Walking the streets of London, be careful: you walk on a surface no stronger than skin, on a thin canvas covering rivers and labyrinths, tunnels and voids, streams and caves, pipes and electrical cables, underground springs and tunnels, crypts and sewers - eerie spaces, where daylight has never penetrated. Trains move huge masses of people right under your feet as they rush through tunnels in the Eocene clay. In case of disasters, facilities have been set up underground to accommodate thousands of refugees.
Don't forget that down there, 24 feet deep, lies the entire history of the ancient city, from prehistoric settlements to the present. The past is very close, below us. It exists as a full-fledged partner of a modern city. And densely populated. It even has its own temperature. At a depth of 100 feet, there is always 65 degrees Fahrenheit, about 19 degrees Celsius. It used to be cooler, but electric trains made a difference. Clay layers absorb excess heat.
In the book “London. Biography”I explored the city on the surface; now my goal is to go underground and explore its depths, no less striking and mysterious. Like the nerves in the human body, the underworld governs the life of the outer world. Our actions stem from and depend on substances and signals emanating from the ground: vibrations, floods, sounds, light, tap water - everything affects our life. What is under us is a shadow, a twin of the city. And just like "upper" London, it organically grew and changed according to its own laws. A resident of Victorian London, making his way through the smog and fog, almost did not separate the two worlds. The underworld is dangerous and unpredictable, riddled with passages and giant brick tunnels leading nowhere. Underneath Piccadilly Square there is an older square,from which thousands of moves run in different directions. And the roads converging at Angel Station in Islington are partly duplicated below the surface.
This is an unknown world. It is not on the cards in one piece. It cannot be viewed completely, entirely. Of course, there are maps of the gas pipeline, telecommunications, electrical cables, sewerage; but there is no public access to them - in order to exclude the possibility of sabotage. So the underworld is doubly inaccessible. This is a closed area. Exclusion Zone. However, it should be noted that the interest in it is not very high. Fear is multiplied by indifference. Out of sight, out of mind. The overwhelming majority of pedestrians do not know and are not interested in the giant voids under their feet. Seeing the sun and the sky is enough for them.
But this world is fraught with monsters. The depths of the underground have been a source of prejudice and legends since the time when people with their irrepressible curiosity appeared. The Minotaur, a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull, lived in a labyrinth under the palace of Knossos in Crete. According to ancient Greek myth, the gates to the underworld were guarded by a three-headed dog with a snake tail, Cerberus. In ancient Egypt, the god of the kingdom of the dead was a creature with a human body and a jackal's head - Anubis, he was called the lord of the sacred Earth.
Traveling underground meant incredible transformations.
The underworld possessed both material and spiritual essence. The great authors of antiquity - Plato, Homer, Pliny, Herodotus - considered the lower world a repository of dreams and hallucinations. Underground are the sanctuaries and temples of most of the world's great religions. An atmosphere of fear reigns in crypts and caves.
16 thousand years ago, the nomadic population of Europe settled inside the caves or near them; but we find colorful drawings in hidden and poorly lit parts of the caves. After all, the deeper you go, the closer you get to the source of power.
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Good and evil exist side by side; miraculous and monstrous mixed. The underworld is a repository of horror and dangers and, at the same time, a salvation from them. He can be an object of both curiosity and fear. It is there, below, that there are miraculous wells and places of power. The depth is like a warm mother's embrace. It is a quiet haven from the outside world. Shelter from enemies. During the world wars of the last century, thousands of people were saved there. Like the early Christians in the Roman catacombs. One can agree with the words of Mr. Mole, addressed to Mr. Badger from the book by Kenneth Graham "The Wind in the Willows" (1908): "How good it is underground! Here you are not threatened by any surprises, nothing can happen to you and no one can attack you. " “That’s what I’m saying,” said Mr. Badger. - Nowhere is there security, peace and tranquility. Only underground."
