London: A Very Local History

The final episode of our first season - Waterloo! Waterloo! F.K.A. Lambeth Marsh. Named after a famous battle - but it was given to the bridge before the train station. From then on it’s a very railways sort of story, UNTIL the post war redevelopment of the Southbank. An alternative theatre land, the salacious Roupells, THAT lonely house and the birth of the circus (acrobats and that - not the one you’re listening to).

Follow us on Instagram @averylocalhistory for some visual accompaniment to the episode

T.I.T. and a Saxon place name - is it taken from the river or the hills though? In the rest of the episode we track an increasingly familiar residential and transport boom, from retail wonderland to uncertain prosperity. And what of the great RYE - with a history taking in wild beast shows, whale bone arches and PoW camps. We’ll also wander down Rye lane and enjoy the murals of Peckham, PLUS meet our first significant lost river!

Follow us on Instagram @averylocalhistory for some visual accompaniment to the episode

What's in the name..?* There’s a few theories, but one part they all agree on is that there was a well. Better health, an historic knees up, asylums to workhouses (workhouses to asylums?), an embarrassment of parks, notable residents from the first black woman to have a BBC radio show to Florence and her machine. Top boozers, TOP scran, and uncovering the Earl’s Sluice (our lost waterway for this segment)

Follow us on Instagram @averylocalhistory for some visual accompaniment to the episode

*we use the term 'cripple' in this episode in its historic context

It's the final instalment in our overview of London's history. We’re into the last 100 years - and it’s chocka! Victorian goes Edwardian, Charles Booth’s poverty map, slum clearance, women’s suffrage, the first London Olympics, the First World War, the SECOND World War, post-war regeneration, The Festival of Britain, high rise estates, decline in the docklands, the Troubles in London, THE BIG BANG and a new millennium. Out of breath yet? Don’t worry, that's the lot.

Next Monday we begin dissecting the map of London with our first area episode, taking in the fresh south London air in Camberwell. Won’t you come and joiners?

Visual notes available on Instagram @averylocalhistory

In part three of our intro to London's history we ask what happened post FIRE, and how did it define the face of London as we know it? Not just surviving, but thriving - bridges, banking and a heavy dose of imperialism makes Britain, with London at its centre, one of the preeminent civilisations in human history. One can only speculate on what the pace of change in this period felt like on a human level, but we can do the locomotive, and bask in the glory of the Victorian sewer system.

Visual notes available on Instagram @averylocalhistory

We begin part two of our history of London on a date you may know - yes, it’s 1066 - but what did the Norman conquest mean for the city? The iconic Domesday book gets done, giving us some of the first written records of people and places. There’s also plague, the London Stone (you’ll have to look it up), the establishment of the guild system, the peasants are revolting AND a couple of notable episodes to do with gunpowder and a REALLY big fire.

Visual notes available on Instagram @averylocalhistory

We kick off the podcast with a four part overview of the history of London. In episode one we discuss the origins of the city - its prehistory as an Iron age settlement and what remains today of the foundations the Roman's laid in Londinium (plus there’s some pseudo history from Ollie). Then it’s a race through time and place - from the outlying farmsteads that would become the suburban centres we know today, to Lundenwic, the new western Saxon capital. We finish up in Lundenburg, back in the old square mile, and see the establishment of Westminster…to the west - which takes us right up to the end of the first millennium AD!

Visual notes available on Instagram @averylocalhistory

This is London: A Very Local History, the podcast where we visit the different areas of London one by one, zooming in on each place’s unique history and present day character, offering a more detailed picture of this fascinating, curious and sometimes overwhelming metropolis.

In Season 1 we'll be kicking things off with an overview of London's near 2000 year history split across four episodes, before getting into our regular format looking at the areas of Camberwell, Peckham and Waterloo. Intro episodes drop Monday 10th June - subscribe for alerts.