with. Application of the mixed development model was more problematic in heavily built-up working-class areas in the inner city. Open spaces were more difficult to incorporate, forcing planners to place tower blocks close to public parks, thereby diminishing the sense of spaciousness. Cost pressures encouraged the widespread use of industrialised building techniques and a trend towards ever taller towers. Growing car ownership required the provision of car parking in multi-level structures separating people from vehicles. Proper maintenance of this increasingly complex built environment was neglected (Cherry & Pevsner, 1983, 87–90). These adverse trends contributed to a growing sense of alienation amongst the working-class residents of large mixed estates, and especially those living in tall tower blocks accessed by a maze of walkways and served by inadequate lifts. The death knell for social housing in tower blocks was literally sounded on 16 May 1968, when a gas explosion partially demolished a newly completed 22-storey block named Ronan Point, located on the Freemasons’ Estate in Canning Town, causing four fatalities (Gold, 2007, 276–280). Many social housing tower blocks were subsequently demolished, though a substantial number have survived and a few iconic blocks, such as Ernö Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower in North Kensington (1968–72), have become much sought-after by middle-class residents. For the mixed development model has retained its attractions in a more middle-class setting. One of the most ambitious of the early post-war schemes was initiated by the city’s wealthiest borough. Between 1947 and 1962, Westminster City Council redeveloped a run-down area overlooking the river and only a short distance from the historic Abbey and Palace. The resultant Churchill Gardens Estate was the product of a design competition won by two young architects, Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya. Their combination of parallel slab blocks of up to 11 storeys with more loosely planned lower terraces, all set within a generous landscaped plot, influenced the LCC’s mixed development model perfected at Roehampton (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 778–780). Ironically, perhaps the greatest monument to collectivist Modernism in London is not to be found in the tightly packed streets of the East End, or on the verdant slopes of Roehampton, or even in affluent Westminster, but rather in the heart of the City of London. The Barbican Estate, started

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in 1956 and not completed until 1981, was planned by the Corporation to be a grand symbol of the City’s renewal after the massive bomb damage it suffered during the War (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 281–286). This mixed-use scheme was designed by the architectural practice Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, winners of an open competition for the project. It comprises a traffic-free precinct containing three residential towers of over 40 storeys, several lower terraces of flats arranged around two landscaped squares with a large lake, and three public buildings for education and the arts. The towers were the highest residential buildings in Europe at the time. The whole complex is inter-connected by elevated walkways and finished in the Brutalist fashion using raw concrete mixed with engineering brick. An enthusiast for Modernism calls it an exercise in Brutalist Baroque, deserving to be lauded as ‘one of the most convincing visions of the alternative city built anywhere in the world during the twentieth century’ (Hatherley, 2021, 66). The Barbican is a truly monumental complex of buildings (Photograph 8.4). The great height of the towers, the imposing mass of the public

Photograph 8.4  Barbican Estate 1956–81 (Source: John Eveson/Alamy Stock Photo)

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buildings and the rushing cascades in the lake all combine to create a sense of the sublime. Only the City Corporation had the resources for a venture of such scale and quality, which in total can house up to 6500 people. ‘The estate’s combination of tower blocks, pedestrian decks and aggressively urban materials, often disastrous in working-class housing elsewhere, found acceptance due to the quality of design, construction and maintenance, as well as the comfortable circumstances of its mostly professional occupants’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 131). The inclusion in the scheme of the City of London School for Girls, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Barbican Arts Centre add to the sense that this was a hegemonic building designed to portray a collectivist vision of the ideal bourgeois life.

8.7  Offices Rising At the same time as the Barbican Estate was under construction, the adjacent new thoroughfare of London Wall was being developed to display the other face of monumental Modernism. Between 1958 and 1964, five office slabs of 18 to 20 storeys were erected either side of the road at an oblique angle, connected into the Barbican Estate by raised walkways, and a sixth was added a decade later. They were constructed using the curtain wall technique, of glass and cladding panels suspended from a steel or concrete frame, that became the standard for Miesian office towers. This was the first coherent attempt to create a mini-Manhattan landscape in London (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 540–545). However, such is the tempo of redevelopment in the City office market that none of these slabs is still operational in its original form—four have been demolished and redeveloped, one is scheduled for redevelopment, and one has been extensively remodelled. Elsewhere in the City, office developers were gripped by the same cycle of competitive emulation as had motivated their predecessors in Chicago and New York, to build ever higher in response to the twin imperatives of commercial profitability and hegemonic supremacy (Harwood, 2015, 386–403). While schemes were still being commissioned in the traditional manner by owner-occupiers, more were now being developed speculatively by property companies that raised finance from one or more funding institutions and then sought to let the space to one or more tenants. Among the first of the post-war towers were two adjacent slabs built by Owen Campbell-Jones for Legal and General Assurance between 1953

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and 1962. The 12-storey Temple Court became the company headquarters, while the 14-storey Bucklersbury House was let out to Norwich Union. During construction, the remains of a third-century Temple of Mithras were uncovered, a reminder of the two millennia of history compressed within the Square Mile of the City (Hingley, 2018, 183–186). These post-war pioneers were followed by the 30-storey Drapers’ Gardens (1962–7) by Richard Seifert, initially occupied by the National Westminster Bank; the 28-storey Commercial Union Building (1963–9) by Gollins, Melvin, Ward (GMW); the 36-storey Britannic Tower for BP (1964–7) by Cashmore and Nelson; and the 26-storey 99 Bishopsgate (1970–6), again by Seifert, initially occupied by HSBC.  With its sleek bronzed finish, the Commercial Union Building ‘got closer to Mies van der Rohe’s immaculate purity than any contemporary London building’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 531). The first post-war phase of Modernist office building in the City culminated in Seifert’s iconic but hubristic NatWest Tower, blighted by the unfortunate combination of exceptional cost and impractical design. When completed in 1981, the 43-storey steel and glass tower stood alone on the City skyline, a Modernist symbol of the current power of national finance that provided a visual counterpoint to St Paul’s, a Classical symbol of the former power of national religion. Forty years later, the NatWest building is lost in a forest of Postmodernist towers that signify the City’s reincarnation as a global financial centre in a new age of neoliberal excess. Modernist office towers were not confined to the City but also rising in other parts of Central London. One of the first was the 15-storey Castrol House on the Marylebone Road by GMW Partnership (1955–60), used as a headquarters by the oil company. It was an early London example of the curtain wall Miesian slab set back on a horizontal podium (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 658). This was followed by the Millbank Tower (1960–3), built for the engineering company Vickers by Ronald Ward and Partners. At 32 storeys it was briefly the tallest tower in London, and its impact was further heightened by its striking combination of concave and convex-­ angled sides (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 708). It was soon overtaken by Seifert’s notorious Centre Point (1959–66) for developer Harry Hyams, a 34-storey speculative tower block with a distinctive concrete frame that acts as a familiar landmark at the intersection of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road (Gold, 2007, 142–144). Even taller but somehow less imposing is the later 36-storey, cross-shaped Euston Tower, centrepiece of the

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massive speculative Euston Square development (1962–72) by Sidney Kaye, Eric Firmin and Partners (Cherry & Pevsner, 2002, 375). The use of Modernist towers as signifiers of status was not confined to office users either. The 30-storey London Hilton (1961–3) by Lewis Solomon, Kaye and Partners is a Y-shaped tower that dominates the southern end of Park Lane, overlooking Hyde Park and Hyde Park Corner. Pevsner dismisses it peremptorily as ‘an insultingly mediocre design for such a prominent site’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 89). Brutalism also put in an appearance in the post-war West End office stock. Two of the movement’s leading lights, Alison and Peter Smithson, designed an elegant office complex in the heart of St James’s for the Economist magazine (1962–4). It is a building that belies the movement’s name (Clement, 2018, 85–87). Three concrete-framed towers of differing sizes are set on a podium, grouped around a raised pedestrian plaza. The classical proportions of the ensemble are sensitive to its eighteenth-­century surroundings, whilst projecting a serious image for a heavyweight financial magazine that is very different in mood from the flamboyant 1930s newspaper offices in Fleet Street. Far more brutal and monumental is the fortress-like office block on Queen Anne’s Gate, overlooking St James’s Park, designed by Basil Spence (1972–6) and occupied after completion in 1976 by the Home Office (Clement, 2018, 44–45). This was the second time a major government department had made a decisive break with the traditional concentration of government offices in Whitehall. Some five years earlier, the Department of the Environment had moved into an enormous Modernist office complex on Marsham Street in Victoria. Comprising three 20-storey slabs and five lower wings, this scheme by government architects was judged to be ‘a spectacular failure, the very image of faceless bureaucracy’, which helps to explain why it was demolished only thirty years after completion (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 705). It was replaced by new offices for the Home Office, which moved there in 2005, leaving the concrete fortress on St Anne’s Gate to be occupied, with uncomfortable symbolism, by the Ministry of Justice. These recent government excursions into hegemonic building have lacked any conviction. Immersed in the prevailing ideology of neoliberalism, the current British state seems unable to project a coherent post-­ imperial, post-industrial identity for the nation. Its failure stands in stark contrast to the confidence displayed by its Victorian and Edwardian predecessors when they developed Whitehall as a symbol of national supremacy more than a century ago.

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CHAPTER 9

Global City

9.1   Capitalism Unbound There was great economic turmoil in Britain during the 1970s, manifested in two oil price shocks, consequent high inflation and interest rates, and widespread industrial disputes and strikes. These upheavals created the conditions for the election in 1979 of a radical Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher, intent on replacing the collectivist politics of the post-war settlement with the individualistic politics of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a new version of the classic liberal philosophy, first propounded by John Stuart Mill, based on a belief in the primacy of the individual within the social order (McCann, 2004). The premises of this ideology are that individual attainment is more valuable than collective action, that self-help is morally superior to welfare, that the private realm is more productive than the public, and that the ‘free market’ should be the arbiter of all choices. Its ideological objective is the extension of competitive market behaviour into all areas of life, economic, political and social (Cahill & Konings, 2017). Yet, in reality, far from protecting the liberty of the individual, the principal achievement of neoliberalism has been to liberate large oligopolistic corporations from the constraints of political accountability or social control (Crouch, 2011). It has swung the balance of economic power

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decisively back from labour towards capital, unleashing the untrammelled forces of capitalism once again (Glyn, 2006). In so doing, it has become the dominant ideology of a new, more advanced form of capitalism, subject to intensifying globalisation and financialisation and operating under the hegemonic control of international finance capital (Duménil & Lévy, 2004, 98–139). It seems safer to call this phase of capitalist development ‘advanced capitalism’, or even ‘hypercapitalism’ (Piketty, 2020), since the popular label of ‘late capitalism’ implies an unfounded belief in its approaching demise (Mandel, 1975). Its principal driving force is financialisation, broadly defined as ‘the increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation of the domestic and international economies’ (Epstein, 2005, 3). It is a process that has enabled financial capital to play an ever more dominant role in the global economy, transforming the conduct of every type of non-financial institution (Lapavitsas, 2013, 2–4). Indeed, so powerful have the financial instruments of advanced capitalism become, they can be said to have achieved a form of apotheosis (Duménil & Lévy, 2011, 55–70). It was during the long post-war boom that the seeds of the neoliberal counter-revolution were sown in Britain. Two structural problems had been created—a profits crisis and a fiscal crisis. The profits crisis derived from the power of organised labour to force through regular increases in real wages, squeezing company profits in the face of increasing international competition that held down prices (Glyn & Sutcliffe, 1972). The fiscal crisis was caused by the ever-expanding demand for public services, which were essential for the effective operation of the market system yet could only be satisfied by ever-rising levels of taxation and/or government debt (O’Connor, 1973). Confronting these problems, the counter-revolutionaries of the Thatcher government set out to dismantle the mixed economy and welfare state constructed by the post-war Labour government (Rowthorn, 1989). Their response to the profits crisis was to deregulate markets, privatise the profitable monopolies in state ownership, abandon full employment policies and break the power of the trade unions. Their response to the fiscal crisis was to find ways of shrinking the state without undermining its essential functions, thereby creating room to reduce the high tax burden imposed on the wealthiest in society (Pollard, 1992, 376–421). These policies succeeded to varying degrees. The ostensible objectives of privatisation were to improve industrial productivity and draw more

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people into share ownership; less clearly stated were the aims of facilitating tax cuts and weakening the power of public sector unions. What is clear is that privatisation yielded an enormous transfer of national wealth from the public to the private realm, facilitating a new wave of wealth accumulation by individuals and corporations (Meek, 2014). Considerable success was also achieved in emasculating the trade union movement, by abandoning Keynesian full employment policies and curtailing union rights to organise and strike (Fraser, 1999, 230–254). As a share of the working population, trade union membership fell from around a half in 1979 to just one-fifth by 2019. Shrinking the state proved more difficult than breaking the power of the trade union movement. The Thatcher government made a concerted effort to reduce the welfare bill by cutting the real value of benefits and restricting access through means testing (Lowe, 2005, 342–348). However, reductions in the value and coverage of benefits were offset by the welfare costs of much higher levels of unemployment. Though the state proved stubbornly resistant to shrinkage, much greater success was achieved in reducing the extent to which the wealthy had to pay for it. The direct tax burden was shifted down to those on lower incomes, by cutting the top rate of income tax from 98 to 40 per cent, and the top rate of inheritance tax from 75 to 40 per cent (Piketty, 2014: 498–503). Furthermore, by raising the standard rate of Value Added Tax from 8 to 15 per cent, an increasing share of tax revenue was extracted from consumption expenditure, bearing down equally on all groups in society. As a response to the profits crisis, this radical programme did boost company profits at the expense of wages, so that the share of profits in national income rose back to its level at the start of the post-war boom (Barras, 2016, 281). As a response to the fiscal crisis, the share of national income consumed by the state changed relatively little, but the cost of supporting it was redistributed from the wealthy to those on average incomes through the regressive tax changes. Since the onset of the Thatcherite counter-revolution, there has been a spectacular widening of income inequalities in Britain. The share of pre-­ tax incomes taken by the top 1 per cent of the population has more than doubled from its trough of 6 per cent in 1978 back to 14 per cent by 2014, a share not seen since the 1930s. A little over one-third of the top 1 per cent lived in London in 2014, a proportion that rose to almost one-­ half of the super-rich in the top 0.1 per cent category (Joyce et al., 2019).

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However, the principal cause of rising inequality has not been the weakening of the redistributive role of the state, but rather the widening of differentials in original incomes due to a fundamental shift in the balance of power within the capitalist economy. For increasing income inequality has been a global and not just a domestic phenomenon (Milanovic, 2005). As markets have become globalised, the unrestricted flow of capital and labour around the world economy has principally benefitted the owners of capital and the most mobile and highly skilled workers (Dicken, 2015). Globalisation has stimulated the spread of oligopoly and monopoly, reducing competition and boosting profitability (Carr, 2020). Financialisation of all sectors of the economy has boosted the incomes of top financiers and corporate executives compared to the rest of the workforce (Piketty, 2014, 304–335). The shift in economic power from Europe and North America to the newly industrialised nations in Asia means that workers in high-­ wage economies are having to compete with workers in low-wage economies. At the same time, technological progress, and particularly the universal adoption of information technology, has eliminated many lower paid jobs and reinforced the premium on the most highly skilled labour. While the neoliberal counter-revolution has achieved a substantial shift in income from labour to capital, this has not translated into increased levels of growth, as its supporters predicted (Stiglitz, 2012). In fact, the average rate of GDP growth in Britain has been decelerating from its post-­ war peak, whilst there has been an associated acceleration in the process of deindustrialisation which began during the inter-war period. In the years of the post-war boom, between 1951 and 1979, GDP growth in the UK averaged 3 per cent per annum, whereas subsequent to 1979 the average growth rate has dropped to 2 per cent. Furthermore, since 2007 the combined impact of the Banking Crash, Brexit and the Covid pandemic has depressed the growth rate to as low as 0.7 per cent per annum. The slowdown in output growth reflects a slowdown in investment and productivity growth, which has fed through to a marked slowdown in real wage growth (Barras, 2016, 118). Relative to its competitors, Britain has become a low investment, low productivity and low wage economy. The acceleration of deindustrialisation has been even more dramatic than the deceleration in growth (Rowthorn & Wells, 1987). The share of production industries in total domestic product reached a peak of some 45 per cent in the aftermath of the First World War, almost matching the 48 per cent share taken by services. However, by 2020 the production share

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had fallen to just 13 per cent while the services share had risen to 81 per cent, with most of the shift occurring since 1979. Within that overall service share, the private sector services of finance, distribution, IT, real estate and professional services together now account for almost 60 per cent of national output and act as the main motor of post-industrial economic growth. These trends are partly attributable to the policies of successive Conservative governments since 1979, in particular the deflationary policies pursued by the Thatcher government which led to a massive wave of factory closures in the 1980s. They are also the result of the changes occurring within the global economy, in particular the industrialisation of the Asian economies, which has not only given rise to highly competitive domestic manufacturers but also encouraged global corporations to transfer their production to these low-cost locations. This combination of factors has caused particularly severe deindustrialisation in the British economy. Having emerged from the Second World War still the third largest industrialised economy in the world, Britain has slipped down to sixth place in the global ranking of economies by size, behind not only the US and Germany but also the new Asian giants of China, Japan and her former colony India. In terms of GDP per capita, Britain has fared even worse, now lying tenth amongst the economies of Europe (Maddison, 2007, 261–265). Government policy-makers have consistently failed to reverse this relative decline, harking back to the nation’s glorious economic past rather than envisioning a realistic economic future (Jones, 2023). The failure of British manufacturing to keep up with its main competitors in the global productivity race can be attributed to the utilisation of less capital-intensive production methods, less effective deployment of new technologies and inadequate workforce training (Broadberry, 1997, 1–16). These shortcomings can in turn be attributed to historical institutional rigidities such as resistance to corporate reorganisation, insufficient research and development, and outmoded management techniques (Elbaum & Lazonick, 1986). More surprisingly, there also appears to be a significant productivity gap between Britain and her principal competitors in some traditional services such as transport and distribution (Broadberry, 2006, 1–16). However, in the key sectors of financial and professional services, Britain has enjoyed productivity levels that were actually higher than those of her competitors (Broadberry, 2014, 339–42).

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Economic restructuring is now accelerating within the global economy under the explosive impact of information technology (Freeman & Louçã, 2001, 301–327). What is unique about ICT is that it is changing the mode of production of all sectors of the economy, not just the manufacturing sectors that were the principal beneficiaries of previous technological revolutions. In particular, the technology is generating a fundamental transformation of the service industries, not only by boosting the productivity of existing services but also by facilitating the introduction of wholly new types of services (Gallouj, 2002). With the emergence of the ‘knowledge economy’, innovation in services is now as important a driver of economic growth as it has previously been in manufacturing (Unger, 2019). The service sectors that have undergone the most radical and far-­ reaching transformation through the introduction of information technology are financial and business services (Barras, 1990). At the same time, the most radical and far-reaching exercise in market deregulation achieved by the neoliberal counter-revolution has been that of financial markets (Cahill & Konings, 2017, 52–70). Financialisation has been driven by this combination of technological innovation and market deregulation.