From time immemorial, a twin city lived near London. The author of Unknown London (1919) Walter George Bel wrote: "I have measured more steps going down to explore the buried city than there are stairs in the City." There is much more hidden below than above. One of the guidebooks says: "It is known for certain that no person who knows London will deny that its treasures are hidden underground."
In ancient times, villains were also driven into the dungeon. A medieval prison, or prison, was literally a hole dug in the ground. The lower the cell in the Tower was, the longer the prisoner was imprisoned. One of the most terrifying places in London was the underground prison near Clerkenwell Green, known as the House of Arrest. It was a system of tunnels, dark and damp, with small cells and other rooms, and had a generally cruciform shape; earlier it served as the foundation of a large building. Most of the brickwork dates from the late 18th century; this place is literally steeped in years of suffering. The arches leading to the chambers date from the same time. The house was used for its intended purpose for 250 years, until 1877, when it was closed. Many Londoners still consider this place a sinister, haven of evil spirits.
Who knows, maybe the souls of the dead do roam underground. And the Styx still carries its waters, separating the living and the dead.
The underground world gives rise to a storm of fantasy, because in it the usual living conditions are turned upside down. In the 19th century, it was considered the abode of criminals, crooks and so-called night wanderers; cellars and tunnels were described as "a secluded repository of vice" inhabited by "wild folk" and also as "children of the underground." It was an underworld hidden from the eyes, which came out only with the onset of darkness. This is what John Hollingshead, the author of London Underground (1862), writes about the tunnels: they were "gloomy labyrinths, dangerous to an innocent passer-by."
It should also be remembered that the underworld is often associated with adventure, because it is the ideal - brought to the point of absurdity - the embodiment of the child's desire to "hide better than anyone else." The very idea of secret passages, mysterious loopholes and exits, of the possibility to hide, to get lost is incredibly attractive. But what if, playing hide and seek, you are never found? If your friends leave you in the dark, and they themselves run out into the sun?
Underground tunnels have been - and have been - found for centuries. For example, there are prehistoric tunnels under Greenwich Park, there are giant catacombs in Camden Town, under Camden Market. A German traveler of the 18th century noted that "a third of the inhabitants of London live underground"; it meant that the poor lived in the so-called semi-basements, or semi-cellars, of which there were many in the city at that time. In these "wells" they went down the steps, and "at nightfall they were closed with a hatch." The poor were literally at the bottom of society. London tramps often lived under bridges or arches, in conditions not unlike those underground.
The Adelphian arches, south of the Strand, once provided an opportunity to see firsthand the remains of the ancient world. The arches were built in the 1770s over a system of cellars that have been described as "part of the Etruscan cesspool in ancient Rome." In the 19th century, they became a real raspberry - the abode of criminals and professional beggars. Notice sheets of those times reported “murderers lurk in dark arches” - for example, Lower Robert Street consisted of such arches, under which were hidden alleys, tunnels, dangerous descents, unexpected turns and almost imperceptible entrances to buildings. Horses reluctantly walked along these streets … Growths similar to stalactites hung from the ceilings. They even kept cows, whose whole life was spent in darkness.
Lower Robert Street is still closed to traffic; it is one of the few existing underground streets in London. Of course, she has her own legend - as if the ghost of a murdered prostitute is haunting her. Thomas Miller, in London Scenic Sketches (1852), describes the gloomy area between the Strand and the Thames: “Sooty arches hanging left and right, front and back, completely concealing hundreds of acres of land never fed by rain or warmed by the sun and the wind itself, it seems, only howls and rages at the entrance, not daring to look further into the darkness. These arches serve as another reminder of London's dungeons.
