Commons

The Commons, or Lower City, is the old low-lying body of London, laid over the buried city and under the raised platforms of Westminster. It grew from the river footholds of the reclamation, from Bridegate and Westminster Rise, through the Ash Scouring of 4041 and the hardening of the capital by pumps, bridges and yards between 4084 and 4116. Twice it has burned. In 4487 the first Great Fire, wind-driven, burned for fourteen days and razed wide stretches of it before demolition, pumps and exhaustion stopped it at the lower edge of the High City. The second, in 4556, broke out of Southbank and White Dock, from their varnish, oil and timber yards, and ran eight days through the river wards. Warehouse spacing hardened after the first, the law on lamps and volatile stores after the second.

Most Londoners live here. The Commons are docks and manufactories, terraces and alleys, parish houses and counting rooms, public houses and ferries, and they are not one slum but many climates packed close: one lane muddy, the next handsome. Lime Quay smells of chandlers and rope, Bellmarket of notices and cheap inns; the works stand in Boilerfields and Ironbank; Eastmere and Saint Olave's Ward keep their parishes; Holborn, Ludgate Hill, Blackfriars and Greywater each answer to their own bell. Around the pylons that carry the High City stand warm, cramped terraces, wash houses and pie shops, prized by the poor in winter for the heat that leaks from the steam mains. The district's rhythm is bread queues, market mornings, foundry whistles, school release and the weekly burden of rent and washing.

The Commons remember. Every August the Fourteen Fires open on the sixth: the bells ring, each ward hears its readings, and fire-watch sermons are preached, and the poorer wards recall evictions and warehouses saved while houses burned. Newgate Gaol stands here, and Bethlem House, and Saint Anne's Infirmary. The people speak of what lies beneath with the caution owed to deep water and old wells: porters of stairs that never lead to the same place twice, river men of culverts where in winter the tide sounds wrong. Children learn early which stair drowned whom and which baker gives credit only on the priest's word, and that knowledge is as much part of the district's fabric as its brick.

A visitor should learn the ward, the stair and the bell before anything else, and should expect to be judged by how he behaves on a crowded stair. Cheap inns gather at Bellmarket. Trouble goes to the ward beadle and the parish woman. Fire, fog and the river stairs after dark are the dangers that actually kill people here.