9.2   City Resurgent Financialisation has reinforced the hegemonic role of financial capital that has been a special feature of British capitalism throughout its development. In so doing, it has enabled the City of London to reinvent its role in the world once again; it has entered a second golden age. No longer in undisputed command of an imperial trading and investment empire, it has repositioned itself as the European hub of the global financial system, operating alongside New York and Tokyo as one of the world’s three leading ‘global cities’ (Sassen, 2001). While New  York has no significant second-­tier competitors, London does face competition from Frankfurt and Paris, while Tokyo is in danger of being overtaken by Singapore and Hong Kong. A unique combination of historical factors has enabled the City to take full advantage of financialisation (Roberts, 2008: 11–19). It has a strongly interlinked and functionally specialised economy, operating within a flexible institutional framework. Its firms cluster in close physical proximity, creating a strong dynamic in which service innovation, productivity growth, market creation and new firm formation operate in a mutually self-reinforcing fashion. It enjoys the further benefits of a long-established

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reputation, strong networks of personal relationships, a plentiful and skilled workforce and a strategic location midway between the North American and Asian time zones. The City’s banks and insurance companies had taken advantage of the long post-war boom to expand their domestic and overseas businesses and increase their market shares through mergers and acquisitions (Cassis, 2012, 209–213). A new global financial architecture, of fixed but adaptable exchange rates based on the dollar, had been erected after the war, with the pound demoted to the position of a secondary reserve currency (Eichengreen, 2008, 91–133). It was the abandonment of fixed exchange rates in 1973 that provided a vital stimulus to financial innovation and the globalisation of capital markets. Principal among the early innovations were Eurocurrencies, international monetary instruments designed to circumvent national regulation (Cassis, 2012, 219–25). The City exploited its international expertise to seize control of this new form of global credit. In so doing, it became a magnet for foreign banks, attracting more than any other international financial centre (Roberts, 2008, 168–172). In 1979, the Thatcher government started a wide-ranging programme of financial deregulation that reached a climax in 1986 with the Building Societies Act and the ‘Big Bang’ reform of the London Stock Exchange (Michie, 1999, 543–595). Deregulation of building societies permitted them to demutualise and convert themselves into banks, which considerably expanded the size of the domestic banking industry (Roberts, 2008, 173–177). Deregulation of the stock exchange opened up membership to any type of financial institution, allowing banks to buy up stockbroking firms and transform themselves into investment banks, combining retail and wholesale banking functions. Investment banks of this type were already well established on Wall Street. Big Bang allowed them to compete for City business, forcing the leading British clearing banks to adopt the same integrated business model (Roberts, 2008, 105–123). The new breed of investment banks occupy the hegemonic pinnacle within international finance. Their principal role has been to provide financing and fund management services for the large corporations that dominate the global economy (Stowell & Stowell, 2018, 3–20). The vast capital resources at their disposal fuelled a wave of corporate mergers and acquisitions during the 1980s and 1990s, facilitated by the neoliberal hunger for the privatisation of public enterprises (Cassis, 2012, 257–259). A select group of 15–20 American and European investment banks captured

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the market for corporate finance during this takeover boom. In the process, they bought out most of the merchant banks that had formed the cream of the City’s traditional banking establishment. These takeovers marked the death of gentlemanly capitalism, that particularly British form of financial capitalism which had flourished for more than two centuries (Augar, 2001). Since the 1980s, the unstoppable combination of information technology and market deregulation has generated a stream of new financial products, of increasing complexity and decreasing transparency. Amongst the most important innovations have been derivatives and securitised assets, both of which have shown spectacular growth during the last thirty years (Cassis, 2012, 248–255). Derivatives purport to reduce investor risk through the process known as hedging, whereby investors offset the risk of their current market exposure by taking an opposing position in derivative contracts. Securitisation involves the conversion of illiquid debt, in the form of a bundle of loans such as mortgages or insurance policies, into highly leveraged, marketable securities (Scott-Quinn, 2012, 134–155). It has been promoted as a means of increasing the supply of credit in the global economy, while at the same time spreading risk more widely. The Banking Crash of 2008 revealed a rather different reality. New types of financial institutions have also emerged during the past thirty years. Hedge funds are entities that trade in derivatives using highly leveraged funds in which the equity is multiplied many times over by loan capital (Stowell & Stowell, 2018, 241–264). Such inherently risky operations lead to both extraordinary profits and catastrophic losses. Private equity funds pursue the opposite strategy to traditional investment funds. Rather than diversifying their investments across a wide range of assets, they invest large amounts in the share capital of a small number of companies that they plan to make more profitable before resale (Stowell & Stowell, 2018, 339–368). The result of this explosion in international finance is apparent in the soaring value of the total assets held in global capital markets, comprising bonds, equities and bank assets. In the 1980s, the value of global financial assets was approximately equal to the value of world GDP. By 2007, just before the Banking Crash, these assets were worth nearly four and a half times as much as world output (IMF, 2009, 177). Today the value of financial assets has reached six times GDP in advanced economies (OECD, 2021). Even more dangerously, the ‘shadow banking system’, comprising

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unregulated entities such as hedge funds and asset management companies, is now larger than the traditional regulated banking system (Scott-­ Quinn, 2012, 156–163). Who can doubt that the hegemonic role played by financial capital in advanced capitalism is a growing source of risk and instability? Today’s financial markets offer the supreme example of globalisation in action. An oligopolistic structure of giant investment banks, dominated by American capital, orchestrates worldwide flows of capital between financial centres across the globe. There are strong echoes in this new world system of the imperial system controlled by Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Operating a century apart, each system can be seen as a product of their age: a form of financial hegemony determined by the economic, political and technological imperatives of the time (Duménil & Lévy, 2004, 156–167). The City of London has won a commanding position within the new world order of global finance (Talani, 2012). By its own analysis (using a carefully selected set of metrics), the Corporation claims that London is emerging from the pandemic as the strongest of all the world’s financial centres (City of London Corporation, 2022). It ranks first in having an ‘innovative ecosystem’, second to New York on the reach of its financial activity, second to Singapore on the resilience of its business infrastructure, third to Singapore and New York on its access to talent and skills, and third to Singapore and Hong Kong on the extent to which its regulatory and legal environment facilitates business. Led by the City, finance dominates the British economy to an extent unparalleled in any other major advanced economy. Financial and professional services account for a little over 10% of national output, and the City contributes nearly a quarter of that total (City of London Corporation, 2023). The UK is the largest net exporter of financial services in the world; its trading surplus is larger than that of France, Germany, Singapore and Hong Kong combined. Finance accounts for almost half of the total trading surplus of the UK service sector, and London accounts for the predominant share of that surplus. The UK is the world’s largest centre for the issue of international debt, commercial insurance and reinsurance, and foreign exchange trading, and the second largest after the US for asset management. Looking to the future, the UK is particularly strong in financial innovation, hosting the second largest number of fintech firms in the world after the US, and more than Germany, France and Hong Kong combined (City of London Corporation, HM Treasury, 2022).

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The size of its banking system is a good indicator of how finance dominates the British economy. In global terms, British banks are losing prominence in the hierarchy of the world’s largest banks, as the UK economy itself drops down the global ranking of economies by size. Only one British bank (HSBC) is now in the top 10 by size of assets, and just 6 are in the top 100, compared to 27 EU, 19 Chinese, 12 American and 8 Japanese banks (S&P Global Market Intelligence, 2022). However, globalisation has meant that foreign banks now make up at least half of the UK banking sector by size of assets. This means that, on a residency rather than ownership basis, the UK has the largest banking sector in relation to the size of national GDP amongst all the advanced economies. In 1975, the ratio of UK bank assets to GDP was 100%, by 2013 it had reached 450%, and the Bank of England estimates that by 2050 it could reach over 950% (Bush et  al., 2014). A rapidly growing international banking industry is increasingly overshadowing a slow-growing national economy. Such a disproportionately large banking sector makes the British economy particularly vulnerable to the volatility of financial markets, as was demonstrated during the 2008 Banking Crash. Having grown so large that they dwarf the global economy, the giant banks are now deemed ‘too important to fail’ (IMF, 2014, 101–132). Their destructive power is such that national governments dare not let them collapse, for fear of the wider economic and social turmoil that would result. Protection of these banks carries substantial fiscal costs for the public sector, if they have to bail out a failing bank, and increases the systemic risk in the banking system as a whole. The knowledge that their activities are effectively underwritten by the state inevitably encourages behaviour by the banks that is predominantly speculative, routinely reckless and intermittently criminal. These risks are particularly acute in an economy so dependent on finance as that of the UK (Augar, 2009). Three centuries of unique capitalist development in Britain have created a global-sized banking system residing within a medium-sized domestic economy. The interests of financial capital now outweigh all others in the national discourse; the national interest has morphed into the City interest. A policy-making nexus of the Treasury, the Bank of England and the City Corporation acts for the City interest above all others; the public and private realms have dissolved into each other in the City’s new golden age.

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But the City is ‘a club no more’, and the financial elite who run it now are very different from that which presided over the City’s first golden age (Kynaston, 2002). The typical gentleman capitalist in the Edwardian City was a partner in an exclusive merchant bank; the typical financial capitalist of today is a top executive in an investment bank or a private equity or hedge fund. There is another important difference between today’s financial elite and that of the Edwardian era: the new breed are part of a global rather than a national elite. A British banker is as likely to associate with a Russian oligarch or Qatari princeling as with an English aristocrat, as likely to spend time in Manhattan or Hong Kong as in Belgravia. One of the most important and lucrative functions undertaken by City institutions is to manage the wealth of the global super-rich. The hypercapitalist economy formed by globalisation and financialisation has created a transnational capitalist class that is accumulating capital and exercising hegemony on a global scale (Sklair, 2001). Its individual members constitute a new global plutocracy which compared to its Edwardian predecessor is very different in its prime movers but very similar in its ideology. Excess is their credo, conspicuous consumption their forte (Freeland, 2012, 1–23). Over the past forty years, the concentration of wealth in the hands of this global elite has grown inexorably, most rapidly in the unconstrained economies of the US, post-Soviet Russia, China and India, and more slowly in the more constrained European economies of the UK and France (Piketty, 2020, 648–716). The super-rich who entrust the City with their fortunes are truly global in their nationalities, domiciles and sources of wealth. What they have in common is a recognition of the professionalism and discretion of the City’s institutions, and an appreciation of the generous nature of the UK’s tax regime for owners of capital, particularly those part-residents with non-domiciled status. At the same time, tolerance or even encouragement of illegal activities such as money laundering and tax evasion has given the City the unwelcome reputation of accepting inflows of ‘dirty money’ from around the globe (Bullough, 2022). As time goes by, global wealth is becoming ever more concentrated in fewer hands and fewer locations (Credit Suisse, 2022). Between 2014 and 2021, the number of dollar millionaires worldwide increased by close to 80 per cent, whereas the number of ‘ultra-high net worth’ (UHNW) individuals with assets exceeding $50 million slightly more than doubled. Of the dollar millionaires in 2021, some 39 per cent were resident in the US, whereas as many as 53 per cent of UHNW individuals were US-based.

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Ranking the locations of the remaining UHNW individuals, China was a clear second with 12 per cent and Germany third with 4 per cent; the UK was in ninth position with just 2 per cent. Moving further up to the top of the wealth pyramid, there were just over 7000 individuals worldwide with assets exceeding $500 million in 2021. Perhaps surprisingly, this select group of half-billionaires was reported to be more evenly spread by location than the UHNW individuals as a whole. The US hosted 24 per cent and China 18 per cent, followed by Germany, Russia and India with between 3 and 4 per cent. However, it seems likely that the higher the wealth band, the more unreliable the data, which undoubtedly under-estimate the number and wealth of the global super-rich, since more and more of their assets are being hidden in offshore tax havens. A more detailed profile of the wealthiest people living in Britain is provided by the annual Sunday Times Rich List, although this survey is also partial, omitting large numbers of the ‘secret rich’ about whom little is known. The contrast between the first Rich List survey in 1989 and the latest in 2022 tells us much about the changing ownership of wealth in Britain over the past three decades. The first survey was heavily weighted towards inherited wealth as represented by Britain’s leading aristocratic landowners. The richest 200 included 11 dukes, 6 marquises 14 earls and 9 viscounts; top of the list was the Queen, followed in second place by the Duke of Westminster (Reuben, 2013). Now the list is dominated by people with self-made fortunes. The Queen dropped out of the top 200 because some of her assets, such as the royal art collection, were no longer considered to be part of her personal wealth. The country’s richest landowner, the Duke of Westminster, had slipped to 12th position by 2022, as England’s aristocratic past is being submerged beneath a transnational present. Over the last five years, there has been a spectacular growth in the fortunes of the super-rich resident in Britain. The latest list identifies a record number of 177 billionaires, and the combined wealth of the top 250 in the list exceeds that of the top 1000 in 2017. The increasingly transnational nature of wealth in Britain is apparent from the fact that just 38 per cent of the assets of the top 250  in 2022 is owned by people born in the UK.  Other countries of origin prominent among the most wealthy are India, Russia, Ukraine, Sweden, South Africa, Israel, Switzerland, Germany and the US.  Most of their fortunes have been made abroad; they have

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chosen a British residence because of the UK’s favourable tax regime, its stable economic and political environment and London’s attractive metropolitan culture. London has become a plutocrats’ paradise. It is a place where they store the wealth they have accumulated elsewhere and where they live at least part of their gilded lives. The metropolis is being shaped to their requirements, with opulent mansions, gated communities, luxury shops, fashionable restaurants and private clubs springing up across its wealthiest districts (Knowles, 2022). And the investment of their fortunes by the City money machine has fuelled a surge of hegemonic building that has transformed the appearance of the metropolis forever.

9.3  The Postmodern Condition The economic and social transition from collectivism to neoliberalism has been accompanied by a cultural transition from modernity to postmodernity, producing a shift from Modernism to Postmodernism in the architecture of London’s hegemonic buildings. What is the nature of postmodern London? It is a metropolis with a population of 8.8 million people in 2021, forecast to reach 10 million by 2038. Its population is highly diverse, exhibiting deep-seated social and economic inequalities. Its economy produces almost a quarter of total UK output, employing over 6 million people whose output per worker is over 40 per cent higher than the national average. It is a service economy with almost no remaining manufacturing base and a concentration of activity in finance, professional services, IT and retailing, together with a large public sector (GLA City Intelligence, 2023). Ever since its Roman foundation, the city has maintained its dual function as international entrepôt and national capital, the one based in the City, the other in Westminster. But London is far more than a city of commerce and government; amongst its multiple personalities it is also a city of consumption, of leisure, of culture and of spectacle. Each of these manifestations can also be traced back through successive eras of its history to the first Roman city. And for consumption, leisure, culture and spectacle, London is a magnet for visitors from around the world, as it has been since Roman times, with annual overseas tourist visits peaking at a little over 20 million before the pandemic struck. London has always enjoyed a cosmopolitan existence as a global city, semi-detached from the rest of the country. It operates in a world of its

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own, looking outward to the rest of the world not inward to the ‘provinces’. It is so large and wealthy that there has always been an uneasy relationship between the government of the city and of the nation. As the deindustrialisation of the British economy has gathered pace, so the sense of metropolitan detachment has intensified. The former industrial regions of the Midlands and North have regressed to resemble abandoned imperial possessions, the domestic component of an abandoned empire, while London flourishes as a primary hub in the network of global cities (Lizieri, 2009, 18–30). In response to the forces of globalisation and financialisation, the world economy now seems to be operating more as a system of quasi-­independent city states than as a collection of nation states. These networked cities are connected by flows of people, goods and information, and bound together by circuits of international finance capital (Taylor & Derudder, 2016). Indeed, it can be argued that throughout history it has been cities rather than nation states that have been the principal drivers of wealth creation (Jacobs, 1985). The vision of a world of networked cities is congruent with the contentious idea that urbanisation has replaced industrialisation as the main motor of global economic and social development. Urbanisation has itself become a force of production (Lefebvre, 2003, 165–180). The increasing power of the urban realm is also consistent with the view that the power of the nation state is waning. Faced with the combination of wealthy urban economies and powerful global corporations, nations find it increasingly difficult to exercise effective control over either (Strange, 1996). We are living in the neoliberal stage of urbanisation under advanced capitalism, and London is a prime example of the phenomenon. It has become ‘the city of capitalism rampant’ (Hall, 1998, 888–931). And if the essence of contemporary London has been formed by the ideology of neoliberalism, then Postmodernism is its cultural expression (Spencer, 2016). Postmodernism grew out of a growing disenchantment with modernity as a broad cultural movement and with Modernism as a particular architectural style. It has been explained as a reaction to the cultural contradictions of modernity, between its relentless drive for economic rationalisation and social progress and the cultural value that society ascribes to custom and tradition (Bell, 1996, 3–15). As we have seen, these contradictions appear especially strong in British society, which has never fully accepted modernity or Modernism, and has retained a strong attachment to

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tradition, even to the extent of inventing traditions where none existed before, in order to establish continuity with the nation’s historic past (Hobsbawm, 1992). Labelling the reaction to modernity as postmodernity is easy; defining what it means has proved altogether more difficult. The movement can be defined by a set of attributes that stand as the antithesis of those which characterise modernity (Harvey, 1990, 39–65). If modernity implies a belief in rationality, progress and universal truths, postmodernity stands for pluralism, indeterminacy and relativism. If Modernists are austere, serious and single-minded, Postmodernists are playful, ironic and ambiguous. Defined in this way, postmodernity can be said to be no more than anti-­ modernity, lacking a coherent philosophy of its own. But then lack of coherence is considered by its proponents to be among the virtues of postmodernity. Postmodernists view the world as fragmented and ephemeral. It is a perspective made more persuasive by the transformation of the fundamental means of economic production from machine technology, linear and systematic in operation, to information technology, non-linear and chaotic in operation. According to one of the movement’s leading theorists, the Postmodernist world view can be defined as ‘incredulity towards metanarratives’ (Lyotard, 1984, xxiv). It is a view that undermines the very concept of historical continuity, thereby denying the possibility of economic improvement and social progress through collective action. Rejecting the idealistic metanarrative of modernity, which chimed with the collectivist spirit of the Great Levelling, the Postmodernists have made a fetish of the economic moment created by the exercise of individual consumer choice within the marketplace. Far from condemning capitalism as the embodiment of modernity, they have reinforced the underpinnings of the neoliberal ideology that has displaced collectivism and egalitarianism (Wood, 2017, 189–192). In other words, postmodernity can be characterised as the cultural logic of ‘late capitalism’ (Jameson, 1991, 1–54). Its underlying contradiction is to be radical in theory but conservative in practice (Eagleton, 1996, 131–135). The very idea that modernity has given way to postmodernity is contested. For the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas, modernity is ‘an unfinished project’; the Postmodernists are merely trying to revolt against modernity by ‘cloaking their complicity with the venerable tradition of counter-Enlightenment in the garb of post-Enlightenment’ (Habermas, 1987, 5). For the English social theorist Anthony Giddens, we have

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entered a period of ‘high modernity’ rather than postmodernity, in which modernity is becoming a more extreme and universal phenomenon under the globalising impact of advanced capitalism (Giddens, 1990, 45–53). However, despite these dissenting views, the idea that we are living in a postmodern age has become so firmly embedded in the collective consciousness that it has taken on the status of an incontrovertible truth, even though incontrovertibility has no place in postmodern philosophy. It is in the realm of architecture and urban design that the transition from Modernism to Postmodernism is most dramatically visible (Connor, 1997, 75–87). As an architectural movement, Postmodernism has certainly defined itself as the antithesis of Modernism, developed through the same dialectical process by which Modernism emerged as the antithesis of the Pre-Modernist cult of eclecticism. In part, the reaction to Modernism has been cultural, a rejection of what was seen as the rigid Utopianism of the movement. In part, it was a reaction to the functional limitations of the Miesian model, as the drawbacks of all-glass walls and completely open-plan layouts became apparent. In part, it was a reaction to the declining quality of the Modernist buildings which were erected en masse during the 1950s and 1960s (Hitchcock, 1987, 577–582). Modernism also came under fire for failing to employ a convincing architectural language; the ‘univalent’ Miesian vision of the universal form was dismissed as architecturally inarticulate, incapable of communicating a distinctive message to the observer (Jencks, 1991, 27–34). In fact, Modernism projected a very clear ideological message, that through technology society could progress to a better future; the problem was that it was not a message the Postmodernists wished to hear. The reaction to Modernism is clear in an early manifesto of Postmodernism written by one of the movement’s leaders, Robert Venturi. He argues for ‘a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience’, asserting that ‘Architects can no longer afford to be intimidated by the puritanically moral language of orthodox Modern architecture’. He dismisses the Miesian doctrine of ‘less is more’ by inverting it into ‘less is a bore’. Instead, he favours a multivalent architecture that is ‘hybrid rather than “pure”, compromising rather than “clean”, distorted rather than “straightforward”, ambiguous rather than “articulated”’, and finishes with a plea for ‘messy vitality over obvious unity’ and ‘richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning’ (Venturi, 1977, 16–17).