The key to the existence of the labyrinths lies in the peculiarities of the geology of London. The city is located on the formations of sand, gravel, clay and chalk that make up the London Basin, or the London Lowlands. In the very depths - deposits of the stone layer of the Paleozoic era, formed millions of years ago; no one has reached him yet. Above it lies a layer of ancient material known as heavy clay, or golt, and the upper green (glauconite) sand. In turn, the sand contains giant chalk layers that formed during the period when the present territory of London was at the bottom of the sea. Next comes a layer of clay. The local type of clay is very thick, viscous and pliable; at the bottom it has a greenish-blue tint, and closer to the surface it acquires a red-brown color. This layer was formed over 50 million years ago. It was in him that the underworld of London was created; it has the tunnels of the London Underground. The clay is pressed so tightly that the remaining moisture has evaporated from it. But if the pressure eases, then, as the geologists say, it will float. This probably means "climb forward."
Above the clay layer are sand and gravel; the city springs come from here. Through this sandy layer, escalators and elevators lower people into the depths. The rivers formed during the Ice Age continue to make their way underground and, flowing through this upper layer, flow into the Thames. It is difficult to imagine how ancient the land we live on. London is built on clay, while New York's Manhattan, for example, is built on a hard rock material - mica shale. This explains the abundance of skyscrapers there. But can this fact explain the behavioral and other differences between the inhabitants of the two megacities?
London is gradually disappearing into clay, while Manhattan, on the contrary, is climbing higher and higher - into the clouds.
Thus, we return to clay and water, to the elements that gave birth to London. They are the beginning and, perhaps, they are the future death. Deep waters are constantly rising; 15.4 million gallons must be pumped out daily to save the city's infrastructure.
Various creatures live underground: huge populations of rats, mice, frogs. The championship is held by a brown Russian rat. Some time ago, it was believed that certain areas near Oxford Street and Canning Town were inhabited by a local breed of black rats, but it seems to be extinct.
Sigmund Freud called the rat a chthonic animal, a symbol of the supernatural rather than the terrible. She is the messenger of the kingdom of darkness, which we all fear. The Underworld can be interpreted as a metaphor for the human unconscious - the formless rudiment of human instincts and desires. It carries our basic personality.
It is difficult to quantify the number of urban rats; but the old legend that it exceeds the human population, it is time to write off to the archive. In the sewers, they periodically turn on ultrasound, from which the rodents panic and, with force rushing to the walls, are smashed to death. It must be a terrible sight. Rodents also die from natural causes. Unable to hide, they drown during heavy rains. They are being driven out by hordes of cockroaches that can live on human excrement. Under London streets there is an abundance of oriental cockroach, or ordinary, it is also a black cockroach. Periodically, there are reports of white crabs, which were allegedly seen on the walls of the tunnels, but most likely these are rumors. Scorpions, pale yellow, an inch long, were once seen on the Line subway line. Whitish stunted creatures - cavernophiles - hide in the dark.
Underground, attracted by the warmth and in search of food, stray dogs descend. Pigeons travel to the desired stations on the roofs of metro carriages. There, underground, there is a kind of mosquito not found elsewhere in England, feeding on its own "herd". The squeaky mosquito entered the system of underground tunnels at the very beginning of the 20th century and has been continuously spreading since then. The authoritative BBC Worldwide magazine reports that "this insect evolves at an incredibly fast pace, so that the differences between the terrestrial and the underground are as great as if they were separated by millennia." Once at great depths below the surface, the mosquito returned to its original form.
In the end, our waste products end up underground. It is no coincidence that once public toilets were arranged only underground, and a long staircase led to them. The workers (they were called washers) serving such establishments were superstitiously afraid. They were like lepers because they were closer to Satan than others. Political movements that have chosen terror and violence as a weapon of struggle against the legal system, which is typical, have been called and are called underground.
When the idea of building an underground railway was first proposed in the middle of the 19th century, a then popular priest seriously declared that "the construction of such a system will bring the impending end of the world closer, as a person will penetrate into spaces subject to hell, and thus wake up the devil." And when the metro was finally built, the journalist described the sound of rushing trains as "the howling of an army of devils."
