The Origins of London

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

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Summary

London is today one of the greatest cities in the world, and the story of its origins is fittingly spectacular. Founded by the Romans as Londinium in around 47-50 AD, the metropolis served as a major commercial hub and indeed military target until its abandonment in the 5th century. It wouldn’t be until the turn of the following millennium that London regained its eminence under the Anglo-Saxons. Thanks to centuries of astonishing discoveries and decades of key archaeological research, we actually know quite a lot about Londinium; perhaps even why the Romans chose to found it there in what was previously a rural and peripheral landscape under the Celtic Britons. In this episode, Tristan from The Ancients chats to ‘Mr Roman London’ himself Dr Dominic Perring, Professor of Archaeology at UCL, who shares incredible insights into the origins of London and what its artefacts tell us about the very first Londoners.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. This episode is one of our sibling podcasts.
0:04.5	We've got an episode of The Entrance with Tristan Hughes, The Tristorian Enjoy.
0:09.6	It's The Entrance on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host,
0:14.0	and in today's podcast, well, you're going to be blown away by this one.
0:17.2	We're talking about the origins of one of the greatest cities on earth. If not the greatest city,
0:21.3	we're talking about the origins of London, because London was originally a Roman foundation.
0:28.4	And to talk us through today, the rise of Roman London from the mid-first century to the
0:34.3	mid-second century, I was delighted to get on the show Mr. Roman London. Dr. Dominic Perring from
0:41.0	UCL. He knows so much about Roman London. He's been studying its archaeology, its history for so many
0:47.6	years, and he's a fantastic speaker. You're going to absolutely love it. It was wonderful to
0:51.9	meet up with him in person a few days back to record this exceptional interview. Now we're going
0:57.4	to be covering big names such as Udicum and Hadrian and so much more. So without further ado,
1:03.2	to talk all about the origins of London, here's Dominic.
1:07.2	Dom, it is great to have you on the podcast today. It's lovely to be with you, doing it in
1:11.4	Paris and Swel, which is always a plus. And London, origins of London, Roman London, because
1:16.2	not only today is it one of the greatest cities on earth, I think we can all say that, but archaeologically,
1:20.6	it's been intensely studied for decades, it's incredible. We are really, really lucky as archaeologists
1:26.4	to have been able to play here for so long. I mean, firstly, London is one of the places where people
1:31.1	started the process of exploration into ancient pasts and we go back into the 16th century,
1:36.4	people have been digging here, but of course, the city of London has now grown to the extent that
1:41.0	under it every single big building. There's been a lot of archaeological work taking place and
1:45.3	there have been hundreds and hundreds. We are over a thousand, well over a thousand, excavations
	...

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