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Complex and contradictory meanings are the essence of the new aesthetic, opening the doors to eclecticism once more. With contradiction and ambiguity have come irony and enigma (Petit, 2013). Architectural signifiers are deployed to amuse or confuse; both their functional denotation and their ideological connotation are deliberately enigmatic, open to multiple interpretations. Here there are parallels with the Mannerist reaction to the balance and harmony of Renaissance architecture in the sixteenth century. Like Mannerism, Postmodernism is capricious and self-conscious, rejecting balance and harmony, favouring eccentric forms of applied ornament and employing structural elements for symbolic effect, not functional necessity. In rejecting the functionalist ideals of Modernism, the Postmodernists make nostalgic references to Pre-Modernist styles, experiment with devices such as broken silhouettes, curvilinear forms, coloured surfaces and playful ornament, and create built forms in startling shapes never seen before. These stylistic elements are manipulated and combined in a variety of ways, so that there is not one Postmodernist style but many (Curtis, 1996, 589–613). The eclecticism of Postmodernism is reinforced by regional and cultural variations, because in today’s globalised economy, celebrity architects and trophy buildings are to be found everywhere in the world, no longer principally confined to North America and Europe (Frampton, 2020, 617–642). Critics of Postmodernism have been as outspoken as the earlier critics of Modernism who gave rise to the movement. It has been described as ‘the conscious ruination of style and the cannibalization of architectural form’ (Frampton, 2020, 343). In the absence of a coherent vision of its own, it is accused of reverting to pastiche. ‘For with the collapse of the high-modernist ideology of style…the producers of culture have nowhere to turn but to the past: the imitation of dead styles’ (Jameson, 1991, 17). The chaotic plurality of architectural styles that has evolved over the past five decades has acquired a rich lexicon of terminology that captures the complexity and contradiction of Postmodernism—‘Radical Eclecticism’, ‘Postmodern Classicism’, ‘Critical Regionalism’, ‘Critical Modernism’, ‘Ecological Expressionism’ and so on (Jencks, 2011, 47–49). Each two-word combination suggests another enticing stylistic possibility. Furthermore, despite the Postmodernist rhetoric, Modernism has not died, but continues to flourish as ‘Late Modernism’ or ‘Neo-Modernism’. So fluid is the stylistic canon that architects think nothing of synthesising several strands within a single building.

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Postmodernist architects aim to create ‘iconic buildings’ of startling form that will rapidly achieve global recognition (Jencks, 2005). The function of architecture has become the creation of spectacle, ‘with its sense of the ephemeral, of display, and of transitory but participatory pleasure’ (Harvey, 1989, 271). One such building is the American architect Frank Gehry’s multi-shelled Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which has become a prototype for cultural and leisure buildings around the world (McNeill, 2009, 81–97). There is no ambiguity about the purpose of such buildings. They are self-conscious personal statements, designed to boost the reputation of the architect, indifferent to their wider social context. They are the perfect cultural metaphor for the atomised state of advanced capitalist society. If each iconic building can be viewed as a spectacle, then the postmodern city as a whole presents itself as ‘an immense accumulation of spectacles’ (Debord, 2014, 2). For Postmodernism has not just transformed the appearance of individual buildings, it has redefined attitudes to urban planning and design, thereby transforming the appearance of cities as a whole (Ellin, 1996). The Modernist ambition to radically reshape the urban landscape through large-scale, rationally planned development schemes has been abandoned. ‘Postmodernism cultivates, instead, a conception of the urban fabric as necessarily fragmented, a “palimpsest” of past forms superimposed upon each other, and a “collage” of current uses, many of which may be ephemeral’ (Harvey, 1990, 66). Urban designers have eschewed the grand social vision and focussed instead on the power of individual iconic buildings to add lustre to the places in which they stand (Jones, 2011, 116–123). For the Modernists, urban space was something dependent, to be shaped for social purposes; for the Postmodernists it is something autonomous, to be exploited for the purposes of spectacle alone.

9.4  Postmodern City It is in the heart of the resurgent City that the rise of Postmodernism in London can most clearly be observed. Here the scene was set in the 1980s by two historic battles fought between the forces of Modernism, Pre-­ Modernism and Postmodernism. Modernism was vanquished in both; the victor in one was Pre-Modernism, in the other Postmodernism. The first of these conflicts concerned the rebuilding of the St Paul’s Churchyard area around the cathedral that had suffered extensive bomb damage during the Second World War. In 1956, the architect and planner

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William Holford produced a classic Modernist urban redevelopment scheme for the site, incorporating two interlocking pedestrian precincts surrounded by several office buildings of between six and ten storeys, culminating in a slim 16-storey tower. Known as Paternoster Square, the scheme was constructed between 1962 and 1967, with Trehearne & Norman, Preston and Partners the principal architects (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 594–596). Initial opinions of the Paternoster scheme were positive: in 1973 Pevsner described it as ‘outstandingly well conceived’. However, as the reaction to Modernism set in during the 1980s, criticisms grew about its harsh and draughty precincts, inadequate pedestrian circulation and poorly managed views of the cathedral. Occupying such a highly sensitive site, the demolition and redevelopment of this unloved example of Modernism became a cause célèbre. In 1986, a high-profile design competition involving the leading architects of the day was won by Arup Associates, with a scheme that was classically inclined but still formally Modern. However, a campaign for a more traditional design was led by no lesser a figure than the Prince of Wales (Hyde, 2019, 160–162). The Arup scheme was dropped in favour of a Classical Revival scheme produced by John Simpson and championed by the Prince. This obtained planning permission in 1993, but was then quietly abandoned. A new masterplan was subsequently commissioned from William Whitfield, and it was this that was finally implemented between 1997 and 2003, with the various office buildings designed by a range of different practices. The resulting pastiche has been judged ‘a weak compromise between modernity and tradition’ (Powell, 2001, 211). The 1980s culture war between tradition and modernity reached a different resolution in the famous case of No. 1 Poultry (Hyde, 2019, 139–152). This prime site, looking out to the Mansion House, Bank of England and Royal Exchange, was occupied by ‘the best group of High Victorian commercial architecture then remaining in the City’s centre’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 578). Nevertheless, the developer Peter Palumbo had a vision to replace this Victorian ensemble with an 18-storey Modernist office tower, designed by Mies van der Rohe himself and earmarked for occupation by Lloyds Bank (Gold, 2007, 144). Having spent over twenty years assembling the site, Palumbo submitted his final proposal to the City Corporation in 1982. Needless to say, the idea of an iconic Miesian tower planted in the heart of the City was bitterly opposed by conservationists, and the Corporation rejected the proposal. Palumbo appealed, there was a public inquiry, and his appeal was dismissed.

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However, this defeat of Modernism did not result in the preservation of the Victorian ensemble. Palumbo commissioned the design of a new and very different iconic building from James Stirling, one of Britain’s leading Postmodernists. Stirling’s design can be likened to a wedge of layer cake, faced with pink and yellow stripes of limestone cladding, and fronted with a keyhole-shaped entrance above which rises a rounded clock tower with winged balconies reminiscent of a submarine conning tower (Franklin & Harwood, 2017, 126–129). Not surprisingly, this eccentric building was as unpopular with the traditionalists as the Miesian tower, but it was more in keeping with the postmodern zeitgeist. Again the Corporation rejected the scheme, again it went to a public inquiry, but this time Palumbo won after the verdict of the inquiry in his favour was unsuccessfully appealed in the High Court, the Court of Appeals and finally the House of Lords. Completed in 1997, No. 1 Poultry remains one of London’s most controversial buildings, its amusing devices and historical quotations symbolising not the importance of its occupiers but the bravura of its architect. Whilst these battles of the styles were playing out, demand for office space in the City was soaring. The Big Bang deregulation of financial markets combined with the computerisation of trading operations was generating a massive office-building boom that provided a perfect opportunity for the wholesale adoption of Postmodernist design (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 141–145). The demand was for larger air-conditioned offices with unobstructed dealing rooms and sufficient provision of ICT services. These demands not only added impetus to the rise of the skyscraper, but they also gave birth to new office forms, the atrium office block and the ‘groundscraper’. Inserting atria into the centre of office buildings improves day-lighting, assists ventilation and allows for deeper and wider floors. Groundscrapers employ atria to create low to medium-rise blocks with enormous floor-plates. Early examples of these new forms of office building are to be found in the Broadgate Centre, an office complex progressively developed by property company Rosehaugh Stanhope on a large site around Liverpool Street Station. The scheme is the creation of engineers as much as architects, employing fast-track construction techniques that make maximum use of prefabrication. Leading the introduction and development of these techniques has been the structural engineering practice founded by Ove Arup, who is considered to have done more to reconcile the rival disciplines of

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architecture and engineering than anyone else in the post-war period (Saint, 2007, 365–394). Broadgate constitutes ‘the largest and most impressive private post-war development in the City’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 434–438). Atrium blocks of varying heights are clustered informally around three new pedestrian squares enhanced with water features and free-standing sculpture. The first block to be erected was No. 1 Finsbury Avenue, originally occupied by Swiss investment bank UBS, an eight-storey groundscraper by Peter Foggo of Arup (1982–4). An external steel skeleton supports deep open-plan floor-plates centred around a full-height octagonal atrium capped with a large glazed lantern. Later came Exchange House (1985–90) by the American practice Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Bridging over the railway tracks leading out from the station, this ten-storey slab also employs an external steel frame, supported on powerful parabolic steel arches that span the tracks. These Broadgate buildings are restrained versions of the High-Tech style that was flourishing at the time in Britain. A much more dramatic example is the Lloyd’s Building by Richard Rogers, built for the insurance market between 1978 and 1986 (Davies, 1988, 42–55). Though adhering to the Machine Age principles of Modernism, High-Tech architects applied them very differently. They created the antithesis of a Miesian smooth skin by wrapping all the service ducts around the exterior of a building, so as to leave the interior space unencumbered while allowing for repeated upgrades of the external services. In this vein, the 12-storey Lloyd’s Building is structured around a glazed barrel-vaulted atrium, with stacks of service ducts lining the exterior, allowing the bottom five floors, linked by escalators, to act as one extended trading room. The interior space has echoes of a Gothic cathedral, but one devoted to the worship of Mammon (Photograph 9.1). Lloyd’s can be viewed as a Late Modernist vision of the ‘building as machine’ (Connor, 1997, 84), or alternatively as an example of ‘techno-­ romanticism in its almost picturesque handling of shiny silver ducts, tubes and mechanical services’ (Curtis, 1996, 658). Whatever the label, it has been called the ‘most consistently innovative building the City has seen since Soane’s Bank of England’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 313). The counter-claim was that the exposed services made the building extremely expensive to maintain, and that the Lloyd’s workforce much preferred their previous traditional building on the other side of Lime Street (Moore, 2012, 73–75). Whatever the truth of the matter, Rogers has certainly

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Photograph 9.1 Lloyd’s Building 1978–86 (Source: DBURKE/Alamy Stock Photo)

provided the underwriters with an instantly recognisable symbol of their hegemonic status at the very centre of the global insurance industry. Needless to say, there is irony in the icon, housing one of the most venerable City institutions in one of its most futuristic buildings (Hatherley, 2012, 348–353). As the 1980s boom gathered pace, the taste for Postmodernist display became increasingly extreme. Non-structural columns, neo-vernacular gables, blank arcades, round-headed windows and strongly contrasting colours all began to appear. Minster Court on Mincing Lane by the GMW Partnership (1987–91) is a quintessential Postmodernist confection. Its three giant blocks are grouped into one jagged pile, faced in ‘rosy polished granite cladding in a bewildering variety of fins and angles, like Hanseatic Gothic done in stiff folded paper’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 558). GMW also designed a new building for Barclays Bank on Lombard Street (1986–94). This ‘vast and boastful’ structure comprises three stout towers of varying heights, the tallest of 17 storeys, with rounded and glazed tops ‘like the Chrysler Building in New  York without its finial’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 1997, 538).

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Less theatrical but equally massive is the 18-storey, twin-towered Alban Gate by Terry Farrell for developer MEPC (1988–92), initially occupied by the UK headquarters of US investment bank J P Morgan Chase. Replacing Lee House, one of the unloved Modernist blocks on London Wall, its Postmodernist successor exhibits the broken profiles, set-back façades and striped pink and grey stone cladding typical of the style. Farrell used similar motifs on Embankment Place (1987–90), his contemporaneous nine-storey office development on the Thames, raised over the tracks at Charing Cross Station and occupied by the headquarters of management consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers. Two dramatic arches overlook the river, echoing the form of the great train sheds of Victorian London; ‘nothing this fearless had been done on the north embankment since the 1930s’ (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 300).

9.5  Beyond Finance Embankment Place leads us out of the City and into Westminster and the rest of Inner London, where Postmodernism has had a more selective impact. Here there are isolated examples of the genre, but no wholesale transformation of the landscape of power as has occurred in the City. As well as commercial buildings, these examples include buildings housing institutions of government, culture and entertainment. Westminster witnessed its own battle to defeat Modernism when a competition was held in 1982 to design an extension to Wilkin’s National Gallery (Hyde, 2019, 156–160). The winning Modernist design went to a public inquiry and received planning permission, but was dropped after the Prince of Wales famously described it as ‘a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend’. A second competition was held in 1985, after the scheme had attracted the sponsorship of the Sainsbury family and was named the Sainsbury Wing. The winning design this time was a restrained exercise in Postmodern Classicism by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. The Corinthian order used by Wilkins in the portico of the original building is repeated in pilasters attached to the facade of the new extension, but they are deliberately oddly spaced for decorative effect rather than evenly spaced to suggest structural balance. Obscure references to other buildings in the vicinity reinforce the impression that this is a clever building but one that is difficult to read, a criticism that the Postmodernists levelled at Modernism (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 308–10).

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The media industry embraced Postmodernism with enthusiasm, as a style that captured the flippant and ephemeral spirit of contemporary popular culture. Terry Farrell’s brash and jokey design for the TV-am studios in Camden (1981–3) established an instant brand for the new breakfast television company. He employed package-tour iconography to relate a ‘global village’ narrative, with a Japanese shrine, a Mesopotamian temple, an Italian garden and a Hollywood landscape laid out around a central atrium (Franklin & Harwood, 2017, 138–141). A decade later, Richard Rogers produced a Westminster headquarters building for Channel 4 (1991–4), designed in the trademark High-Tech style he had developed for the Lloyd’s Building. An imposing entrance through a concave glass wall leads into two right angle wings, framed by two ‘spikily techno-Gothic towers’, one supporting an array of masts and aerials that advertise the nature of the occupier’s business activity (Hatherley, 2021, 72). It seems that the neoliberal state was also inclined to welcome Postmodernism, eager to demonstrate that the age of earnest egalitarianism was over and the that a new age of ironic individualism had arrived. No public building has indulged in irony more obviously than the new Vauxhall headquarters of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), designed by Terry Farrell and completed in 1994 (Photograph 9.2). The riverside front is an extraordinary mélange of protruding pavilions, stepped up through several tiers, creating the overall impression of a massive ziggurat (Franklin & Harwood, 2017, 152). The style is reportedly influenced by Mayan and Aztec temples, coupled with the 1930s Modernist power stations at Bankside and Battersea! These references suggest ‘tough’ and ‘exotic’, just the image the spymasters may hold of themselves, and one that has been reinforced by the starring role the building has played in several James Bond films. Here a fortress of espionage has been transmuted into a theatre of spectacle, in which power is expressed in a playful, postmodern language (Williams, 2019, 60–62). Portcullis House (1998–2001) by Michael Hopkins, designed to house the offices of Westminster MPs, is a more serious public building. Sited directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, it looks conscious of its prime position at the heart of the Westminster landscape of power (Photograph 1.2). The body of the building is a massive rectangular block of stone and bronze, topped by a sloping roof above which rise a forest of bronze ventilation chimneys. It is a skyline that spells power, signifying both a

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Photograph 9.2  SIS Building 1990–4 (Source: Mark Beton/London/Alamy Stock Photo)

historical Tudor palace and a modern electricity generating station (Bradley & Pevsner, 2003, 247). If Portcullis House respects the national importance of the Westminster Parliament, City Hall on the river in Southwark showed less regard for the status of the Greater London Authority, its occupier until 2022. Following the abolition of the GLC by the Thatcher government, the incoming Labour government under Tony Blair was committed to correcting the city’s ‘democratic deficit’ by recreating a central strategic authority for London, with an elected Assembly led by an elected Mayor. But the new streamlined GLA was given more limited powers than its troublesome predecessor, reducing its importance in the eyes of both central government and the people of London (Inwood, 1998, 930–934). The Greater London Council, staring across the Thames at the Houses of Parliament from its imposing Imperial headquarters in County Hall, was a serious and powerful body. The Greater London Authority, cocooned in its goldfish bowl by Tower Bridge, looked neither serious nor powerful.

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City Hall was designed by Norman Foster, already becoming established as London’s most prolific celebrity architect. Completed in 2002, the glazed structure has a strange bulbous shape, a sliced sphere displaced from its axis with each stepped-back slice corresponding to an internal floor. Two Mayors who were based in the building have unkindly likened its form to that of a testicle (Jencks, 2005, 50). Enclosed in glass, the assembly chamber is visible from outside, intended to symbolise the democratic transparency of the new government of London (Moore, 2012, 192–197). However, the overwhelming use of glass offsets the gain in energy efficiency achieved by the very particular shape of the building. The GLA leased rather than owned City Hall, and so in 2022 it ended its tenure there and moved into a new building that it owned in Newham, next to the redeveloped Royal Victoria Dock, in order to save rental costs. As postmodern London approached the millennium, its identity as a city of culture and spectacle became increasingly prominent. In 1997, work was finally finished on the British Library on Euston Road, next to St Pancras Station. This enormous project by Colin St John Wilson had begun twenty years earlier, which explains why it has been suggested that on completion it looked like ‘a weird half-Brutalist, half historicist throwback’ (Hatherley, 2021, 144). But, as befits the repository of the nation’s ancient manuscripts and literary treasures, as well as one of the largest libraries in the world, the result is a complex and serious building, strongly influenced by the Finnish Modernist Alvar Aalto, without any of the flamboyant devices beloved of the Postmodernists. The Library comprises two wings of unequal length, their junction marked by a slim clock tower, all set back from the road by a large public courtyard (Photograph 9.3). This contains a great bronze statue of England’s most famous mathematician and scientist, Isaac Newton, connoting the intellectual mission of the library. Denoting awareness of its surroundings, the exterior finishes of orange brick and grey slate echo the appearance of the neighbouring neo-Gothic station hotel. Within the interior ‘detail is minimal; all depends on space and light’, creating an almost religious atmosphere appropriate to a temple of learning (Cherry & Pevsner, 2002, 374). Two major additions to London’s community of museums were also being completed on the eve of the millennium. Between 1998 and 2000, the central courtyard of the British Museum was converted into an enclosed Great Court by Norman Foster, covering the vast quadrangle with an undulating glazed roof that unites the courtyard walls with the

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Photograph 9.3  British Library 1978–97 (Source: Charles Bowman/Alamy Stock Photo)

central Reading Room. As well as producing additional exhibition space for the Museum, a unique new public space has been created in the heart of Central London (Powell, 2011, 86). At the same time, a new branch of the Tate Gallery, Tate Modern, was being created by the Swiss practice Herzog & de Meuron within the shell of the redundant Bankside Power Station in Southwark. Situated directly across the Thames from St Paul’s, the power station was built between 1957 and 1960 by Giles Gilbert Scott, grandson of the High Victorian architect. To house the new gallery, much of the massive steel-framed, brick-clad structure was retained, including the tall central chimney and cavernous turbine hall. In 2016, the architects added a Postmodernist extension to the existing structure in the form of a brick-clad stepped pyramid (Powell, 2011, 100). Incorporating shops, bars and restaurants as well as exhibition space, the gallery has become one of the most visited tourist attractions in London, especially once it was connected to St Paul’s by the Millennium Footbridge, another addition to the landscape of London by Foster and Arup (Powell, 2011, 37). The success of Tate

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Modern derives from that seamless fusion of culture and consumerism that characterises the modern museum. The start of the new millennium was inevitably celebrated through spectacle as well as culture, and a new theatre of spectacle was built in London to celebrate the auspicious date. The Millennium Dome on Greenwich Peninsula was planned to house the Millennium Experience, an exhibition with the hegemonic purpose of ‘showcasing Britain’ in the spirit of the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Festival of Britain in 1951 (Jones, 2011, 79–88). Designed by Richard Rogers, the Dome has the appearance of an enormous circular marquee suspended from 12 High-­ Tech masts, its shape a reference to the Dome of Discovery in the Festival of Britain. The Millennium Experience was divided into 14 topic zones (Body, Mind Faith, Work, Learning, Money etc.), grouped around a central stage for musical performances. Each zone was designed by a different architectural practice and funded by a different corporate sponsor (Powell, 2011, 139). Despite the monetisation of the experience, in the neoliberal spirit of the times, the exhibition was judged a failure. Financial predictions were based on a forecast of 12 million visitors, but during the twelve months it was open it attracted only 6.5 million, which compared unfavourably with the 8.5 million people attracted to the Festival of Britain over a shorter five-month period. Like the Crystal Palace before it, there were extensive discussions and proposals concerning the use of the Dome after the exhibition closed, which eventually saw this hubristic building converted into a sports and entertainment arena. Sports stadia have always been important theatres of spectacle in London, stretching right back to the amphitheatre of Londinium. While Roman gladiators, like today’s footballers, were marketable commodities with prized reputations, what is new is that sport has become a totally globalised industry in the postmodern world. London has acquired two new stadia in the first decade of the millennium (Powell, 2011, 118, 152): the Emirates Stadium for Arsenal Football Club in Highbury by HOK Sport (2006) and the new Wembley Stadium by Foster + Partners together with HOK Sport (2007). These were followed by a whole collection of sporting venues built for the London Olympics in 2012, primarily in the Stratford Olympic Park. This housed, in particular, the main Olympic Stadium by Populous (formerly HOK Sport), the Aquatics Centre by Zaha Hadid and the Velodrome by Hopkins Architects.