We bury our dead in the ground. Therefore, the underworld is inextricably linked to grief. Church cemeteries in the City by the beginning of the 19th century were, so to speak, filled to capacity; Medieval sources already testify that a terrifying stench emanated from the ground in those places. Plague pits can be found in London from Aldgate to Walthamstow. There are places where, they say, "dig in and release the plague outside." And these fears are not unfounded: if the bacterium of the bubonic plague has long been destroyed, then the anthrax spores can sleep for hundreds of years.
There is no darkness like the underground darkness. It is darker than the blackest shade of black. There you will not see your own hand raised to your face. The darkness takes possession of you, and you seem to cease to exist. This happens in the worst nightmares, when suddenly you find yourself in the kingdom of eternal night. But the darkness of the night is nothing compared to the darkness of the dungeon. He suppresses the slightest urge to escape, for there is nowhere to run.
Perhaps this is true hell. Various concepts of divine arrangement put heaven above and hell below. Their topography is as constant as east and west, from where the sun rises and where the sun sets. Order and harmony are inherent in the visible world. All that is hidden from view is formless, incorporeal, ethereal. Forgotten, abandoned, secret - you will find all this there, deep underground.
Into the light of day
When Sir Christopher Wren excavated the ruins of the old St. Paul's Cathedral after the Great Fire of London (1666), he first discovered the graves of the Anglo-Saxons in the chalk layers. The coffins of the Saxons made of the same material rested right there. Immediately beneath the remains of this extinct civilization lay the Britons; their skeletons are strewn with pins made of wood and ivory, which suggests that the bodies of the deceased in shrouds were laid in rows. Under the Britons there was a layer with the remains of the Romans and even fragments of the ancient pavement. Deeper still, Ren discovered sand and shells. It turns out that Ludgate Hill was once a seabed.
A Bronze Age road has been found on the Isle of Dogs. The gravel streets of the Anglo-Saxon period run underground along Maiden Lane and Short's Garden, Fleet Street and King Street; the houses on ancient Drury Lane were 39 feet long and 18 feet wide. Life is still raging here, but its roots are underground. We walk on the bones of our ancestors.
As soon as a city was built on this land, it began to gradually descend. Over time, the first floors turned into basements, and the front door became the door to the underground. The streets were then located at the ground floor level. The oldest of these ruins are at a depth of 26 feet. And the entire history of the city in a condensed form is 30 feet.
Excavation of an ancient Roman sidewalk at Walbrook, 1869
When clean-ups were carried out in the Fleet Valley in the mid-19th century, the remains of a Roman sidewalk were discovered at a depth of 13 feet; it was noticeable that its stones were worn to a shine by the wheels of carriages and the feet of thousands of pedestrians. Under the sidewalk were piles of oak logs, petrified and darkened. Their purpose is unclear. Ancient pipes of wood were found a few feet below, apparently hollow tree trunks. All these layers of urban history were so tightly adjacent to each other that they formed a clay conglomerate of gravel, wood and stone. Just below the level of the current street, a mass of scattered pins was found. There were hairpins or sewing needles, the sources are silent.
However, the spontaneous discoveries of underground secrets of London have been carried out for centuries. Historian and antiquarian John Stowe, who lived in the 16th century, writes about the discovery of the tibia of a mountain man, whose height was estimated at 10-12 feet. She was found in the cemetery of St. Paul's Cathedral, among other remains. Stowe, however, argues that the existence of a race of giants on Earth is more a certainty than a legend. In fact, there is no doubt that these giant bones belonged to mammoths.
