It used to be all fields around here

Hello. Hope you're keeping safe and well. Also warm. February started off icy but sunny, The snowdrops were looking good and I heard a woodpecker. It really felt like spring was just around the corner. By day two we were straight back into winter again. But I'm glad about this for two reasons. Firstly, the snow has given me a partial day off. When I'm not needle felting, I am caretaker of a small primary school. So while there is snow to shovel and a pandemic to clean up after, my days start early and finish late and life is pretty exhausting right now. Secondly, February 2nd is Groundhog Day. That's the proper Groundhog Day and not the one we all feel like we've been living through since last March. If it had been bright and clear today we may all have had to put up with another six weeks of winter. Did you know that it is a tradition which travelled to the US from Europe and that the original weather prognosticator was a badger? If a badger can see his shadow at Candlemas, that does not bode well for an early spring. None of mine have seen their shadow today so fingers crossed.

There are advantages to being up and about early. So many sunrises that I might otherwise have slept through and I occasionally see the pale barn owl who floats silently over the fields like a ghost. My wildlife watching is mainly all about birds at this time of year. There's a lot of drama going on, even just in my garden. A couple of female blackbirds who don't get on at all. Then there are the dunnocks. Small grey and brown birds who hop about in the leaf litter. They are fine when there are just the two of them but if a third one turns up everyone is very upset. It's surprising to see such tiny delicate things be so furious.

Last time I wrote, I told you my imaginary tour through the whole island of Great Britain would take me to London. I wondered how I would illustrate it. When I was listening to the radio the other day, I heard a city dweller tell me how the countryside seemed like a distant dream to him now. And I can sympathize. Because the city seems like distant dream to me. Sometimes, when I’m out early and all I can hear is a cock crowing and maybe a distant dog barking, I can believe I really am in the eighteenth century. It’s hard to imagine a bustling city when no one has been this way apart from me and this rabbit…

London is growing fast in the 1720s. The surrounding fields are being eaten up by new buildings. Westminster is growing close to Chelsea. The buildings around Great Russell Street are stretching towards the little village called Tottenham Court. Towards the east, the city almost reaches Mile End. The Church of St. Martins has not been 'in the fields' for a long time. But Spittle Fields now has a market where cattle used to graze and the fields around White Chapel are full of brick kilns. How big will it grow? Daniel can't begin to guess. He thinks there are maybe fifteen hundred thousand people now living in the city. He isn't great at estimates though, there are maybe eight hundred thousand.

Daniel loves London. He is proud of its fine new buildings, its busy wharves, its bustling markets, its hospitals. If he has one complaint it is the way it is straggling out east and west but not so broad north to south. What is happening is that the city is spreading along both banks of the Thames but he thinks its shape is untidy. He wishes it was more round. More like Rome.

He takes us on a journey around the perimeter. We skirt along the huge boggy field around the back of Westminster towards Buckingham House, Along the side of Hyde Park to the gallows at Tyburn. Up the Tyburn Road (Oxford Street) over Marylebone towards Montagu House (where the British Museum is now). We stop to admire the church of St George which is being built in Bloomsbury. It is one of many new churches designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. It's of particular significance to me because in about three hundred years, my daughter will be working in the crypt here. On we go, along the edge of Lambs Conduit Field by Ormond Street to Gray's Inn, over the Islington Road, then we cross the Cow Keeper's Yard and I'm a bit lost after that. He reckons the circumference of the city to be thirty-six miles, two furlongs and thirty-nine rods.

Since the Great Fire much of the city has been rebuilt. The streets are wider, but because the old rambling buildings with large gardens have been pulled down, more houses have been fitted into the space. All the palaces which stood along the Strand between Somerset House and Northumberland House at the Charing Cross and are gone except the Savoy Palace, which has been turned into tenements. It is really much better. Look at the old (unburnt) parts of the city. How the upper floors project outwards towards each other. Sure if there's a fire you can escape by jumping to the house on the other side of the road, but the flames can quickly follow.

Daniel gleefully tells us how great the people of London are at putting out a fire now. Wooden water pipes have been laid under the roads and accessing the water is simply a matter of removing the plug from the pipe. Immediately your street is flooded. That wouldn't work where I live. It would all just run downhill towards the river. Every parish has an engine and there are proper ‘fire men’ in the city now, though he doesn't think it is a good name for them. They ought to be called ‘water men’. He is keen to point out though, that Londoners haven't really learned how to not start fires in the first place. There are more fires in London than all the other cities in Europe put together. Henry VIII's old Palace at Whitehall has burned twice since the Great Fire and frankly, it's a bit of a wreck.

Westminster is not one of his favourite places either. The abbey has been recently repaired because it was so 'old and weak' that it had almost become a ruin. The Palace where parliament meets is rather old fashioned and labyrinthine. Not at all fit for its modern purpose. Even getting in and out of the place is hard unless you have a private back entrance into St James' Park. Westminster Hall, he thinks, is just awful. From a distance, he says, you can't tell if it's a house or a barn. Maybe a church? No. It looks like 'a heap of churches all huddled together'.

He is proud of the city's hospitals though. The Bethlehem Hospital is very beautiful. It has been recently relocated and built in the style of a French Palace (a thing the French are not happy about) Most of the hospitals have been founded by royalty but the newest, Guy's Hospital, has been funded by a private citizen. Mr. Guy was an immensely wealthy bookseller who planned the building at Southwark to receive patients who were accounted incurable. In the 21st Century, it probably isn't a happy prospect to look too closely at the Bedlam Hospital or the surprising fortune of Mr. Guy but they were wonders of their time.

There is much in eighteenth century London that we would find unacceptable. The massive gallows at Hyde Park, a staggering number of gaols (including one hundred and nineteen debtor’s prisons) and the heads of traitors displayed on the top of the gate at Temple Bar. It is all perfectly normal to Daniel Defoe. But there are other things he thinks are aberrations that will probably just go away. Many people have recently moved themselves to London to keep a really close eye on their stocks. So many have been lately financially ruined by the South Sea Bubble and they are nervous. But he thinks that if peace continues and everyone behaves decently then our national debt will be all paid off and there will be no need to raise money by selling shares any more. Everyone will be able to relax and move back to their country seats. He thinks that will probably mean all the greedy landlords and property developers in the city will be out of a job. Shhh... don't tell him. I think he'll be very disappointed in us.