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If the Millennium Experience was judged a failure, the London Olympics twelve years later was acclaimed as a spectacular success in showcasing Britain (Williams, 2019, 13–14). Beyond the games themselves, and the stadia built to house them, this unique event will always be remembered for the opening ceremony held in the Olympic Stadium. Devised by film director Danny Boyle and entitled Isles of Wonder, this spectacle captured the essence of Britain past and present in a radical and optimistic vision that harked back to the spirit of the Great Levelling. In the decade that followed, the ceremony was fondly remembered as a cultural high-­ point, as the city and the nation were convulsed by the political upheaval of Brexit and then the social upheaval of the Covid pandemic.

9.6   City of Towers As in every global city, the competition to build the tallest office tower continues unabated in London (Barras, 2016, 342). A mutually reinforcing dynamic of accumulation and innovation has been created by the interaction between the ascendancy of financial capital and the rise of the office tower. Financial institutions now dominate every aspect of the metropolitan office market, acting as the principal occupiers, sources of development finance and long-term investors. They are engaged in a competitive process of merger and restructuring, perpetually enhancing their labour force and upgrading their ICT systems, creating the demand for new buildings of ever larger size, higher quality and improved technical specification. Beyond this economic imperative is the hegemonic imperative, to assert superior status by developing, owning and occupying the tallest and most striking towers. Financial institutions seek to occupy highly masculinised buildings that symbolise the vertical structure of their power (Graham, 2016, 149–173). Siting their towers in the most prime locations, on the most expensive land, in the heart of the largest cities broadcasts the reach of that corporate power. The global race to be the tallest has long since passed London by. Whilst the early running was made in the US, the contest has now shifted to Asia and the Middle East. Nevertheless, the fever of the tall tower race has now infected decision-makers in London. The lure of the skyscraper even seduced a left-wing politician like Ken Livingstone, Leader of the GLC between 1981 and 1986 and Mayor of London from 2000 to 2008 (Hatherley, 2012, 341–347). The politicians and planners dream of

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creating a Manhattan skyline on the Thames; the architects and developers yearn to create the ultimate iconic building that will secure their lasting fame. But the competition is not just about height, it is also about shape. Moving into the noughties, the appetite for the more fanciful forms of Postmodernism had waned. In place of fractured silhouettes and playful ornament, Neo-Modernism emerged in a Miesian smooth skin. But in the continuing search for iconic status, that skin now enclosed shapes that were anything but rectangular. When those shapes are identified with forms of foodstuffs or everyday objects (Gherkin, Cheesegrater; Walkie-­ Talkie, Scalpel, Shard), then it is clear that irony and humour still feed their architects’ imagination (Dyckhoff, 2017, 31–39). They are Postmodernist forms disguised in Modernist dress, and their nicknames are a signifier of their symbolic value. Each distinctive form is designed to maximise its impact as a spectacle on the new skyline of London (Gassner, 2020, 83–96). Completed in 2003, the earliest and finest of the new towers is Norman Foster’s 30 St Mary Axe, popularly known as the Gherkin, UK headquarters of the Swiss Re insurance company. Rather than a Miesian rectangle, the floor-plate of the 41-storey tower is a circle of varying diameter enclosing a central service core, with the floors expanding and then contracting as one moves up through the building, creating a sense of entasis. It is a shape that certainly produces a dramatic effect, but poses a considerable practical challenge in terms of the functionality of the internal space. This the architect endeavoured to overcome by dividing each floor into blocks of offices, separating floors into groups of six, and linking them by open shafts which wind around the building, assisting day-lighting and ventilation while creating a strong spiral pattern in the exterior glazing (Hollis, 2011, 387–390). This instantly recognisable building has attracted widespread approval, even from skyscraper sceptics (Sudjic, 2006, 424–428). It rapidly achieved iconic status, to the extent that it has been called ‘the most original and elegant skyscraper ever produced in Britain’ (Jencks, 2005, 185). Despite its iconic status, the Gherkin, like the NatWest Tower before it, is now largely lost to view amongst the cluster of towers that have sprung up around it since its completion (Photograph 1.1). Most of these towers have been built speculatively and let to a multiplicity of smaller City firms, who collectively share the hegemonic status that their building bestows upon them.

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First up was the 26-storey Willis Building (2004–8) on Lime Street, opposite the Lloyd’s Building, headquarters of the Willis Group of insurance brokers. Built for developer British Land, it is another adventurous Foster design with three curved segments stepped up one behind the other, supposedly resembling a crustacean shell (Heathcote et al., 2017, 31). Also for British Land was the 35-storey Broadgate Tower by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (2005–8). Its external steel skeleton articulated by diagonal struts gives it the trademark Broadgate High-Tech appearance (Powell, 2011, 303). Next was the 46-storey Heron Tower, at 110 Bishopsgate, designed for developer Heron International by the American practice Kohn Pedersen Fox (2007–11). Again, it is a steel and glass tower featuring prominent cross-bracing, distinguished by its stepped roofline (Powell, 2011, 298). Slightly later, and of a similar height to the Heron Tower, was Rogers’s 48-storey Leadenhall Building known as the Cheesegrater (2011–14), built for British Land in partnership with Canadian real estate company Oxford Properties. This wedge-shaped slab with a sloping façade is yet again fashionably clothed in High-Tech diagonal struts (Heathcote et al., 2017, 28). Of the same vintage as the Leadenhall Building, not so tall but much bulkier, is 20 Fenchurch Street, nicknamed the Walkie-Talkie (2011–14). Designed by the Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly for development company Land Securities, its distinctively bulbous, top-heavy form is more obviously in the Postmodernist tradition than those of its slimmer contemporaries. Of all the recent City towers, this is the most controversial; on its opening in 2015, the reception was almost universally hostile, one architectural critic describing it as ‘bloated, inelegant and thuggish’ (Williams, 2019, 42–46). However, there is an economic logic to its idiosyncratic shape. The bulbous form is a device for maximising the area of the upper floors, because these can be let at a higher rent to tenants who value the superior daylighting and spectacular views. It is a perfect illustration of the maxim that ‘form follows finance’ in the design of office towers (Willis, 1995). The community of City towers has continued to expand in the last five years, clustering along Bishopsgate. The 38-storey Scalpel (2015–18) at 52 Lime Street, adjacent to the Willis Building, is another design by Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), built as the European headquarters of the American insurance company W R Berkley. It is so named because of its sharply angular design. Number 100 Bishopsgate (2015–19) is a 40-storey tower, part occupied by the Royal Bank of Canada. Number 8 Bishopsgate

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(2019–23) is a 51-storey tower by British architects WilkinsonEyre for Japanese developer Mitsubishi Estate in partnership with British developer Stanhope. The building is notable for the innovative technical systems promoting energy efficiency that were incorporated by services engineer Arup. Dwarfing all these towers is 22 Bishopsgate, at 62 storeys and 278 metres the tallest addition to the City skyline so far. It is a project with a long and chequered history. In 2008, construction had started on a previous scheme named the Pinnacle, designed by KPF in the form of a twisting helter-skelter. This was abandoned in 2012 due to lack of both funding and letting commitments. A simpler and cheaper rectilinear design was then drawn up by PLP Architecture, a London practice founded by former partners of KPF, for a development consortium led by Axa Real Estate. Construction restarted in 2016, despite objections from several parties about the potential loss of light to surrounding buildings, and the building was completed in 2021. This enormous structure contains some 120,000 square metres of office space served by 60 lifts, capable of housing 12,000 workers. Initial verdicts have not been favourable; it has been described as ‘dystopian architecture’, a massive monolith made ‘incredibly intimidating’ by its breadth rather than its height (Hatherley, 2021, 78). Planning permission has been granted by the City Corporation for an even taller 74-storey, 300-metre high, tower at 1 Undershaft, situated between the Gherkin and the Leadenhall Building. If built this would beat 22 Bishopsgate to become the tallest tower in the City, but it would still not be the tallest in London. That title continues to be held for now by the 72-storey London Bridge Tower, known as the Shard, a steel and glass pyramidal spire standing 310 metres tall on the south bank of the Thames in Southwark, poor relation of the City since Roman times. Completed in 2012 at a cost of some £435 million, the Shard is a child of the globalised economy. It was designed by an Italian architect and engineer, Renzo Piano, financed by a consortium of Qatari investors and built by a global construction company, Mace Group, that is headquartered in London. Orchestrating the whole project has been Irvine Sellar, a British property developer who, in the great tradition of buccaneering entrepreneurs, started life as a market trader. Functionally, the building is organised as a ‘vertical city’ containing a mix of uses—offices, apartments, restaurants and a hotel—all linked together by a fleet of 44 lifts. From the outset, this was a project that attracted much controversy. English Heritage, guardian of the nation’s historic buildings, argued that

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it would visually overpower both the Tower and St Paul’s. Popular mythology claims that the organisation unwittingly gave the building its nickname, describing it as ‘a shard of glass through the heart of historic London’. The great tower rises blithely oblivious to its immediate surroundings, which are ‘not so much dwarfed as bullied into silence, subject to an act of urban thuggery’ (Hatherley, 2012, 346). It gains in physical presence by standing a little apart from the mêlée of towers that crowd the City skyline. However, it cannot be detached from the world of finance that inhabits the north bank of the river. Though located in one of the less affluent parts of London, the Shard functions as part of the very different world across the water. So far our discussion of the City has made interchangeable reference to its dual identity—as a physical locus in the historical heart of the metropolis, and as a virtual nexus in the financial heart of the global economy. But since the 1980s, with the development of London Docklands as a competing office centre, the financial nexus is split between two loci; the City has become ‘the City’. It was the establishment of the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC) in 1981 that created this competing growth pole in the borough of Tower Hamlets, to the east of the City (Fainstein, 2001, 175–196). The Corporation offered the combination of an abundant supply of derelict land, generous tax incentives and a favourable planning regime, which attracted development on a grand scale. At the heart of the project was Canary Wharf, a major office complex situated in the Isle of Dogs on the site of the former West India Docks (Daniels & Bobe, 1993). Its original developer was the Canadian firm Olympia & York, owned by the Reichmann brothers, which in the 1980s had grown to be the largest development company in the world. Their aim was to build prime office accommodation for leading financial institutions, especially investment banks, at rents substantially lower than those levied in the core of the City. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill produced a masterplan for the site, with lines of offices flanking sequences of squares, all surrounded by the waterscape of the former docks (Cherry et al., 2005, 666–669). They created a landscape of power on a Modernist scale, but in a Postmodernist mode. It is a home for financial capital in its most rampant form. The first of the Canary Wharf towers to be built was the 50-storey One Canada Square by Argentine-American architect César Pelli (1988–91). Though built as a speculative development, it was specified as a trophy

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building, a landmark designed to announce the birth of a new American-­ style office district in the heart of London. It is a hegemonic building that signifies the creation of a ‘hegemonic place’, a whole new neighbourhood in London’s landscape of financial power. At 235 metres, One Canada Square was the tallest building in Britain for two decades until displaced by the Shard in 2012, and it remains the tallest tower in Docklands. Using fast-track construction methods, only four years were needed to construct the 92,000 square metres of space. However, the hegemonic intent of architect and developer is reflected in its extraordinarily high reported construction cost of £624 million, which in terms of price-adjusted unit costs is close to that of the equally ambitious NatWest Tower (Barras, 2016, 325). Essentially Modernist in its minimalist form, the massive square skyscraper is sheathed in stainless steel, its only Postmodernist features being the set-back corners and pyramidal crown (Cherry et al., 2005: 677). The architect was adamant that this was London’s first true skyscraper in the tradition of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings, and that he was creating ‘a human presence in the sky’ (Grindrod, 2022, 162). The hegemonic imagery is clear, this was to be an Olympian home for the deities of finance. In the first, late 1980s wave of building at Canary Wharf, One Canada Square was fronted by a collection of lower blocks, grouped around Cabot Square and designed in a medley of styles from Classical through to Postmodernist. Investment banks still occupy two of these buildings: Swiss bank Credit Suisse is in 1 Cabot Square by Pei, Cobb Freed; US bank Morgan Stanley is in 25 Cabot Square by SOM. In the second wave of development, around the millennium, the original tower was joined by six glass towers, all essentially Modernist in form, each incorporating design variations intended to distinguish the identity of the building and its occupiers (Cherry et  al., 2005: 675–681). The majority have been occupied by investment banks, who have left no doubt as to the hegemonic identity of their buildings by emblazoning the facades with their company names and logos. Two 45-storey, 200-metre towers rise either side of One Canada Square, each containing another 100,000 square metres or so of space. 8 Canada Square by Foster (1999–2002) is the global headquarters of HSBC, Europe’s largest bank; 25 Canada Square by Pelli (1998–2001) is the European headquarters of American investment bank Citigroup. The HSBC Tower is one of Foster’s less memorable works, its most notable feature being its rounded corners. The Citigroup tower is distinguished by

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stepped storeys towards the top and is joined with its neighbour 33 Canada Square, a lower 18-storey building by Foster, to create the combined Citigroup Centre. Surrounding the three main towers on Canada Square are four slightly lower towers of 32 or 33 storeys, between 150 and 160 metres in height, and all completed in the early noughties. One Churchill Place by American architects HOK, a rather bulky tower reduced in height after the 11 September terrorist attacks, is the headquarters of Barclays Bank. 40 Bank Street, again by Pelli, is in multi-occupation; 10 Upper Bank Street by Kohn Pedersen Fox, serves as the global headquarters of the British law firm Clifford Chance. The last of this group of Canary Wharf towers, 25 Bank Street, yet again by Pelli, has had an eventful history. It was originally intended for occupation by US energy company Enron before it was declared bankrupt in 2001, after the exposure of systemic fraud in its accounts. Following completion in 2003, the building served as the European headquarters of American investment bank Lehman Brothers until its collapse in the Banking Crash of 2008. It is currently occupied as the European headquarters of J P Morgan Chase, at present the largest of the American investment banks. When capitalism is unleashed, risk and instability are the order of the day.

9.7   From Offices to Apartments As the towers of Docklands continue to multiply, the newcomers are increasingly likely to be blocks of luxury apartments rather than prestige offices. Both the hegemonic imperative and the technical capability to build high have been transferred from the business to the residential sector. Ever since the end of the Second World War, residential tower blocks have been a feature of the London landscape. In the early post-war age of Modernism, they were built primarily by local authorities to meet the need for social housing, in estates such as Roehampton. The development of the Barbican towers marked a new departure, being built for professional middle-class occupants rather than the working-class families who were housed on the council estates. The provision of luxury apartments is the model that has been adopted in Docklands and is now spreading right across London. From the outset, the planners intended Docklands to be a place where people of different social classes lived as well as worked. But just as bankers

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have replaced dockers in the workforce, so office professionals have replaced manual workers among the residents. One of the earliest of the Docklands housing schemes was Cascades (1985–8), a 20-storey riverside slab located on the southern edge of Canary Wharf designed by architects DZWG (Cherry et al., 2005: 687). It was this development, more than any other, that established the market for high-rise luxury apartments in Docklands. Cascades is a Postmodernist extravaganza, typical of the times. It is of concertina form, banded in yellow and blue brick, with a south-facing sloping facade incorporating a ‘cascade’ of terraces and conservatories. The memorable silhouette, the inclusion of penthouses and the provision of residents’ services such as shops and a concierge were all designed to appeal to young affluent professionals. Ironically, at the same time as the construction of Cascades was announcing the arrival of a new form of high-rise urban living for the middle class, the demolition of Ronan Point was signalling the demise of an established form of high-rise urban living for the working class (Franklin & Harwood, 2017, 173). The development of residential towers in Docklands has escalated since Cascades was built and has reached a crescendo in the last few years. Seven of the eight tallest residential towers in London have been completed in Docklands since 2019, either in Canary Wharf or elsewhere on the Isle of Dogs. Each is competing to be the star on a crowded stage, combining distinctive shapes with eye-catching facades. Highest of all at 233 metres is the 75-storey Landmark Pinnacle, the fourth tallest tower in Britain and the tallest residential building in Western Europe. Built by Chalegrove Properties and designed by Squire and Partners, it is the most restrained of the group, in essence a stretched version of the rectilinear Miesian slab. Its near neighbour, the 58-storey Newfoundland built by South Quay Properties and designed by London architects Horden Cherry Lee, is altogether more adventurous. It is a convex-sided slab enclosed in a diamond-patterned exoskeleton that is reminiscent of the Broadgate Tower. Even more histrionic is the 57-storey One Park Drive, designed for the Canary Wharf Group by Herzog & de Meuron, architects of Tate Modern. It is a cylindrical tower with a granulated façade formed by alternating recessed and projecting balconies circling each floor. Wardian London, developed by Barrymore and designed by the Glen Howells practice, comprises a pair of identical towers linked at their base by a podium, one of 55 storeys, the other 50 storeys. They have

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a stark, striped appearance, each storey picked out by a white line of protruding balconies below a dark line of recessed windows. Most comprehensive of these recent residential schemes is South Quay Plaza by Foster + Partners for the Berkeley Group. When completed it will contain three apartment towers of 68, 56 and 36 storeys, set within a new public plaza containing shops, cafes and restaurants. What is remarkable about this scheme is that it replaces three office and retail buildings constructed only thirty years earlier during the first wave of Docklands development. Damaged in 1996 by a bomb detonated by the Provisional IRA, one was demolished and two rebuilt. Nevertheless, just twenty years later it was decided to rebuild the whole area to a higher density and more modern specification. Such is the rate of obsolescence in the hectic Central London property market. The recent spread of luxury apartment towers across the rest of London is as frantic as their surge into the skies of Docklands. They have sprung up in every inner borough and even in a few outer boroughs such as Croydon and Ealing. A Thameside location is particularly favoured; wealthy Londoners today value a river view just as much as their medieval, Tudor and Georgian predecessors. Consequently, a sequence of these towers can be seen stretching along the riverside from Tower Hamlets to Hammersmith, especially along the south bank where there is a more plentiful supply of derelict or under-used land available for redevelopment. A prototype for the new generation of Thameside apartment blocks, and for a new style of luxury waterside living, was provided by Chelsea Harbour. Built in the late 1980s on derelict railway land at Chelsea Basin, the scheme comprised apartments, shops and a hotel, all situated around a marina. The focus is the Belvedere, a 20-storey landmark tower with a profile that is ‘a faint echo of the campanile of St Mark’s in Venice’ (Cherry & Pevsner, 1991, 245). Of today’s crop of waterside apartment towers, there is a particularly prominent cluster at Nine Elms in Wandsworth, home to the New Covent Garden Market and the new American Embassy (Photograph 9.4). First on the scene was the 52-storey Vauxhall Tower, completed in 2014 as part of the St George Wharf development by the Berkeley Group. Designed by the Broadway Malyan practice, this pencil-shaped skyscraper aroused great controversy when submitted for planning approval (Moore, 2012, 241) and set the tone for much that has followed along the river. In 2016, The Guardian reported that in 184 out of the 223 apartments in the tower