It is important to remember that people have always believed that treasures are hidden under the ground. Yes, coins and small statues were found regularly, but according to local laws, "the values in the ground belong to the Crown." In the Middle Ages, people were little interested in what was under their feet, with the exception of perhaps a chest with a treasure. But in general, the underworld was considered the possession of the devil, and that it is not worth intruding there. The first English archaeologists, John Aubrey and William Stukeley, who carried out scientific excavations in the 17th and 18th centuries, respectively, chose the more visible objects, Stonehenge and Avebury. Stukeley was able to find traces of the camp of Julius Caesar at the present church of St. Pancras and trace the routes of Roman roads until the 18th century. This is what his interests were limited to. In those days, the city grew so rapidly in all directions,that its underground part was practically of no interest to anyone. During a period of exponential growth, the past is usually irrelevant.
Meanwhile, it lived a life of its own. In 1832, the giant head of a statue of Emperor Hadrian was pulled out of the Thames, which had lain there for 1,700 years. In 1865, workers digging in the Oxford Street area discovered a trap door. They lifted it, and before their amazed gaze appeared a 16-step brick staircase leading down. They went down it and found themselves in a spacious room. Its walls were eight red-bricked arches through which light once penetrated the hall. In the center was a pool, or bath, about 6 feet deep. It was half filled with water, and a spring was gushing at the bottom. In all likelihood, it was a Roman baptismal, and the water, as in ancient times, flowed from a tributary of the Tyburn River. Despite the findings, the hall was demolished in order to construct a modern building. Interest in monuments,underground, was still minimal, all this was considered, in the words of the journalist of that time, "the abyss of oblivion."
In 1867, during construction work on Bouverie Street, off Fleet Street, the underground chapel of an old Carmelite monastery was excavated. It was turned into a coal storage facility. In the 19th century, the world hidden under the ground was considered in a certain sense unclean, contaminated. Later excavations, in 1910, revealed that the walls of the chapel were "made of hewn stone … The recessed ribs of the arches in the corners and in the center of each side are connected on the ceiling in the form of a rose carved in stone."
So, imagine that on the site of Fleet Street and around the towering walls of Whitefriars Monastery. You can see monks walking in the garden, hear them singing psalms. The Cheshire Cheese Tavern is located on the site of the North Gate Watchtower; the gardens, stretching just outside the northern wall of the monastery, turned into the Wine Compound. Remains of the chapel can still be seen today at Ascentry Court, near Whitefriars Street. They strike a casual passer-by with the proximity of the past, but there are not many people there.
In 1910, during the construction of the County Hall building, the skeleton of a Roman ship appeared from the black mud of a dry river; it sank from a gap made by a stone core at the end of the 3rd century AD. In general, by chance, once again hidden under the ground came out.
Archeology as such began only at the beginning of the last century thanks to the selfless work of the Guildhall Museum (City Hall). Under the pressure of enthusiastic archaeologists and antiquaries, the museum began to accept coins and fragments of vessels found throughout the city; prehistoric objects fished out of the Thames were soon added to them - from stone tools to bronze weapons. Museum staff visited the sites of demolition of buildings and excavation works and seized all objects that had at least some historical value.
Often they bought such items from workers, thus collecting many items from the Roman, medieval and early Renaissance era. One of the curators, J. F. Lawrence, found more than 1,600 items in just his first six months at the museum. The past was coming out into the light of day. It was during these years that a Paleolithic pavement was discovered near Stoke Newington Common; however, it again turned out to be hidden from view - this time a modern building.
The bombing during the Second World War, willy-nilly, contributed to the beginning of systematic archaeological excavations. The bombs destroyed the city's present, but fortunately helped open up its past. In particular, London of the ancient Roman era, when everyone could admire the fragments of the Roman city wall. As meticulous research went on at the bombing sites, the wall was revived. In the underground parking under it, you can still see a solid fragment of the original masonry of Kentish red clay limestone; in the other part of the parking lot, the remains of the western fortress wall have been preserved.
