Background and history of City campus

London Met's City campus covers a diverse and vibrant area of London. Ranging from the financial centre to the creative industries of the City Fringe, this central campus incorporates all that is compelling and charismatic in London.

The City has a long and fascinating history. In Celtic times there were a few homesteads in the area now occupied by the City, but it wasn't until the Romans founded Londinium that it became a major settlement, chiefly populated by incomers engaged in commerce, with trade links internationally via the Thames.

The revolt of Queen Boudicca devastated the young city in AD61, but help came from Julius Alpinus Classicianus, the Procurator (Chief finance officer) of the province, who stood up for the defeated Brits against the revengeful military Governor. This friend of the oppressed died before he could return home and in 1935 parts of his tombstone were excavated behind London Met’s Tower Hill site.

Londinium was rebuilt and became the capital of Britannia and its hub of communications and trade. It was home to merchants, soldiers and assorted Roman dignitaries and well as workers in many trades and handicrafts. In accordance with Roman law the area within the city limit was for streets, civic buildings, people and houses while the area beyond was open ground, cemeteries, smallholdings and the more industrial trades. This division is marked to this day by the boundary between the City of London and the London Boroughs. Pictured left is an artist's impression of late Roman London.

Around 200AD a wall was built along the official boundary, two fines parts of which can still be seem near London Met's Tower Hill site. More remains of the Roman wall were found under the John Cass Foundation in Jewry Street in 1992. This wall was renewed in Medieval times and its entrances are perpetuated in local names like Aldgate and Moorgate where City Campus buildings are located. Pictured right is the stained glass window over the entrance to London Met's Moorgate building, built 1900-1903.

Londinium was abandoned after the end of the Roman rule, but communal life resumed in the 9^th century when Danish Viking attacks caused a return to the walled city. After the advent of William the Conqueror in 1066 London once more became the national capital, with the principal Royal fortification at the Tower of London, but the City always asserted its rights to self government based on the Lord Mayor and Council at Guildhall.

Medieval London grew within the walls of the City, again becoming a successful trading centre, despite such setbacks as the fearsome Black Death of 1347-48, because it always attracted those in search of education, advancement and a new life.

Commerce was managed by the City Livery Guilds, which were formed to maintain codes of practice, and provide training and welfare for their trades, such as the Furniture Makers, Skinners, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths and many others. They grew wealthy and built fantastic halls in London in which to conduct their meetings, but some actually worked outside the City boundaries as London grew.

From about 1500 London began to spread significantly beyond the old walls, especially after the Great Fire of 1666, which destroyed much of the medieval city, after which buildings had to be rebuilt in stone or brick. Britain’s burgeoning overseas interests in the 16-17^th Centuries caused a great expansion of shipping facilities along the Thames and provided new opportunities for entrepreneurs. Rapid growth continued in the 18^th Century, as London became the largest city in Europe. However there were great inequalities of wealth and opportunity, notably in the Aldgate, Shoreditch and Whitechapel areas, where impoverished newcomers and the unskilled settled.This period however saw the beginning of movements for social reform that gained strength through the 19^th century and which shape political life to the present.

Although the physical remains of the past have often been swept away by redevelopment, London Met’s City campus has a distinguished history of activism in numerous industrial, political and welfare causes, from which the creation of educational opportunities for the less privileged was a natural development.

In 1845-47 wash-houses and public baths were constructed on the site between Old Castle Street and Goulston Street; swimming pools were added at a later date. The complex closed in 1989. A mid-19th century time-capsule unearthed during the building’s demolition recorded that Queen Victoria had donated £200 towards the cost of the baths/washhouses.

In 2001 the University constructed the Women’s Library on the site (pictured left), which incorporated the fa?ade of the washhouses into the new building. The Women’s Library, which houses the most extensive collection of women’s history materials in the UK, also acts as a cultural centre, hosting exhibitions and events. some curious pits lined with cows’ horns (suggesting there might have been a way of the Aldgate.

Brooke Bond & Co built a ‘tea factory’ (warehouse and offices) in Old Castle Street in the early 1900s, which was enlarged and partially rebuilt in the 1930s. The building was named after the Indian port of Calcutta, where most of the tea was shipped from. These premises were converted for use by the University in 1975 and then extensively refurbished in 1992 and subsequently. Calcutta House is one of the University’s principal teaching buildings and in addition to housing politics, psychology and social studies academic areas, it is the location of a major library and much of the City campus’s student welfare provision.

The German bombing during the Second World War saw many fine buildings destroyed or damaged, and the later 20th century was a period in which new developments such as the Barbican Complex, Lloyds Building and Swiss Re spring up across the Square Mile.