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Photograph 9.4  Nine Elms 2022 (Source: Richard Barnes/Alamy Stock Photo)

there was no resident registered to vote in the UK, and that 131 out of 210 apartments for which title deeds were available were in foreign ownership. It is an occasional home for the new global plutocracy. Close by the Vauxhall Tower is the 50-storey DAMAC Tower built by Emirati developer DAMAC Properties. Completed in 2022, it was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox with the additional lifestyle lure of interiors created by Donatella Versace. Still to be completed is One Nine Elms, another design by KPF being built by Australian contractor Multiplex. This luxury residential and hotel development contains two towers, the 58-storey City Tower and the 42-storey River Tower. The original developer was Wanda One, UK subsidiary of Chinese development company Dalian Wanda, but they sold it on to another Chinese development company R&F Properties. With Chinese and Emirati developers, an American architect, Italian designer and Australian construction company all serving the demands of the international super-rich, this really is globalisation in action. The current obsession with office and apartment towers is driving one of those periodic transformations that have reshaped London’s landscape

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of power and created a new London skyline. As of early 2023, there were 117 towers at least 100 metres tall across London, with another 24 under construction and a further large number in the planning pipeline (source Wikipedia). Of those towers built or under construction, almost two-­ thirds (93) were for residential use. Luxury apartments have overtaken prestige offices as the principal function of London skyscrapers. Half of all the towers were concentrated in Tower Hamlets (43) and the City (27), with the other half spread across the metropolis. In the city of towers, Docklands has taken over from the City as the location of their greatest concentration, but the phenomenon is now city-wide. Docklands, and in particular Canary Wharf, is unique in the metropolis for being built to a masterplan, rather like the post-war New Towns. Both the plan and the individual towers within it are American in concept and execution. It is the closest that London gets to the sense of a Manhattan landscape of power (Photograph 9.5). The overall impression of the City skyline, on the other hand, is of an incoherent chaos of sprouting towers. Each is a signature statement by

Photograph 9.5 Canary Wharf 2018 (Source: Stefano Ravera/Alamy Stock Photo)

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one of the world’s leading architects, each identified by a unique physical form. Superimposed on a medieval street pattern that has survived many centuries of redevelopment, they jostle for space and block each other’s sight-lines. By contrast in New York, squadrons of towers rise from a street grid that sets off their differing forms in a powerful sequence of interlocking vistas. The City of London can never be Manhattan, however much successive Mayors of London may wish it to be so. This incoherence flies in the face of a Corporation planning process that ostensibly stresses the importance of the visual impact of new buildings and the preservation of sightlines to nearby monuments such as St Paul’s and the Tower (Kenyon, 2011, 271). In part, the apparent chaos is a reflection of the Postmodernist aversion to large-scale urban planning in the Modernist manner. But the causes run deeper than the ephemeral present, to the long-running national aversion to grand designs of urban redevelopment which smack of absolutism and totalitarianism. The most notable casualty of this aversion was, of course, Christopher Wren’s plan for the rebuilding of the City after the Great Fire of 1666. The permissive stance of the City planners inevitably encourages hubristic building. An extreme example is provided by the recent proposal to build the Tulip, a 305-metre observation tower situated next to 30  St Mary Axe. The owner of the Gherkin, the Brazilian billionaire Jaco Safra, commissioned Foster + Partners to design the observation tower to complement their earlier office tower. Rising far above the Gherkin, the tower was to contain no office space but rather, as its nickname suggests, it was to consist simply of a slender lift shaft rising to a bulbous observation pod. City planners approved the scheme in 2019, but their decision was overturned by Mayor Sadiq Khan, and his decision was finally upheld by central government in 2021. It is difficult not to see this vanity project as a reaction by owner and architect to the loss of visibility of the Gherkin as it became enveloped by taller, less distinguished towers. But are ever-higher towers the inevitable future for hegemonic city centre buildings? Recent events have exposed their vulnerability to fire and terrorist attack. They perform poorly in terms of energy efficiency, especially glass towers. Occupants are very dependent on the lifts to access their offices or apartments, which proved a problem in the pandemic. Their height can create a sense of isolation and alienation, which seems to be prompting developers’ increasing resort to facilities such as gyms and rooftop gardens. It could be said that the symbolic value of such buildings has risen to exceed their use value.

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Furthermore, as far as apartments are concerned, many among the new plutocracy rank security over self-promotion. They favour apartments that are large and luxurious on the inside, but situated in blocks that are discrete rather than spectacular on the outside. Such a building is One Hyde Park, located on Knightsbridge and overlooking the park. Designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and completed in 2009, it comprises four linked towers ranging in height from 9 to 13 storeys. It houses what are said to be some of the most expensive apartments in Britain, if not the world. The majority are owned by companies registered in tax havens, which means that their wealthy but largely anonymous owners are not liable to pay council tax (Freeland, 2012, 102). For major corporations, there is an alternative future for the office that has been apparent ever since the first generation of groundscrapers was built in the 1980s. They provide a different form of hegemonic building from the tower. Several financial and tech companies have commissioned such buildings recently as new headquarters, conceived on a scale not seen before, occupying enormous sites covering a whole city block. There are economic benefits to these low-rise, campus-style buildings: their construction and energy costs are lower than those of towers, which offsets the higher land costs of their extensive sites. There are also cultural benefits: they can more easily be designed to provide a socially inclusive working environment that is attractive to their highly skilled, highly mobile workforce. An early example of such a building was Farrell’s nine-storey Embankment Place, headquarters of management consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers. It provides some 35,000 square metres of office floor space, comparable to the size of the Prudential Building constructed a century earlier. But the recent behemoths have taken the concept to a new level altogether. In 2015, Swiss bank UBS moved into a new British headquarters at 5 Broadgate, designed by Ken Shuttleworth and developed by British Land. This 13-storey groundscraper is configured to look like a giant engine block, with a smooth steel façade pierced by horizontal, vertical and diagonal window strips. It provides around 65,000 square metres of office space, as much as any of the City towers with the exception of 22 Bishopsgate. Two years later in 2017, US financial services company Bloomberg moved into a new European headquarters at 3 Queen Victoria Street, on the site previously occupied by Bucklersbury House, one of the first of the

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post-war City office slabs (Photograph 9.6). Designed by Foster + Partners, the Bloomberg HQ comprises two 10-storey buildings divided by a covered arcade and linked by bridges, provided three new public plazas as well as a new setting for the Roman Mithraeum discovered during the previous building works. In total, the scheme contains around 100,000 square metres of office space, as much as each of the main Canary Wharf towers, and occupies a site extending over 1.3 hectares, as large as that occupied by the nearby Bank of England. Its reported construction cost of £1 billion seems extraordinarily high, but it is still much lower than that of One Canada Square when allowance is made for inflation. Next, in 2019, was the completion of a new European headquarters for US investment bank Goldman Sachs, at Plumtree Court on Farringdon Street in the west of the City. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and developed by US real estate company Tishman Speyer, the ten-storey glass shell contains some 77,000 square metres of office space, spread over a one-­ hectare site. As well as the obligatory cafes, restaurants and fitness centre, the bank has signalled the importance it attaches to workforce wellbeing by providing health, nursing mother and childcare facilities. Most recently, the massive groundscrapers have moved out of the City altogether, to provide new homes for the Tech Giants. Google have chosen to locate their new London campus in the major regeneration area on

Photograph 9.6  Bloomberg Building 2010–17 (Source: Nick Moore/Alamy Stock Photo)

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former railway land to the north of King’s Cross Station. Planned for occupation in 2024, their 11-storey headquarters, designed by British practice Heatherwick Studio and the Danish Bjarke Ingels Group, contains close to 100,000 square metres of office space, two-thirds of which will be occupied by Google. Facilities such as a pool, games area and walking track put a more active emphasis on workforce wellbeing than Goldman Sachs, perhaps indicating a difference in staff age profiles. On the other side of the city, Foster + Partners have designed a new office building for Apple, sitting within the Art Deco shell of the former Battersea Power Station that was built in two phases by Giles Gilbert Scott between 1929 and 1955. Complementing the earlier conversion of Bankside Power Station to accommodate Tate Modern, the Apple building contains some 46,000 square metres of office space extending over six floors within the former Battersea boiler house. Pierced by a glass-roofed atrium lined with trees, the interior is a groundscraper version of the rooftop gardens that adorn some recent towers. This new generation of groundscrapers may not pierce the City skyline like the towers, but their sheer mass grants them a dominant presence in London’s urban landscape of power. Furthermore, given the extremely high price of land in Central London, to occupy such large sites is to signal that cost was no barrier to hegemonic building ambition. They can be read as a more environmentally sensitive statement of the wealth and power of the institutions that reside in them, and they may therefore be a pointer to the future of hegemonic building.

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CHAPTER 10

The Hegemonic Premium

10.1   Hegemonic Investment The panoply of office and residential towers that have risen across the London skyline in the last forty years illustrates the crucial role that urban development has played in the financialisation of economic life (Moreno, 2014). Buildings like any other cultural artefact are now commodities to be packaged and sold; the development and sale of buildings as investment assets has become an important segment of the real estate and financial services industries. Production of the built environment takes place in what has been termed the secondary circuit of capital, funded through the capital markets by financial surpluses generated in the primary circuit of production (Harvey, 1985, 3–13). The development process within this secondary circuit is coordinated by property companies, executed by construction companies and funded by banks and other financial institutions. The buildings they create are ‘fictitious’ investment assets, with values determined by the expectation of future returns that can only be realised when they are deployed as means of production or consumption back within the primary circuit of production (Durand, 2017). If they are developed speculatively and leased to their occupiers, they generate real rental income; if they are developed for owner-occupation, they generate notional rent.

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Despite the burgeoning supply of investment properties, empirical analysis reveals that building capital plays a diminishing role as means of production in the modern economy. It is equipment capital such as ICT systems that has become the main instrument of technological change and the dominant driver of economic growth (Barras, 2009, 83–101). It is a trend that is intensifying as more and more economic activity is conducted within the virtual rather than the material realm. Conventional economic logic suggests that building investment should therefore decline relative to that in other more productive components of capital. But this ignores the symbolic value of hegemonic buildings: their expected economic return includes a return on the symbolic capital as well as the economic capital invested in them (Dovey, 2008, 117–135). In our hypercapitalist world, economic and symbolic capital have become perfectly interconvertible (Bourdieu, 1977, 178). The symbolic value as well as the use value of a hegemonic building has become a tradeable commodity, and its exchange value incorporates both components. This is a consequence of neoliberalism having taken the ‘fetishism of commodities’ to extremes: we live in a world in which everything is now commodified. Consequently, it is increasingly difficult to separate the economic and cultural realms, since cultural artefacts and images have been integrated into the market economy. Cultural production has become one component of commodity production in general (Jameson, 1991, 4–5). We can describe the return on the symbolic capital invested in a hegemonic building as a ‘hegemonic premium’. For the perceived benefits of owning a trophy building, investors and owner-occupiers will pay a premium on the purchase price or construction cost when compared to a building having similar use value but little or no symbolic value. Owning an iconic building boosts the profile and prestige of an owner-occupier or investment fund, a benefit that can be monetised in a higher share price and an increased inflow of investor capital. Similarly, leaseholders will pay a premium rent for residing in a trophy building when compared with a non-trophy building. Inhabiting a trophy address boosts the image and status of an occupier, a benefit that for businesses can be monetised in higher client fees and greater business volumes, while for individuals and households the benefits derive more indirectly from their enhanced social status. The value of the hegemonic premium to a status-conscious owner-­ occupier was explicitly recognised by Sir Edward Holden, chairman of the Midland Bank, in 1919. He asserted that it was essential for the bank to

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operate in suitably grand buildings ‘because a good bank with poor premises does not attract deposits in the same way as a bank with good premises’ (Brown, 1997, 216). We have already seen how the bank set about satisfying that precept. They commissioned the nation’s most eminent architect, Edwin Lutyens, to design for them a palatial new headquarters building adjacent to the Bank of England that took sixteen years to complete and was in terms of real unit cost probably the most expensive office building ever constructed in the City. The price of hegemony can be substantial indeed. It is the architect and developer who create the hegemonic premium embodied in a trophy building, through some combination of prominent location, imposing scale, striking style and opulent finish. The status of both is enhanced by their involvement in producing such a building, and this reputational benefit can be translated into greater demand and higher fees for their future services. This effect is particularly apparent with regard to celebrity architects (Sklair, 2017). They have historically always played an influential role in hegemonic building, but they have traditionally worked for powerful patrons. The hegemonic subject of their buildings was typically captured through the use of their patron’s name—the Queen’s House, Devonshire House, Prudential Building, NatWest Tower. However, in the financialised world of speculative building investment, it is the architect’s name that is now the signifier, as illustrated by the crop of eccentric new office towers in Central London—Foster’s Gherkin, Rogers’s Cheesegrater, Viñoly’s Walkie-Talkie and Piano’s Shard. The evidence suggests that celebrity architects are more successful in obtaining the planning permissions needed to construct tall buildings (Cheshire & Dericks, 2014), and that once constructed their trophy buildings can command premium rents and values (Fuerst et al., 2011). The reputational benefits enjoyed by today’s celebrity architects have been facilitated by the replacement of the patron by the market, and the adoption of self-conscious Postmodernism as the favoured architectural style. The career of Norman Foster illustrates how repeated commissions to design trophy buildings in the capital have created an unstoppable momentum that has been termed the ‘Fosterisation of London’ (Hollis, 2011, 378). Celebrity architects have been incorporated into the landscape of power. They ‘place their own signature on the landscape, and repeat it wherever they are hired’ (Zukin, 1993, 47).

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10.2   Boom and Bust It is in the Central London office market that the production and distribution of the hegemonic premium can most clearly be observed. Controlling the investment process are the financial institutions that fund the development of hegemonic buildings, acquire the completed buildings as portfolio assets and occupy them as symbols of their wealth and status. Coordinating the development process are the specialist property companies that assemble development sites, commission architects and engineers, acquire planning permissions, raise development finance, hire construction companies and secure occupiers for the completed buildings. Owners, occupiers, developers and architects share the hegemonic premium derived from the symbolic capital invested in the completed buildings. Such buildings truly function as ‘towers of capital’ (Lizieri, 2009). The investment market for City office buildings originated in the Victorian era, when the first specialist property companies were formed to supply the growing demand for multi-occupier buildings. These early property companies leveraged up their capital base with fixed-interest mortgages from financial institutions, in order to purchase land or acquire ground leases, develop office buildings and lease them to tenants. From these beginnings, there has been an enormous expansion in the scale and sophistication of the City investment market (Scott, 1996). City office building, like all sectors of property development, has not proceeded along a smooth trajectory but rather exhibited a strongly cyclical dynamic (Barras, 2009, 179–214). As with the production of any fixed capital goods, property developers are faced with uncertainties about the future market conditions into which they will deliver their completed buildings. Consequently, development tends to veer between overshoot and correction, generating a succession of building booms punctuated by slumps. The instability of the building cycle is reinforced by inflows of speculative investment capital during each upswing. Each boom produces a distinctive vintage of new buildings, defined by the latest construction technology and the prevailing architectural style. Following a lull during the inter-war period, due to the depressed conditions in the City economy, the property industry enjoyed a huge bonanza in the aftermath of the Second World War. Whilst the demand for commercial property was growing strongly, building controls held supply virtually static. The inevitable result was an escalation in property prices and an investment boom in existing buildings. When building controls were

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relaxed in the 1950s, the age of the buccaneering developer dawned (Marriott, 1967). With rents growing strongly and cleared bomb sites readily available, exceptional rates of development profit could be achieved. The leading property developers amassed considerable fortunes during this boom; of the forty largest estate fortunes left in Britain between 1960 and 1979, eight belonged to property developers (Rubinstein, 2006, 293–298). However, rapid market expansion led to increased market instability. In the early 1970s, the City market was convulsed by an extraordinary boom-­ bust cycle, fuelled by the combination of development controls introduced by the outgoing Labour government and a credit-driven economic boom set off by the incoming Conservative government. Rents soared and bank lending funded a massive development boom, only for the economy and the property market to crash in response to the OPEC oil price shocks. Two contrasting buildings constructed during the 1970s boom illustrate the extent to which the desire to produce an iconic building can inflate construction costs so as to carry a substantial hegemonic premium. The NatWest Tower and its close neighbour 99 Bishopsgate were both designed by Richard Seifert, the former a custom-built banking headquarters, the latter a speculative venture let out as a bank headquarters. Seifert was the most prolific of London’s commercial architects in the early post-war era. His popularity with developers was based on his encyclopaedic knowledge of planning regulations, which enabled him to design schemes that would cover a site with the maximum amount of lettable floor space while taking the shortest time to build (Marriott, 1967, 32). This was the approach adopted for 99 Bishopsgate, in stark contrast to the occupier-led hubris of the NatWest Tower design. The Bishopsgate tower contained slightly more than 70 per cent of the office space in the NatWest Tower, arranged on a more conventional floor-plan and built to a much less demanding height of 26 rather than 43 floors. It took little more than half as long to build at a unit cost only one-third that of the NatWest Tower. On completion, the development consortium let the whole building to HSBC, who then purchased it at a price which provided the developers with a handsome profit and the bank with a headquarters substantially cheaper than that built by its seemingly more status-conscious neighbour (Barras, 2016, 324). The late 1980s witnessed the second speculative boom-bust cycle of the post-war era, triggered by a similar combination of circumstances as that

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which had caused the first (Goobey, 1992). Big Bang unleashed surging demand for new space, the Conservative government set off another inflationary economic boom, and the City Corporation relaxed planning controls in response to the competitive threat posed by the development of Docklands. A new generation of property companies were the prime movers in this development cycle, funding their schemes with bank loans and selling them on to financial institutions on completion. For the first time, this boom attracted large numbers of overseas investors, lured by the prospect of owning a trophy City building. It was the global recession of the early 1990s that caused the office market to crash once more (Dow, 1998, 321–363). The turnaround in market fortunes was particularly damaging in Docklands, where Olympia & York, the developer of Canary Wharf, was declared bankrupt in 1992 with over half of the office space in the scheme still unlet (Ghosh et al., 1994). In 1995, the Canary Wharf estate was taken over at a price of £800 million by a consortium of international investors including a Saudi billionaire and chaired by Paul Reichmann, one of the Olympia and York founders (Harris, 2005, 122–125). Following this rescue, the success of the venture was finally assured by the completion in 1999 of the Jubilee Line extension of the underground network to serve the new office location. Its ultimate success made Canary Wharf a highly desirable target for international investors. In 2004, it was taken over by Songbird Estates, a consortium led by US investment bank Morgan Stanley with US fund Glick Family Investments as the main shareholder. The consortium acquired around two-thirds of the equity at a price that valued the company at £1.7 billion. In 2009, the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and China Investment Corporation injected over £800 million of equity capital into Songbird to save the heavily indebted company from bankruptcy in the aftermath of the Banking Crash. In 2015, the QIA, together with Canadian investor Brookfield Properties, launched a hostile, but eventually successful, bid to wholly acquire Songbird for £2.6 billion.