A fragment of a Roman wall found behind the monastery of Mineriz. Charles Knight, 1841-1844
The foundation of the Leadenhall Market store is a fragment of the London Basilica. Underneath Guildhall is an amphitheater that can hold 6,000 spectators; the wooden gate leading to the arena was 16 feet wide. In the space below Pepis Street, not far from the Tower, a church was discovered that can be considered the first Christian cathedral in England. Will St. Paul's Cathedral ever be dug up?
Under number 5 Fenchurch Street, an image of a woman in an elegant outfit was found. It probably adorned the entrance to the tavern. Near New Fresh Wharf, an iron ring was found engraved with the inscription da mihi vita ("give me life") and four stars - a symbol of eternity.
Inch by inch Londinium is being reborn. The moist soil has kept it in excellent condition, so that according to the evidence found underground, we can restore the appearance of a huge city with a basilica, an amphitheater, an arena and numerous public buildings. We see baths and monumental statues, sanctuaries and palaces. Findings continue - for example, the colossal Wall of the Gods, preserved only in fragments; it is now in the Museum of London. It was a 19-foot long stone façade with six gods carved on either side. Some of the bas-reliefs remain somewhere underground. The underworld, as before, hides gods and heroes. Under Grave Dover Street, in Saywork, the head of a river deity was found carved from caviar stone. The carved sphinx was recovered from the bowels of Fenchurch Street. The sanctuary of Bacchus was located in Poltri - two figurines of the deity were found there. Isis ruled at Walbrook; the images of her and her relatives there resemble mithraeums - the underground sanctuaries of the god Mithra. The discovery in 1954 near Walbrook of an authentic 3rd century mithraeum at a depth of 18 feet generated such enthusiasm that 80,000 people visited the site. A great demonstration of the attraction that something lost and regained has. A similar delight was caused by a find in Southwark during excavation work in 1989 - then fragments of the Rose Theater were discovered. A great demonstration of the attraction that something lost and regained has. A similar delight was caused by a find in Southwark during excavation work in 1989 - then fragments of the Rose Theater were discovered. A great demonstration of the attraction that something lost and regained has. A similar delight was caused by a find in Southwark during excavation work in 1989 - then fragments of the Rose Theater were discovered.
The sacred site has maintained its holiness for centuries. When the church of Sainte-Mary-le-Bau was destroyed by the bombing, it was revealed that the foundation of the building was a Roman temple; at a depth of 18 feet was a Roman road leading to the temple. In addition, it was found that the crypt of the Church of All Saints near the Tower was built of brick from the Roman era. Once it was an ordinary building, there was a barber shop. A chute in the pavement indicates a constant supply of water. Even deeper under the crypt of the Cathedral on Southwark, statues of Neptune and a certain god of the hunt were discovered, as well as a temple altar. Excavations under the Treasury building on Whitehall have revealed the submerged remains of two 9th-century log buildings.
As a result of these findings, a number of streets have acquired a completely different look. An ancient Saxon settlement can be seen on Cromwell Road in West London; there were Paleolithic sites in the Creffield Road area of Acton; a Bronze Age bowl was excavated on Hopton Street in Southwark. And on Nightrider Street (Street of the Galloping Knight) below St. Paul's Cathedral, the remains of a giant structure were found, apparently part of the wall of the circus, where chariot races were held. Hence the name of the street. Remains of early Iron Age wooden structures have been found at Richmond Terraces in Westminster, and signs of ancient woodland have been found at Bankside. There are many discoveries dating back to the very dawn of humanity. The votive figurine, known as the Dagenham Idol, was buried 8 feet deep at the edge of the Dagenham Marshes;it lay in the ground for about 4500 years. And from the depths of the Erythian swamps, they removed a canoe hollowed out of a tree, in which a flint ax and a scraper lay.
Crypts, crypts and burial sites form an integral part of the urban space. They are incredibly ancient. In a multivolume edition on London archeology, there are photographs in which an excavator awkwardly bends over a twisted skeleton - this is how technology involuntarily copies what remains of a person. However, a significant part of the city is literally built on the bones of the dead. “I suddenly realized in all seriousness,” writes Charles Dickens in his essay Night Walks (1861), “what an unimaginable number of the dead lie in the bowels of this huge city, and if you imagine that while the inhabitants are sleeping, they will all come out, on the streets, an apple would have nowhere to fall, let alone to accommodate all those living today. Moreover, gigantic crowds of the dead would fill all the hills and fields in the vicinity and much beyond. From the Roman era alone, there should have been about a million dead. Christ Church Cemetery in Spitalfields opened in 1729 and existed until 1859; during this period, 68,000 people were buried in its cramped space. By the time excavations began in 1993, soft tissues were preserved on some of the bodies. There were fears that the miasms would harm the health of archaeologists, but nothing happened.
Excavations in cemeteries allow you to study the dead from all sides. We find out what social groups and family clans lived in the city; what diseases people suffered and how urban life in general affected the health of an individual. How many of those buried in the cemetery were local residents, and how many were visitors? A private, G. Pomponius Valens, is buried under Kingsway, and Vivius Martianus lies under Ludgate Hill. One Celsus, a legionnaire under the Blackfriars, and Marcus Aurelius Eukarp, who died 15 years old, on Camomile Street. In Southwark, a mausoleum and temple were found underground, overlooking a roadside cemetery. Both buildings were painted red ocher, as if predicting the red-brick masonry of future metro stations.
Almost every church in London had its own cemetery. Until 1800, there were more than 200 burial sites, most of which are now unknown to anyone. In one of these small cemeteries at the corner of Fetter Lane and Brims Building, there is a tombstone, apparently installed on the grave of a child, with the name carved - Seimwell. It can be assumed that in the pronunciation of Dickens' time it is Samuel, like Sam Weller from The Pickwick Papers. Or maybe this is just a reminder of the "common well".
Our knowledge of London is made more complete by the burials of the dead. It turns out that until 1823, urban suicides were buried at a crossroads, and this place - at the intersection of Grosvenor Place and Hobart Place - is still available. Perhaps it should be avoided.
There are also the London catacombs - burial sites of later times. There the coffins were stacked underground in wall niches along the corridors; they survived in the areas of Brompton and Norwood, Kenzal Green and Highgate, Abney Park and Tower Hamlets.
There are 10 of them in total, and they were built in the middle of the 19th century; the Victorians fervently believed that the place of the dead was as deep underground as possible. They also created the cult of the dead, the essence of which is a combination of horror and sentimentality; the catacombs became the temples of this cult. They are not as refined and luxurious as the Parisian ossuary, and not as secluded and frighteningly cramped as the Roman catacombs. The first Christians of Rome hid in the catacombs side by side with their dead; this sense of sacred horror is foreign to London's dungeons. They also have little in common with Parisians. The first are urban, filled with mythology; and the London ones are suburban and quite practical. The structures at Brompton or Norwood are not like mazes: they have a regular grid structure with a central cross. Anyone familiar with Victorian architecture has seen similar brick vaults. So in underground galleries, coffins were placed in niches in vaults moist with water, individual or common, in close rows. In 1869, the author of a detailed guide to Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington describes the catacombs there as "the cold stone masonry place of Death … The coolness here is disgusting and terrible."
Racks of coffins in the West Norwood Catacombs.
The architecture of the “Place of Death”, like the journey under the ground, was interpreted in both the pagan and classical sense. Some catacombs bear typical traces of Egyptian necropolises - architectural details, passages, obelisks; on the contrary, the abundance of statues, columns, and shrines at Highgate are borrowed from the Romans. In the chapel at the Kenzel Green cemetery, a hearse with a hydraulic mechanism was discovered, which lowered the coffins into the catacombs. Penetration into the ground is perceived, on the one hand, as a heritage of antiquity, and on the other, as a theatrical performance. Welcome to the depths of the underground!
From the book "Underground London". By Peter Ackroyd