10.3  A Global Investment Market The frenetic struggle to own Canary Wharf kickstarted the great wave of international investment now engulfing the Central London property market (Craggs, 2018). It has become a truly global market, fully integrated into the worldwide financial economy. As in all investment markets,

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the combination of computerisation and market deregulation has generated a stream of innovative investment vehicles such as securitised funds and property derivatives (Tiwari & White, 2014). Compared to direct property ownership, these indirect vehicles are promoted as offering better risk diversification, greater liquidity and reduced transaction costs. Investment demand for Central London property has been reinforced by the entry into the market of the new breed of sovereign wealth funds that have emerged in the last twenty years (Clark et  al., 2013). These funds are owned by states that are accumulating wealth at an extraordinary rate, either through the export of commodities such as oil (Gulf States; Norway) or through foreign exchange earnings resulting from a positive trade balance (China). Because of its long-term security, property is one of their favourite stores of wealth, and the hegemonic towers of Central London are one of their favourite storage facilities. Long before the first pile has been sunk, each new development proposal in the City or Docklands arouses a feeding frenzy amongst the world’s richest investors, as they compete to add another trophy building to their portfolios. The most prolific of the sovereign wealth funds operating in London is the Qatar Investment Authority. As well as funding the development of the Shard and acquiring a majority stake in the Canary Wharf Group, it is joint owner of the Olympic Village in Stratford and sole owner of Harrods. Such is the power of international capital in the post-colonial world that this fabulously wealthy but tiny oil kingdom, once a British protectorate, is now able to buy up large quantities of prime real estate in the capital city of its former overlord. There are risks as well as benefits attached to the integration of the Central London property market into the global economy. In particular, it is exposed to contagion risk from the cross-border transmission of financial shocks, making market conditions more volatile and the eruption of boom and bust more likely (Lizieri, 2009, 183–296). These risks were dramatically exposed in the Banking Crash of 2008, caused by the collapse of the US ‘sub-prime’ mortgage market, a classic case of excessive lending on inadequate collateral in an overheated housing market (Duménil & Lévy, 2011, 171–263). The risk attached to these mortgages was spread throughout global investment markets by means of complex securitised assets, such as mortgage-backed securities, underwritten by even more complex derivatives such as credit default swaps. The risk was further amplified by investment banks and hedge funds leveraging the value of these securities many times over. The shock emanating from

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the market collapse not only devastated the global banking industry, but also caused global property markets to slump, with a particularly severe fall in the investment value of Central London offices. Despite this market turmoil, the global competition to own prime investment properties has resumed even more strongly after the Banking Crash. In particular, the competition to own a prime Central London office building is fiercer than ever, as is illustrated by the recent history of two trophy buildings: the HSBC Tower, one of the several banking headquarters that cluster in Canary Wharf, and the UBS headquarters at 5 Broadgate, one of the new generation of giant City groundscrapers. HSBC was smart enough to conclude a sale and leaseback deal on their tower in 2007, at the pre-crash peak of the property cycle. The purchaser was the Spanish property company Metrovacesa, who funded the acquisition cost of £1.09 billion with the help of an £810 million bridging loan from the vendor. Unable to service its massive debts, the Spanish company was forced to sell the building back to the bank just eighteen months later, at the height of the Banking Crisis, for a price of £838 million, yielding the bank a profit of £250 million on the deal. A year later, financial difficulties forced the bank to sell again, this time to the National Pension Service of South Korea (NPS) for the even lower price of £773 million. In December 2014, the tower changed hands once more, this time sold by NPS to the voracious Qatar Investment Authority for a new record price of £1.18 billion. The UBS headquarters at 5 Broadgate was developed by British Land in partnership with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC at a reported cost of £500 million. Three years after completion, in 2018, the partnership sold the building to Hong Kong-based CK Asset Holdings for £1 billion. In 2022, the new owner in turn sold it to the Korean pension fund NPS for £1.21 billion, beating competing bids by another Chinese investment fund and the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi. At the time, this was the most expensive non-tower real estate deal ever closed in London, beaten only by the 2017 sale of 20 Fenchurch Street for £1.3 billion to Lee Kum Kee, a Hong Kong-based food company. Not only are Asian and Middle Eastern investors leading the global race to build the tallest towers, but they are also leading the race to own the most expensive buildings. So competitive is the pursuit of the hegemonic premium by global investors that the investment demand to own prime properties is tending to exceed the occupier demand to reside in them. This means that the premium rents a prime building can command do not fully compensate

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for the premium price which investors have to pay for it. The consequence is that the investment returns from a hegemonic building will tend to be lower than those from a non-hegemonic building. This apparently unfavourable investment performance can be explained by the additional benefit that investors derive from the hegemonic premium attached to such a building, a reputational benefit monetised in the increased scale and value of the investment fund as a whole rather than in the returns from the individual building. Some indication of the value that investors attach to the hegemonic premium is revealed by an analysis of the average investment returns from the City office market between 1980 and 2015, compared to those from all commercial property, equities and government bonds (Barras, 2016, 311). These returns combine the rental income with the capital growth derived from each individual building. Taking into account the extreme volatility of the market, it would appear that City office investors have suffered the unfavourable combination of below-average returns and above-­ average risk compared to owners of other, non-hegemonic, forms of commercial property (Lizieri et al., 2000, 1110). Furthermore, property investment as a whole has delivered considerably lower cumulative returns than the equities market and has even been out-performed by the bond market, despite the greater risk attached to property investment.

10.4  Accelerated Obsolescence Driven by the lure of the hegemonic premium, the imbalance between investor and occupier demand creates a persistent tendency towards the over-supply of trophy buildings, as investors compete to fund new schemes which they can add to their collection (Barras, 2009, 186–188). This is a particularly striking example of the general tendency towards over-­ accumulation that affects all branches of the capitalist economy (Harvey, 2006, 190–203). The tendency towards over-supply of hegemonic buildings is intensified by the speculative capital flowing into property development for the purpose of creating fictitious investment assets. With investment demand running ahead of occupier demand, over-accumulation is manifested in a surplus of available buildings compared to the number of occupiers willing and able to fill them. This leads to the devaluation of building capital and the acceleration of obsolescence, as older buildings become economically obsolete long before they reach the end of their physical life. Economic

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obsolescence in turn leads to the destruction of building capital through demolition, freeing up sites to begin a new circuit of development (Harvey, 1985, 15–25). Because of the strongly cyclical nature of property development, the process of accelerated obsolescence works on the distinctive vintages of buildings created in each development boom. Each new vintage, of improved technical specification and latest architectural style, has been designed to meet the exacting requirements of the most demanding occupiers of the day, who are prepared to pay a significant rental premium for such a building. Thus, for example, City office buildings erected in the decade 1996–2005 attracted on average a 25 per cent rental premium over buildings that had been completed just a decade earlier. The arrival of each new vintage of buildings depresses the rental value of older vintages, and devalues the symbolic as well as the economic capital invested in them. Thus the 1996–2005 vintage is now suffering rapid devaluation in the face of the latest vintage developed following the 2008 Banking Crash. As they age, successive vintages subside inexorably towards obsolescence, their hegemonic power progressively diminishing. As the rate of obsolescence accelerates, so the average economic life of each vintage declines. Over the past sixty years, the acceleration of obsolescence in the City office market has been dramatic indeed (Barras, 2016, 302). The first wave of post-war redevelopment in the 1950s and 1960s involved the demolition of buildings that were on average 111  years old; in other words, it was the very first generation of Victorian office buildings that was being replaced. By the early 2000s, the average age of the buildings being replaced had dropped to 43 years; it was now the first post-war vintage of buildings that was being swept away in the gale of creative destruction. The City’s office stock may look permanent today, but much of it will be gone tomorrow. Obsolescence is both a technological and cultural phenomenon. Technological progress induces the obsolescence of economic capital by rendering older vintages of buildings less productive than newly developed buildings. Space layouts and user facilities improve as new construction and building services technologies are introduced. Economic obsolescence due to technological progress can also induce the symbolic obsolescence of a building. The fate of two of the most iconic financial headquarters built in the City during the last century illustrates how this can happen. Despite

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extensive refurbishment, the neo-Gothic palace built for Prudential Assurance by Alfred Waterhouse between 1879 and 1906 became increasingly unsuited to the operations of a modern financial institution. In 1999, the Prudential moved to new offices elsewhere in the City, while the old building was adapted to function as a conference centre. In a similar vein, the Midland Bank came to realise that their grand 1930s Lutyens-designed headquarters did not meet their contemporary requirements, despite or perhaps because of its lavish finishes. The building was vacated after the Midland was taken over by HSBC in 1992, and subsequently converted into a luxury hotel. While history shows that the banking sector is particularly prone to engage in such hubristic building, they are not alone. Completed in 1906, the Old War Office on Whitehall was built at the height of Britain’s imperial power in the trademark Edwardian Baroque style. When the War Office was abolished in 1964, the building was passed on to the Ministry of Defence, but in 2016 it was sold on the open market for in excess of £350 million as part of a rationalisation of government offices. The purchaser was the Hinduja Group, an Indian conglomerate owned by the Hinduja brothers, who topped the Sunday Times UK Rich List in 2022. In a telling reflection of the diminished nature of British power and influence in the current world, the Hindujas have converted this hegemonic building into a luxury hotel and lavish apartments. Their target market is the international super-rich; the imperial capital has indeed been converted into a global city. In each case, the increasing technological obsolescence of these hegemonic buildings reached a point at which their occupancy could no longer be sustained on grounds of economic efficiency. By moving to more modern premises, their original owners devalued the symbolic capital they had invested in the buildings, even though the new owners still try to extract value from that symbolic capital by associating their new uses with the status of the former occupiers. However, created as signifiers of corporate or state power, their change in function has drained these trophy buildings of their true significance. In the terminology of semiotics, their change in denotation has destroyed their original connotation. Shifts in architectural style can also devalue the symbolic capital invested in hegemonic buildings. Such shifts constitute a form of cultural obsolescence. We have already seen that the reaction against Modernism in the 1980s turned into a crusade that led to the early demolition of some landmark Modernist buildings in Central London. But now some of their

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Postmodernist successors are suffering the same fate. The demolition and rebuilding of South Quay Plaza in Docklands, to a higher density and more modern specification, is one example. Another is Lansdowne House, a Postmodernist office block built on the south side of Berkeley Square in 1987–8, now being redeveloped as a headquarters building for US investment management company Blackstone.

10.5   Hegemonic Places The dangerous combination of market instability, over-accumulation and accelerating obsolescence have not lessened the appetite of global investors for trophy buildings. On the contrary, the scale of hegemonic building in London has moved to a new level over the past forty years. Developers no longer confine themselves to stand-alone hegemonic buildings designed to signify the status of an individual owner-occupier. Wherever large enough sites are available, or can be assembled, they favour high-density, mixed-use schemes incorporating a multiplicity of buildings and urban spaces, designed to house a variety of occupiers. The closest comparable scale of hegemonic development in previous ages of Monumental London was the wholesale residential development of Georgian Mayfair and St James’s. The aim of such developments is to create hegemonic places, locations which bestow elite status upon their occupiers even though the individual buildings they inhabit may be relatively anonymous. If the scheme can be anchored to an existing landmark building with historical resonance, so much the better. The scale of these developments is such that each can create its own landscape of power. This makes them especially attractive to global investors, because they absorb vast amounts of financial capital in exchange for the highly visible symbolic capital sought by both owners and occupiers. Such is the nature of hegemonic investment in the global city. Early post-war examples of the creation of hegemonic places in Central London were the Barbican and Paternoster Square schemes, post-war Modernist developments on large bomb-damaged sites. The search for further vacant sites on that scale really intensified during the 1980s, leading to a spate of major development schemes on land in obsolete uses, in particular the Broadgate complex around Liverpool Street Station and Canary Wharf in Docklands. Three further examples of this scale of

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project are currently under long-term construction: King’s Cross Central, Paddington Waterside and Battersea Power Station. Since 2008, regeneration of a 27-hectare site to the north of King’s Cross Station has been undertaken by a consortium led by development company Argent (Fainstein, 2001, 119–123). Planning permission allows for some 50 new and restored buildings, including new offices for Google and Meta, together with the provision of 100 shops and restaurants, 1750 dwellings and several new public spaces. In 2015, Australia’s largest pension fund, AustralianSuper, purchased a major stake in the project. It is planned that when completed the regeneration area will house a community of over 40,000 people. Paddington Waterside is a vast scheme to develop derelict railway and canal land around the station. It comprises 13 individual projects spread over an area the size of Soho, planned to create in total nearly one million square metres of new commercial and residential space. The climax of the scheme is Paddington Basin, begun in 2000 to a masterplan by Terry Farrell under the direction of development company European Land and Property. A mix of office, retail and residential development has been undertaken, including office buildings by Farrell and Rogers (Powell, 2011, 330). The latest phase is focused on Merchant Square, a mixed-use scheme including what will be the tallest tower in the City of Westminster, the 42-storey 1 Merchant Square containing luxury apartments and a hotel. The Battersea Power Station scheme is transforming 19 hectares of derelict industrial land around the power station into a new residential and commercial neighbourhood on the south bank of the Thames, adjacent to Nine Elms. The overall project is divided into eight phases, each designed by a different team of architects, and is planned to accommodate a community of some 25,000 people. Ever since the power station was closed down in 1983, the future of this landmark waterside development site has been the subject of intense controversy. It has passed through many proposals (housing estate, theme park, retail and leisure centre, urban park, football stadium, mixed-use development), many designers (Grimshaw, Viñoly, Farrell, Gehry, Foster, WilkinsonEyre) and many ownerships (British, Chinese, Irish, Malaysian). Such is the feeding frenzy aroused by the opportunity to create a hegemonic place. A very different type of hegemonic place has evolved since the 1970s. It is the covered shopping centre, which re-imagines the traditional high street as an ‘inverted place’, set within a monumental structure that

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presents an anonymous exterior to the outside world but conceals a lavish fantasy world within (Dovey, 2008, 137–155). Here are to be found iconic department stores that ‘anchor’ the development, a range of retail units that cater for every taste, food courts to revitalise the flagging shopper and waterfalls to soothe their weary spirits. The town centre has become heated, air-conditioned and weatherproofed. This is shopping as spectacle, as a shared experience for the consumers who throng the malls. Like the skyscraper, the covered shopping centre was an American invention. The contrast between the hegemonic messages projected by the two built forms can be framed in Freudian terms (Barras, 2009, 305). The phallic imagery of the skyscraper overwhelms through external effect; the womb-like nature of the shopping centre seduces through the offer within. Yet they are but two facets of the same hegemonic imperative of advanced capitalism, the celebration of corporate power and personal wealth through conspicuous consumption and investment. And as with skyscrapers, size matters for shopping centres. The more monumental they are, the more they can present themselves a transformative ‘special place’, an internalised landscape of power in their own right (Sklair, 2017, 236–239). Pioneering this form of development in the metropolis was the Brent Cross Shopping Centre in north-west London, built by UK developer Hammerson and opened in 1976. After extension in 1996, the centre provides almost 85,000 square metres of shopping space in 120 retail units spread over two floors, occupying a site of 21 hectares. ‘Architecturally it is undistinguished…externally the buildings appear as a clumsy accidental agglomeration’ (Cherry & Pevsner, 2002, 111). But it is the interior that matters, and this has continued to exert a powerful attraction on consumers for five decades. On an altogether grander scale is Westfield London, built in West London by the Australian developer Westfield in partnership with German bank Commerzbank. First opened in 2008 at a cost of £1.6 billion, it has subsequently been extended to become the largest covered shopping centre in Europe, with 240,000 square metres of retail space spread over five floors, occupying a site of 17.5 hectares. Within, the centre houses a total of around 320 retail units, including five large anchor stores and an ensemble of luxury stores clustered in what is nostalgically called The Village, together with some 50 cafes and restaurants, a cinema and a gym. For its designers, Westfield is a hegemonic place that provides ‘a sense of

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being outside without being outside…[offering] a certain feel of elegance and luxury’ (Dyckhoff, 2017, 190). Shoppers are seduced into conspicuous consumption, which repays the cost of the conspicuous investment. As in every global city, the scale and scope of hegemonic building investment in London seems to be expanding inexorably. But as investor demand surges ahead, there are growing questions about the strength and direction of occupier demand. In particular, the Covid pandemic which erupted in 2020 generated a shock to global occupier demand that has been unique in its severity and consequences. The pandemic has instituted a permanent change in the way economic and social life is conducted, accelerating the transition away from face-to-­ face interaction towards online communication. Corporate and state hegemony is increasingly being expressed through virtual portals rather than real buildings. The inevitable result will be a weakening of demand for commercial and public buildings, where less activity will be conducted, and a strengthening of demand for residential property, where more activity will be focussed. The rapid growth in home working and home shopping are the most obvious examples of this shift. The inevitable outcome must be a further increase in the over-accumulation and consequent accelerated obsolescence of hegemonic buildings such as office towers and shopping centres.  A sign of things to come  was the announcement by HSBC in June 2023 that when the lease on its Canary Wharf tower expires in 2027, it intends to move back into a City office of half the size. The prospect of a world of hegemonic buildings without hegemonic occupiers is a paradox of over-accumulation. It has enormous implications for a global city such as London, which has identified itself through its monumental buildings ever since its foundation two millennia ago. Designed as iconic trophies, created on a production line, occupied and vacated at will, and continuously traded in a frantic market, today’s hegemonic buildings are the ultimate example of cultural commodification. They are the product of a globally integrated, financialised economy in which technology is progressing ever more rapidly, and capital is circulating ever faster. Investors, architects and developers vie for a share of the hegemonic premium, creating an unstoppable dynamic of over-­accumulation and accelerating obsolescence which destroys the very symbolic value they are seeking to create. As history itself accelerates under the dynamic of hypercapitalism, the permanence of hegemonic buildings is becoming increasingly illusory, their symbolic value melting ever faster into air.

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References Barras, R. (2009). Building cycles: Growth and instability. Wiley-Blackwell. Barras, R. (2016). A wealth of buildings: Marking the rhythm of English history, volume II 1688-present. Palgrave Macmillan. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press. Brown, J. (1997). Lutyens and the Edwardians: An English architect and his clients. Penguin Books. Cherry, B., & Pevsner, N. (2002). The buildings of England: London 4: North. Yale University Press. Cheshire, P., & Dericks, G. (2014). ‘Iconic design’ as deadweight loss: Rent acquisition by design in the constrained London office market. SERC discussion paper 154. Spatial Economics Research Centre LSE, London. Clark, G.  L., Dixon, A.  D., & Monk, A.  H. B. (2013). Sovereign wealth funds: Legitimacy, governance and global power. Princeton University Press. Craggs, D. (2018). Skyscraper development and the dynamics of crisis: The new London skyline and spatial recapitalization. Built Environment, 43(4), 500–519. Dovey, K. (2008). Framing places: Mediating power in built form. Routledge. Dow, C. (1998). Major recessions: Britain and the world, 1920–1995. Oxford University Press. Duménil, G., & Lévy, D. (2011). The crisis of neoliberalism. Harvard University Press. Durand, C. (2017). Fictitious capital: How finance is appropriating our future. Verso. Dyckhoff, T. (2017). The age of spectacle: Adventures in architecture and the 21st-­ century. Random House. Fainstein, S. S. (2001). The city builders: Property development in New York and London 1980–2000. University Press of Kansas. Fuerst, F., McAllister, P., & Murray, C. B. (2011). Designer buildings: Estimating the economic value of ‘signature’ architecture. Environment and Planning A, 43, 166–184. Ghosh, C., Guttery, S., & Sirmans, C. F. (1994). The Olympia and York crisis: Effects on the financial performance of US and foreign banks. Journal of Property Finance, 5(2), 5–46. Goobey, A. R. (1992). Bricks and mortals. Century Business. Harris, R. (2005). Property and the office economy. Estates Gazette. Harvey, D. (1985). The urbanization of capital. Blackwell. Harvey, D. (2006). The limits to capital. Verso. Hollis, L. (2011). The stones of London: A history in twelve buildings. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. Verso.

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Lizieri, C. (2009). Towers of capital: Office markets and international financial services. Wiley-Blackwell. Lizieri, C., Baum, A., & Scott, P. (2000). Ownership, occupation and risk: A view of the City of London office market. Urban Studies, 37(7), 1109–1129. Marriott, O. (1967). The property boom. Hamish Hamilton. Moreno, L. (2014). The urban process under financialised capitalism. City, 18(3), 244–268. Powell, K. (2011). 21st century London: The new architecture. Merrell. Rubinstein, W. D. (2006). Men of property: The very wealthy in Britain since the industrial revolution. Social Affairs Unit. Scott, P. (1996). The property masters: A history of the British commercial property sector. E & F N Spon. Sklair, L. (2017). The icon project: Architecture, cities and capitalist globalization. Oxford University Press. Tiwari, P., & White, M. (2014). Real estate finance in the new economy. Wiley Blackwell. Zukin, S. (1993). Landscapes of power: From Detroit to Disney World. University of California Press.

Index

A Ackroyd, Peter, 32 Adam, Robert, 188–192, 194, 198, 237 Agricola, Julius, 51, 58 Albert, Prince, 294 Anglo-Norman kingdom, 90, 107 aristocratic clergy, 93 capital city, 205 English common law, 90, 290 fortress London, 100 Norman aristocracy, 15, 87, 90, 91, 93, 113, 125 Old English aristocracy, 90 power struggle, 91 royal palaces, 103–105 Architectural language, 4, 15, 55, 111, 183, 266, 364 Classical, 143 connotation, 17, 57, 332, 365, 374, 407 denotation, 17, 57, 365, 374, 407 eclecticism, 266, 270, 296, 329, 364, 365 signifiers, 17, 109, 365, 399

Architectural styles, 407 Art Deco, 325, 328, 331, 391 Artisan Mannerist, 228, 229 Baroque, 119, 144, 176, 182, 183, 187, 226, 227, 236, 237, 239, 240, 266, 331 battles of the styles, 265, 284, 289, 368 Brutalist, 334, 337, 338, 341 dialectical progress, 16, 364 Elizabethan, 146, 266, 281 English Gothic, 112, 113, 116, 127, 146, 211, 282, 289 French Gothic, 110–112, 143 Gothic Revival, 16, 18, 188, 198, 199, 265, 266, 268, 272, 281, 282, 284, 285, 287, 289, 294, 374, 407 Greek Revival, 188, 234, 265, 271, 292, 293 High-Tech, 2, 369, 372, 376, 379 Jacobean, 146, 157–159, 196, 219, 266 Mannerist, 176, 315, 365

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. Barras, Monumental London, Palgrave Studies in Economic History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38403-5

415

416 

INDEX

Architectural styles (cont.) Modernist, 16, 18, 158, 188, 271, 325, 327, 328, 330–333, 340, 341, 363, 367, 369, 371, 372, 374, 378, 381, 382, 388, 407 neo-Baroque, 18, 158, 272, 274, 287, 288, 310, 314, 315, 318, 323, 407 Neoclassical, 18, 183, 188, 191, 192, 198, 199, 232, 234, 241, 268, 292 neo-Modernist, 378 Palladian Revival, 182–184, 186, 187, 197, 226, 229, 230, 236, 237, 288 Picturesque, 188, 193, 282, 285 Postmodernist, 16, 18, 21, 340, 363, 365, 368, 370–372, 375, 378, 379, 381, 382, 384, 388, 399, 408 Regency, 191, 192 Renaissance, 16, 18, 143–146, 148, 156, 176, 188, 218, 219, 241, 266, 285–287, 295, 314, 365 Rococo, 187, 195, 230 Romanesque, 108, 110, 111, 115 Tudor, 127, 148, 156, 196, 266 Architecture, 4, 143 celebrity architects, 21, 143, 365, 374, 388, 399 cultural production, 4, 398 profession, 143, 146 Architecture of domination, 14, 40, 101, 234, 289, 290 Arup Associates, 367, 368, 375, 380 Attlee, Clement, 322 B Bacon, Francis, 252 Baker, Herbert, 310, 311, 324 Barbon, Nicholas, 179

Barlow, William, 267 Barry, Charles, 266, 282, 289 Beckford, William, 225 Bede, 81 Bellin, Nicholas, 152 Black Death, 131, 210 Bloomsbury, 191 Bloomsbury Square, 180 British Museum, 291–293, 374 Hotel Russell, 274 Lincoln's Inn Fields, 180 University College, 291, 293 Brexit, 352, 377 British Empire, 227, 283, 287, 298, 299 American War of Independence, 190, 249 Atlantic economy, 215, 223 civilising mission, 275 colonisation, 135, 215, 256 Commonwealth of Nations, 312, 316 decolonisation, 307, 312, 316, 323 Dominions, 312, 313 East India Company, 214, 224, 249, 276 East India traders, 225, 280 fiscal-military state, 221, 222, 235–237, 239, 249, 251, 257, 280 independence movements, 313, 316 India, 276, 313, 316 informal empire, 275, 277 multilateral trading system, 275, 277, 309, 313 naval power, 214, 220, 221, 236, 240, 277 overseas investment, 277, 309, 310, 312, 316 Pax Britannica, 275, 286 Seven Years War, 222, 225, 231, 241 slave trade, 223, 224

 INDEX 

Sterling Area, 313, 316 triangular trade, 223, 224 West Indian planters, 191, 223, 225, 280 Brunel, Isambard Kingdom, 259, 264, 267, 325 Brydon, John, 288 Building investment, 397 boom-bust cycle, 400, 401, 403 circuits of capital, 397 fictitious capital, 397, 405 financial institutions, 377, 397, 400, 402 market volatility, 400, 401, 403, 405, 408 property companies, 397, 400, 402 property derivatives, 403 securitised assets, 403 speculative investment, 397, 399, 400, 405 vintages of buildings, 26, 400, 406 Burlington, Lord, 183, 185, 187, 197, 231 Burnham, Daniel, 273 Burton, Decimus, 296 C Camden, 340 Centre Point, 340 Euston Tower, 340 TV-am studios, 372 Campbell, Colen, 183, 185, 186, 226 Campbell-Jones, Owen, 339 Capitalism, 249, 251, 252, 255, 257, 261 agrarian capital, 7, 31, 135, 169, 173, 174, 250, 254 capital accumulation, 253, 258, 262, 278, 377 centralisation of capital, 261, 279, 314

417

commercial capital, 18, 31, 169, 215, 220, 226, 250, 254, 309 concentration of wealth, 250, 320, 359 fetishism of commodities, 254, 398 financial capital, 1, 18–20, 31, 169, 215, 220, 226, 250, 254, 255, 279, 309, 310, 313, 350, 354, 358, 362, 377, 381, 408 financialisation, 31, 327, 350, 352, 354, 359, 362, 397, 399 fractions of capital, 8, 254 free market, 254, 349, 363 free trade, 258, 277 gentlemanly capitalism, 13, 227, 256, 271, 279, 308, 356 globalisation, 31, 350, 352, 355, 357–359, 362, 376, 380, 386 global super-rich, 26, 359, 360, 386, 407 hegemony of finance, 255, 274, 308, 309, 315, 330, 350, 357 hypercapitalism, 350, 359, 398, 411 industrial capital, 20, 31, 250, 253–255, 257, 260, 265, 274, 309, 310, 313, 320 oligopoly, 260, 278, 279, 311, 314, 349, 352, 357 transnational capitalist class, 21, 359 Cashmore, Milton, 331 Cassel, Ernest, 280 Castle building, 89 changing form and function, 101, 103 multiple functions, 101 mythology, 105 stone keep, 102 symbols of power, 21, 91, 104 wooden donjon, 102 Cecil, Robert, 156, 179, 219 Cecil, William, 136 Chamberlin, Powell and Bon, 338

418 

INDEX

Chambers, William, 192, 241 Charles III (Prince of Wales), 367, 371 Christian Church, 88, 92 Act of Supremacy, 137 Church of England, 137, 138 dissolution of the monasteries, 137, 138, 151, 153, 155 English Reformation, 136 landed wealth, 90, 92, 93, 96, 117, 137 power structure, 92 Protestantism, 138, 140, 251 Reformation, 117, 137, 251 Church building basilica form, 109 hegemonic purpose, 95 liturgical requirement, 109 stone vaults, 110, 115 structural innovation, 109–111 symbolism, 109–111 towers, 109, 115, 118 City Corporation, 209, 358, 402 independence, 317 Lord Mayor, 128, 209, 230 merchant oligarchy, 209, 217, 227 monumental building, 211, 218, 228, 234, 270, 339, 367, 380 City of London economy, 221, 255, 261, 271, 312, 357 bankers, 208, 256, 279 Banking Crash 2008, 352, 356, 358, 383, 402, 403, 406 Bank of England, 222 Big Bang, 355, 368, 402 Big Five banks, 279, 314, 315 commercial banks, 261, 271, 279, 313, 314, 355 computerisation, 356, 368, 403 derivatives, 356 Eurocurrencies, 355 financial innovation, 355, 357 financial plutocracy, 279

first golden age, 278, 359 foreign banks, 279, 355, 358 global financial system, 279, 316, 354 gold standard, 277, 313 hedge funds, 356, 359, 403 insurance companies, 222, 271, 279, 355 investment banks, 5, 22, 310, 355, 357–359, 381–383, 403 livery companies, 209, 229 market deregulation, 355, 356, 368, 403 merchant banks, 256, 261, 279, 356, 359 overtaken by New York, 313 private equity funds, 356, 359 second golden age, 354, 358 securitisation, 356 separation from industry, 310, 313 Stock Exchange, 222, 234, 261, 279, 355 trade, 208 Wall Street Crash, 311 wealthy merchants, 208 City of London historic buildings Bank of England, 31, 199, 221, 230, 231, 234, 310, 318, 367, 369, 390 Baynard’s Castle, 100, 101 Central Criminal Court, 234, 289, 290 Coldharbour, 128 Crosby Hall, 129 Custom House, 229, 234 Fleet Street, 324, 325 Goldsmith’s Hall, 219 Guildhall, 30, 63, 130, 210–212, 233, 242 Leadenhall Market, 2, 211, 270 livery halls, 130, 210, 229, 234 Mansion House, 6, 31, 230, 232, 270, 367

 INDEX 

Newgate Gaol, 234, 290 parish churches, 85, 118, 119, 211, 227 Royal Exchange, 2, 31, 218, 219, 227, 228, 230, 231, 269, 367 St Paul’s, 2, 6, 30, 62, 84, 93, 108, 115, 116, 119, 211, 212, 227, 290, 298, 340, 375, 381, 388 Tower of London, 2, 30, 73, 87, 100–102, 104, 105, 108, 147, 149, 381, 388 City of London office buildings 1 Finsbury Avenue, 369 1 Poultry, 367, 368 1 Undershaft, 380 5 Broadgate, 389, 404 8 Bishopsgate, 379 20 Fenchurch Street (Walkie-­ Talkie), 379, 404 22 Bishopsgate, 1, 380, 389 30 St Mary Axe (Gherkin), 378, 388 52 Lime Street (Scalpel), 379 99 Bishopsgate, 340, 401 Adelaide House, 331 Alban Gate, 371 Barclays Bank, 370 Bloomberg HQ, 390 Britannic House, 315, 331 Britannic Tower, 340 Broadgate Tower, 379, 384 Bucklersbury House, 340, 389 Commercial Union Building, 340 Daily Express Building, 325, 328, 331 Daily Telegraph building, 325 Drapers’ Gardens, 340 East India House, 229, 286 Exchange House, 369 Finsbury Circus, 272, 315 Heron Tower, 379 Leadenhall Building (Cheesegrater), 379 Lloyd’s Bank, 314

419

Lloyd’s Building, 2, 369, 372, 379 London and Westminster Bank, 271 London Wall, 339, 371 Midland Bank, 315, 398, 407 Minster Court, 370 National Provincial Bank, 271, 314 NatWest Tower, 22, 340, 378, 382, 399, 401 Paternoster Square, 367, 408 Plumtree Court, 390 Prudential Building, 272, 389, 399, 407 Westminster Bank, 314 Willis Building, 379 Clive, Robert, 225 Cobden, Richard, 254, 256 Cockerell, Charles, 271 Competitive emulation, 22, 46, 115, 178, 188, 298 Anglo-French rivalry, 90, 106, 108, 109, 113, 141, 152, 182, 195, 227, 297 Battle of the Bankers’ Palaces, 314 Italian city states, 139, 143 Jacobean courtiers, 156 skyscrapers, 327, 339, 377 Tudor courtiers, 154 Conspicuous consumption, 20, 26, 51, 72, 97, 125, 142, 174, 210, 215, 219, 359, 410, 411 Conspicuous investment, 21, 26, 51, 66, 67, 71, 72, 117, 129, 142, 149, 154, 156, 177, 210, 216, 410, 411 Covid pandemic, 352, 377, 411 Cromwell, Thomas, 136, 137 Croxton, John, 211 Cubitt, Lewis, 267 Cubitt, Thomas, 193 Cultural hegemony, vii, 6, 13, 42, 94, 151, 256, 289, 291, 324 Cultural universal, 4, 22, 43

420 

INDEX

D Dance, George, the Elder, 229, 230 Dance, George, the Younger, 229, 234, 290 Defoe, Daniel, 184, 196, 216, 226, 236 Disraeli, Benjamin, 276 Docklands, 3, 381, 383, 385, 387, 402 8 Canada Square (HSBC Tower), 382, 404, 411 10 Upper Bank Street, 383 25 Bank Street, 383 25 Canada Square, 382 40 Bank Street, 383 Cascades, 384 Landmark Pinnacle, 384 London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC), 381 Newfoundland, 384 One Canada Square, 381, 382, 390 One Churchill Place, 383 One Park Drive, 384 South Quay Plaza, 385, 408 Wardian London, 384 Dominant ideology, 7, 10, 23, 41, 308, 324 Christianity, 92, 93 collectivism, 18, 31, 321, 324, 325, 332, 349, 361, 363 divine right of kings, 134, 141, 142, 166 egalitarianism, 363, 372 faith and obligation, 90, 93–95, 97 ideology of honour, 7, 41–47, 56, 71, 98, 170, 188, 265 ideology of progress, 7, 13, 227, 252, 253, 255, 264, 272, 275, 294, 321, 326 individualism, 139, 321, 324, 332, 349, 372 myth of national identity, 13, 264, 272, 281–283

nationalism, 114 neoliberalism, 31, 340, 341, 349, 352, 354, 361–363, 398 oligarchy of virtue, 170, 172 private property rights, 140, 170, 173, 252, 258 E Economy agricultural revolution, 135, 173, 250 capital formation, 20, 251, 277, 308, 309, 322 commercial revolution, 215, 250, 251 consumer demand, 130, 174, 214, 215, 251, 261, 322 consumer goods industries, 263, 311 credit, 215, 222, 251, 310 deindustrialisation, 276, 307, 312, 352, 353, 362 deregulation, 350, 354 factory system, 253, 259, 260 financial revolution, 215, 221, 250, 251 fiscal crisis, 350, 351 Great Depression, 311, 313, 323 guilds, 119, 206, 207 income distribution, 99, 131, 135, 165, 351 industrial revolution, 13, 18, 20, 25, 171, 224, 242, 249, 250, 252, 259, 261, 276, 308, 309, 320, 326 information technology, 5, 352, 354, 363 infrastructure investment, 251, 263, 402 investment in human capital, 321, 322

 INDEX 

manufacturing, 208, 250–252, 260, 263, 308, 311, 353 mode of production, 8, 9, 19, 24, 26, 27, 31, 41, 48, 87, 88, 130, 173, 206, 213, 223, 252 modernisation, 271, 311, 312 national debt, 222, 231, 256, 310, 315, 350 path dependency, 28, 308 post-war boom, 322, 325, 350–352, 355, 400 price inflation, 166, 349, 401 privatisation, 350, 351, 355 productivity growth, 250, 278, 322, 352–354 profits crisis, 350, 351 railways, 31, 259, 261, 262, 266 rents, 88, 117, 131, 132, 135, 174, 179, 186, 206, 214, 218, 379, 381, 401 service economy, 312, 322, 353, 354, 361 social relations of production, 8, 9, 24, 87, 130, 252, 253, 260 surplus product, 9, 20, 26, 50, 88, 99, 132, 206, 223, 253 taxation, 46, 67, 73, 88, 90, 133, 166, 209, 221, 222, 258, 350, 351, 359, 361 technological innovation, 249, 250, 252, 253, 259, 262, 264, 272, 307, 321, 352, 354, 398 trade, 2, 38, 40, 48, 49, 81, 131, 132, 142, 207, 214, 217, 220, 222, 251, 255, 262, 263, 311–313 Edward I, 104, 114 Edward III, 96, 106, 128, 129, 147 Palace of Westminster, vii Edward the Confessor, 29, 86, 87, 106, 108, 113 Palace of Westminster, vii

421

Elizabeth I, 21, 133, 136, 138, 153, 157, 177, 218 Engels, Friedrich, 7, 14, 257, 263, 326 Engineering structures, 264, 283 Coal Exchange, 270 Crystal Palace, 264, 265, 281, 376 Euston Station, 267 King’s Cross Station, 267, 391, 409 Paddington Station, 267 St Pancras Station, 267, 268, 374 shopping arcades, 273 English exceptionalism, 113, 145, 265, 308, 331 love of tradition, 13, 157, 363 English Revolution, 159, 168, 217, 252, 321 Charles I, 159, 167, 218 Civil War, 136, 167, 168, 171, 174, 251, 257, 283 Commons, 166–168 Commonwealth, 168, 218 Cromwell, Oliver, 168, 283 Glorious Revolution, 169, 283 Puritans, 167, 252 Restoration, 172, 180, 196, 218, 235 Enlightenment, 227, 242, 251, 252, 261, 275, 326 scientific revolution, 251, 252, 326 Essex, 226 Wanstead House, 226 Evelyn, John, 181 F Farrell, Terry, 371, 372, 389, 409 Feudalism, 19, 31, 72, 87 bastard feudalism, 131, 132 civilizing process, 97, 102, 126, 141, 142 coercion and consent, 23, 94, 95, 97, 105

422 

INDEX

Feudalism (cont.) crisis and breakdown, 130–132 feudal aristocracy, 96, 97, 131, 132, 135 hierarchical social order, 90, 91, 94, 95, 112, 113 landed estates, 89, 90 lord and vassal, 91, 97, 132 origins, 89 secular and religious power, 94, 96, 108, 117 self-governing towns, 206 three estates, 93 Foggo, Peter, 369 Foster, Norman, 374–376, 378, 379, 382, 385, 388, 390, 391, 399, 409 Foundation myths, 12 Britain, 98 London, 99 Rome, 46, 54 Fowke, Francis, 295 G Gehry, Frank, 366, 409 George IV (Prince Regent), 182, 192, 195 Georgian London, 184, 408 Georgian aristocracy, 15, 72, 170, 172, 173, 177, 178, 182–184 residential estates, 179, 184 townhouses, 177, 178, 184, 189, 197 villas, 197 Gibbons, Grinling, 228, 236 Gibbs, James, 185 Giddens, Anthony, 363 Goldfinger, Ernö, 337 Gollins, Melvin, Ward (GMW), 340, 370 Gothic architecture, 111, 264 Gothic climax, 110 luminosity, 112

proportion, 112 stone vaults, 111 Governments Coalition 1916-22, 321 Conservative 1979-90, 319, 349–351, 353, 355, 373, 402 Labour 1945-51, 322, 332, 350 Labour 1997-2007, 373 Gramsci, Antonio, vii, 6, 10, 14, 96 Great Famine, 130, 210 Great Fire, 119, 128, 218, 220, 227, 229 Greenwich Hospital, 238–240, 242, 290 Millennium Dome, 376 Palace, 147, 153, 176, 239 Queen’s House, 157, 197, 239, 399 Gresham, Thomas, 217, 218, 270 Grimshaw, Nicholas, 409 Gropius, Walter, 330 Grosvenor, Richard, 185 Groundscrapers, 368, 389, 391, 404 H Habermas, Jürgen, 363 Hadid, Zaha, 376 Hardwick, Philip, 267 Hawksmoor, Nicholas, 240 Hegemonic imperative, 7, 8, 11, 21, 27, 115, 193, 228, 323, 377, 383, 410 Hegemonic places, 382, 408–410 Barbican, 337–339, 383, 408 Battersea Power Station, 372, 391, 409 Broadgate, 368, 369, 379, 408 Canary Wharf, vii, 3, 5, 14, 18, 19, 381–384, 387, 390, 402, 404, 408 hegemonic ensemble, 56, 61, 230, 287

 INDEX 

King’s Cross Central, 409 Olympic Park, Stratford, 376 Paddington Waterside, 409 Hegemonic premium, 7, 398, 400, 401, 404–408, 411 accelerated obsolescence, 181, 385, 405, 406, 408, 411 devaluation of building capital, 405 over-accumulation, viii, 278, 405, 408, 411 rental premium, 399, 404, 406 reputational benefit, 398, 399, 405 symbolic capital, 4, 269, 291, 296, 398, 400, 406–408 symbolic obsolescence, 406 trophy buildings, 21, 181, 266, 332, 365, 382, 398, 399, 402–405, 407, 408 Henry III, 104, 106, 108, 110, 113, 114, 116, 177, 209 Palace of Westminster, vii Henry of Reyns, 110 Henry VII, 130, 132, 134, 147 Henry VIII, 21, 106, 133–137, 140, 142, 145, 148, 152, 237 Herzog & de Meuron, 375, 384 Hilferding, Rudolph, 309 Hobson, John, 278 HOK Sport, 376 Holford, William, 367 Holland, Henry, 192 Hopkins, Michael, 372, 376 Howard, Henry, 156 Hubristic building, 22, 46, 154, 376, 388, 401, 407 Carlton House, 191, 192, 195 Nonsuch, 152, 153 Old War Office, 407 Roman basilica, 63 The Tulip, 388 Hume, David, 171

423

I Iconic buildings, vii, 2, 6, 21, 284, 366, 368, 378, 398, 401, 406, 411 Imperialism, 220 European expansion, 220 ideological justification, 221 military force, 221 nationalism, 221 world system, 221, 275, 281, 285, 294, 312, 316, 357 International investors, 402, 408 AustralianSuper, 409 Canary Wharf Group, 403 China Investment Corporation, 402 GIC, 404 National Pension Service of South Korea, 404 Qatar Investment Authority, 402–404 Songbird Estates, 402 sovereign wealth funds, 403, 404 J James I, 138, 156, 157, 159, 166, 219 Jones, Inigo, 146, 157–159, 176, 180, 182, 183, 197, 219, 235, 239, 288 K Kensington and Chelsea Albert Hall, 294, 295 Albert Memorial, 294, 295 Albertopolis, 294 Chelsea Harbour, 385 Chelsea Hospital, 238, 239 Harrods, 273, 403 Natural History Museum, 294, 295 One Hyde Park, 389 Victoria and Albert Museum, 294, 295

424 

INDEX

Kent, William, 183, 186, 187, 191, 197, 237, 241 Khan, Sadiq, 388 King’s Cross British Library, 374 Google HQ, 390, 409 Midland Grand Hotel, 268, 272 Knott, Ralph, 318 Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), 379, 383, 386, 390 L Landscape of leisure, 177, 178, 184, 192, 196–198 Landscape of power, 2, 6, 24, 25, 29, 198, 391, 399, 408, 410 aristocratic, 130, 154, 175, 178, 179, 198, 213 civic, 83, 130, 210, 212, 229, 234, 262 classical, 54, 61 collectivist, 335 commercial, 29, 130, 196, 210, 213, 227, 229, 234, 269 feudal, 99, 102 financial, 120, 314, 382 government, 29, 236, 372 imperial, 280 industrial, 24, 262 political, 185 religious, 60, 64, 83, 118, 119, 130, 211, 212, 227 royal, 130, 213 urban image, 57, 74 Lasdun, Denys, 334 LCC Architect's Department, 333–335 Le Corbusier, 329, 334, 335 Livingstone, Ken, 377 Lloyd George, David, 321 Locke, John, 169, 170, 252 Londinium (Roman London), 1, 28, 311

abandonment, 74 amphitheatre, 63, 68, 85, 211, 212, 376 baths, 63, 64, 71 Boudican Revolt, 37, 39, 53, 58 British aristocracy, 40 churches, 73 city walls, 68, 69, 74, 84, 85, 100 Cripplegate fort, 69 forum-basilica, 1, 30, 39, 55, 56, 62, 67, 84, 211, 212 forum temple, 60, 62 foundation, 28, 37, 361 mansions, 66, 70 palatial buildings, 64, 66 Romano-Celtic temples, 60 Southwark, 65 Temple of Mithras, 340, 390 urban economy, 38, 50, 66, 68 urban status, 52, 68 London government, 317 abolition of GLC, 319, 373 Greater London Authority (GLA), 373 Greater London Council (GLC), 318, 373 London County Council (LCC), 317, 323 Louis XIV, 241 Lundenburh (Late Saxon London) Alfred of Wessex, 84 international entrepôt, 86, 205 national capital, 86 rebuilding the city, 85 urban renaissance, 85 Lundenwic (Early Saxon London), 81, 119 foundation of St Paul’s, 83 Mercian authority, 82 Saxon reoccupation, 2, 82–84 Viking raids, 84, 89 Lutyens, Edwin, 315, 331, 399

 INDEX 

M Manchester Town Hall, 284 Martin, Leslie, 333 Marx, Karl, 7, 9, 44, 206, 213, 253, 254, 257, 326 Marylebone, 191 Broadcasting House, 325, 331 Castrol House, 340 Cavendish Square, 185 Home House, 191 Portland Place, 191, 325 Regent’s Park, 152, 193 Mass media BBC, 324, 325 hegemonic influence, 324 ideological strategies, 324 newspapers, 324 TV companies, 372 Matthew, Robert, 333 Mayfair, 184, 193 44 Berkeley Square, 187 Apsley House, 194 Berkeley Estate, 185 Berkeley Square, 185, 190, 225 Burlington House, 185, 186 Chesterfield House, 187 Clarendon House, 181, 186 Devonshire House, 186, 399 Grosvenor Estate, 185, 186, 193 Grosvenor House, 195 Grosvenor Square, 185, 186, 189 Hanover Estate, 185 Hanover Square, 185 Lansdowne House, 190, 408 London Hilton, 341 Park Lane, 194 Piccadilly, 180, 184–186, 194 Regent Street, 184 Ritz Hotel, 274 Scarborough Estate, 185 Spencer House, 188 Medieval townhouses, 125, 130 courtyard houses, 128, 148, 149, 156

425

ecclesiastical nobility, 126, 127 great hall, 126, 127, 129, 148, 150 lay nobility, 126, 127 merchant houses, 128–130 Mercantilism, 31, 213, 220 merchant capital, 213, 223 primitive accumulation, 213, 224, 250 protectionism, 214 regulation, 213, 251 tariffs, 214 trading monopolies, 214, 216, 224, 258 Middlesex, 226 Cannons, 226 Mill, John Stuart, 253, 258, 349 Modernism, 325, 330, 331, 336, 361, 364 architecture of collectivism, 327, 331, 335, 337, 339, 361 Bauhaus, 330 creative destruction, 326, 406 form follows function, 327 functional flexibility, 330, 332 functionalist ideals, 327, 365 the ideal city, 326, 329 International Style, 329, 331 Machine Age, 326–331, 369 modernity, 326, 362, 363 planning battles, 366, 371 principles of design, 327 rationality and progress, 326 rectangular forms, 329, 330 standardised construction, 331 universal forms, 329, 332, 364 Utopianism, 364 Monarchy absolutist, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142, 148, 151–153, 159, 166, 169, 170, 176, 182, 192, 213, 216, 217, 235, 236, 252, 331

426 

INDEX

Feudalism (cont.) constitutional, 13, 169, 170, 172, 177, 182, 228, 231, 236, 252, 296 Hanoverian succession, 172, 182 republican, 171 sacred kingship, 113, 134 Mountford, Edward, 290 Moya, Hidalgo, 337 N Nash, John, 182, 192, 193, 296, 297 O Office towers, 3, 17, 31, 327, 368, 387, 397, 411 American skyscrapers, 327, 328, 382 Chicago, 328 competition by height, 327, 328, 339, 377 competition by shape, 378, 388 construction innovation, 26, 327, 377, 406 disadvantages, 388 form follows finance, 379 Miesian slab, 330, 339, 340, 364, 369, 384 New York, 328 skyline spectacle, 328, 378, 381, 387 symbol of capitalism, 328, 330, 340 visual impact, 17, 388 P Palladio, Andrea, 144, 146, 157, 159, 183, 197, 219, 231, 235 Palumbo, Peter, 367 Pantheon, 232 Paris, 240 hotels, 274

Louvre, 176, 236, 240, 285 Versailles, 176, 177, 227 Parliament, 106, 113, 137, 138, 159, 166, 167, 169, 170, 175, 209 franchise, 171 House of Commons, 106, 171, 282 House of Lords, 106, 171, 282 Tories, 172, 185, 190 Whigs, 172, 184, 187, 190 Whig supremacy, 172, 182, 187 Paxton, Joseph, 264 Pelli, César, 381–383 Perrers, Alice, 128 Piano, Renzo, 380, 399 Piketty, Thomas, 320, 350, 351 Plantagenet dynasty, 104, 108, 113, 132 Population, 38 2nd century, 59, 205 8th century, 82 12th century, 205 13th century, 99, 205, 210 14th century, 131, 205, 210 16th/17th centuries, 165, 216 18th century, 250, 260 19th century, 250, 261 21st century, 320, 361 medieval, 210 Port of London, 58, 63, 70, 82, 223, 228 dockyards, 263 Roman, vii Postmodernism, 334, 361, 362, 364–366 ambiguity and irony, 363, 365, 372, 378 cities as spectacles, 334, 366, 374 cultural metaphor, 363, 366 enigmatic signifiers, 365 multivalent architecture, 364 plurality of styles, 365 reaction to Modernism, 362–364, 367, 407

 INDEX 

Powell, Philip, 337 Pratt, Roger, 181 Property companies, 339 Argent, 409 Axa Real Estate, 380 Berkeley Group, 385 British Land, 379, 389, 404 Hammerson, 410 Heron International, 379 Land Securities, 379 MEPC, 371 Mitsubishi Estate, 380 Olympia & York, 381, 402 Rosehaugh Stanhope, 368 Tishman Speyer, 390 Westfield, 410 Pugin, Augustus, 265, 266, 282 Pulteney, John, 128 Punctuated hegemony, 9, 11, 26, 30, 316 R Redistribution of power, 317 civic pride, 317 devolution to local government, 317 division of powers, 317 municipal socialism, 318, 335 Redistribution of wealth, 317, 319, 321 egalitarianism, 321 Great Levelling, 322, 323, 325, 363, 377 inherited wealth, 320, 360 land, 90, 138 progressive taxation, 321, 322 trade unions, 321, 350, 351 Renaissance architecture, 142, 143 classical orders, 143 country villas, 144 Early Renaissance, 144 English Renaissance, 146, 157

427

French châteaux, 145, 149, 152 High Renaissance, 144 influence of Vitruvius, 143 Mannerism, 144, 146 proto-Renaissance, 143 Roman ruins, 143 symmetry and proportion, 143, 144, 159 urban palaces, 142, 144, 151, 157 Renaissance culture, 139, 140 civilised life, 141, 142 Classical legacy, 139, 142–144 culture of commodities, 142 festivals, 141 humanism, 137, 139, 143 origins, 139, 143 Renaissance princes, 140–142, 156 urban realm, 141 Residential towers, 26, 31, 387, 397 alienation of residents, 337 Alton Estate, Roehampton, 335, 383 Docklands towers, 384, 385 foreign ownership, 386, 389 luxury apartments, 26, 383, 385, 409 mixed development, 335–337 Nine Elms, 385 planning failures, 336, 337 Ronan Point, 337, 384 social housing, 332, 335, 383 Thameside location, 385 Trellick Tower, 337 Ricardo, David, 253 Richard II, 108, 129, 218 Rogers, Richard, 2, 369, 372, 376, 379, 389, 399, 409 Roman Empire, 47, 275, 287, 298 agrarian economy, 31, 48, 49 archetypal city, 53, 55, 57–59 Augustan Rome, 54, 57, 184, 296 Christianity, 72

428 

INDEX

Roman Empire (cont.) citizenship, 42, 45, 52 collapse, 73 golden age, 59, 67 monumental building, 46, 51, 53, 57, 58 Roman aristocracy, 41, 43, 47, 51, 66, 183 slave economy, 19, 41, 48, 67, 72, 224 urban decline, 67 Roman occupation, 38 Anglo-Saxon invasions, 74 British aristocracy, 40, 44, 51, 52, 70, 72, 90, 125 Romanisation, 42, 45, 74 Romano-British church, 73, 83 villas, 71, 72 Roman Republic, 170 Romanticism, 187 Rufus, William, 106, 107 Ruskin, John, 265, 266 S Sampson, George, 231 Scott, George Gilbert, 266, 268, 285, 289, 294 Scott, Giles Gilbert, 375, 391 Seifert, Richard, 340, 401 Sellar, Irvine, 380 Seymour, Edward, 146, 155, 241 Shaw, Norman, 290 Shopping centres, 409, 411 Brent Cross, 410 Westfield London, 410 Shuttleworth, Ken, 389 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), 369, 379, 381 Smirke, Robert, 234, 292, 293 Smith, Adam, 213, 253, 258 Smithson, Alison & Peter, 341 Soane, John, 178, 232, 233, 242, 310, 369

Social and political reform, 257 modern state, 257, 258, 291 Old Corruption, 257, 281 Reform Acts, 169, 257, 281 social programmes, 321, 322 state intervention, 258, 321 welfare state, 321, 322, 350 Social classes aristocracy, 5, 7, 8, 19, 87–89, 98, 125, 129, 133, 134, 138, 140, 144, 167, 169, 170, 172, 175, 179, 180, 194, 196, 197, 199, 206, 213, 215, 225, 226, 250, 254, 256, 280 bourgeoisie, 13, 132, 133, 140, 144, 171, 173, 179, 191, 197, 199, 207, 213, 214, 226, 251, 254–257 gentry, 8, 91, 132, 133, 135, 138, 154, 167, 168, 172, 174, 175, 179, 214, 226, 308 merchants, 19, 128, 129, 132, 133, 143, 144, 167, 206–208, 226, 250 peasantry, 12, 19, 48, 72, 87, 89, 91, 131, 132, 206, 210 Social unrest, 256 Chartist demonstrations, 233, 257 General Strike, 323 Gordon Riots, 233 Peasants’ Revolt, 129, 131 Peterloo Massacre, 257 South Bank, 385 Apple Building, 391 Bankside Power Station, 372, 375, 391 City Hall, 373, 374 County Hall, 318, 319, 332, 373 DAMAC Tower, 386 London Bridge Tower (Shard), 380, 382, 403 National Theatre, 334 One Nine Elms, 386

 INDEX 

Royal Festival Hall, 333 SIS Building, 372 Tate Modern, 375, 384, 391 Vauxhall Tower, 385, 386 Spence, Basil, 341 Sports stadia, 376 Aquatics Centre, 376 Emirates Stadium, 376 Olympic Stadium, 376 Velodrome, 376 Wembley Stadium, 376 Stephenson, George, 259 Stephenson, Robert, 267 Stirling, James, 368 Street, George, 289 Stuart dynasty, 21, 139, 142, 156, 157, 168, 172, 180, 228, 235 Stuart, James, 188 T Taylor, Robert, 230, 232, 237, 310 Telford, Thomas, 264, 325 Thameside houses, 147, 196 Chiswick House, 197 Fulham Palace, 196 Ham House, 196 Hampton Court, 145, 149, 150, 153, 177, 227, 239 Lambeth Palace, 127, 196 Marble Hill, 197 Northumberland House, 156, 159 Richmond Palace, 147, 149, 153, 196 Salisbury House, 156 Savoy Palace, 129, 155 Somerset House, 155, 156, 218, 241, 242 Strand, 126, 127, 129, 154–156, 180, 191, 219, 241 Strawberry Hill, 198 Syon House, 198

429

Thatcher, Margaret, 349 Theatre of spectacle, 6, 16, 140, 212, 282, 372, 410 church processions, 111, 212 civic parades, 212 coronations, 96, 213, 296, 298 court masques, 142 Festival of Britain, 332, 376 Field of Cloth of Gold, 141 Great Exhibition, 264, 281, 294, 332, 376 Horse Guards Parade, 238 Londinium, 64 London Olympics, 376, 377 Lord Mayor’s Show, 6, 213 Millennium Experience, 376, 377 pageants, 142, 282, 298 public executions, 234 royal processions, 212, 296 state funerals, 296, 298 state opening of Parliament, 282, 296, 298 tournaments, 98, 140, 141 Thornhill, James, 240 Tite, William, 269 Tudor architecture, 145 brick, 148 classical motifs, 145 court style, 148 dynastic propaganda, 147 long galleries, 148, 149 vernacular elements, 145 Tudor dynasty, 21, 125, 130, 132, 134, 138, 142, 148, 235 palaces, 21, 137, 145, 147–149, 151, 152 prodigy houses, 153, 154 royal deer parks, 152 sale of offices, 134, 135, 156 Tudor aristocracy, 15, 135, 138, 153–158 Tudor townhouses, 154

430 

INDEX

U Urbanisation, 27, 362 manufacturing, 24, 259, 262 medieval, 24, 99, 206, 207 mercantilist, 215 network of global cities, 362 post-war rebuilding, 331, 332, 335, 336 Roman, 2, 44, 45, 53, 55, 58 urbanisation of capital, 262 urban planning, 331, 366 V Value of buildings exchange value, 19, 24, 398 symbolic value, 4, 7, 19, 21, 23, 24, 54, 55, 64, 93, 100, 105, 107, 130, 378, 388, 398, 411 use value, 19, 21, 23, 24, 54, 130, 388, 398 van der Rohe, Mies, 330, 367 Vanbrugh, John, 176, 182 Vardy, John, 188 Venturi, Robert, 364, 371 Viñoly, Rafael, 379, 399, 409 Vitruvius, 5, 54, 60, 63, 71, 112, 143, 183, 188, 198, 232, 235 W Walpole, Horace, 197, 198 Waterhouse, Alfred, 266, 272, 284, 289, 295, 407 Webb, Aston, 295, 297 Webb, John, 176, 235, 239 Weber, Max, 27, 251, 326 Westminster, 29 1 Merchant Square, 409 Adelphi, 191

Admiralty Arch, 297 Aldwych, 81, 323, 324 Australia House, 323 Belgrave Square, 193 Belgravia, 193 Buckingham Palace, 182, 192, 296–298 Bush House, 324, 325 Channel 4 HQ, 372 Churchill Gardens Estate, 337 Covent Garden, 81, 180 Economist building, 341 Embankment Place, 371, 389 Green Park, 188 Hyde Park, 185, 187, 194, 264, 296 Hyde Park Corner, 296 India House, 324 Kingsway, 323 Lancaster House, 195 Leicester Square, 180 The Mall, 296, 297 Marlborough House, 182 Marsham Street, 341 Millbank Tower, 340 National Gallery, 291, 294 , 297, 371 New Exchange, 219 Palace of Westminster, vii, 6, 29–31, 86, 105, 106, 108, 127, 141, 147, 199, 281, 284, 289, 296, 318, 332, 372, 373 Pall Mall, 193 Queen Anne’s Gate, 341 Regent Street, 184, 192, 193 Royal Courts of Justice, 289, 290 St Anne’s Gate, 341 St James’s Palace, 153 St James’s Park, 182, 191, 235 St James’s Square, 180, 189 Salisbury House, 219

 INDEX 

Selfridges, 273 Shell-Mex House, 331 Trafalgar Square, 63, 193, 294, 296–297 Waldorf Hotel, 274, 323 Wellington Arch, 296, 298 Westminster Abbey, 6, 30, 86, 87, 93, 108, 113–116, 145, 177, 282, 296, 298 Westminster Hall, 106, 107, 211, 212, 218, 281, 282 Whitehall, 31, 235, 236, 238, 241, 280, 296, 341 Admiralty Extension, 287 Banqueting House, 142, 157, 158, 235 Foreign Office, 284–286, 288 Horse Guards, 237 India Office, 284, 285 New Government Offices (Treasury), 287, 288 New Scotland Yard, 289, 290 Old Admiralty, 236 Portcullis House, 372 Treasury Block, 237 War Office, 287, 288

431

Whitehall Palace, 31, 106, 142, 149, 151, 153, 158, 199, 235, 237, 288 York Place, 149 Wilkins, William, 293, 294, 371 WilkinsonEyre, 380, 409 William and Mary, 169, 176, 177, 228, 239, 241 Williams, Owen, 325 William the Conqueror, 87, 90, 100, 101, 209 Wilson, Colin St John, 113, 115, 374 Wolsey, Thomas, 136, 141, 145, 148, 149, 151 World War One, 277, 298, 307, 310, 312, 317, 318, 321 World War Two, 307, 313–316, 318, 322, 353, 366 Wren, Christopher, 2, 119, 176, 177, 182, 227, 229, 235, 238, 239, 290, 388 Y Yevele, Henry, 108 Young, William, 288