The Oldest House In London

London's old buildings hold a wealth of clues to the city's rich and vibrant past. The histories of some, such as the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, are well documented. However, these magnificent, world-renowned attractions are not the only places with fascinating tales to tell. Down a narrow, medieval lane on the outskirts of Smithfield stands 41–42 Cloth Fair – the oldest house in the City of London. Fiona Rule uncovers the fascinating survival story of this extraordinary property and the people who owned it and lived in it, set against the backdrop of an ever-changing city that has prevailed over war, disease, fire and economic crises.

Brixton is one of the country's most notorious prisons. It is London's oldest and 2019 will mark its 200th anniversary. The House on the Hill tells the story of this remarkable institution, which popularised the dreaded treadmill, was the first women's prison, acted as London's remand jail for most of the last century and today is home to the Clink restaurant and National Prison Radio. But it also recalls the colourful lives of some of its residents - among them terrorists, mass murderers, spies, politicians and rock stars.

Amid the bustling streets of Spitalfields, East London, there is a piece of real estate with a bloody history. This was once Dorset Street: the haunt of thieves, murderers and prostitutes; the sanctuary of persecuted people; the last resort for those who couldn't afford anything else – and the setting for Jack the Ripper's murderous spree. So notorious was this street in the 1890s that policemen would only patrol this area in pairs for their own safety. This book chronicles the rise and fall of this remarkable street; from its promising beginnings at the centre of the seventeenth-century silk weaving industry, through its gradual descent into iniquity, vice and violence; and finally its demise at the hands of the demolition crew. Meet the colourful characters who called Dorset Street home.

Growing up in California, Dennis Severs fell in love with the England he saw in old black and white movies. At seventeen he came to London, looking for a home with a heart. In 1979 he found one, a run-down silk-weaver's house in Spitalfields, and over the next twenty years he transformed it into an enchanted time-capsule, transporting us back to the eighteenth century. From cellar to roof, he filled 18 Folgate Street with original objects and furniture, found in the local markets, lit by candles and chandeliers. More than that, he invented a family to live here, the Jervis family, Huguenot weavers who fled persecution in France in 1688, and bought the house in 1724. Sounds and scents bring their world to life, always just out of sight - floorboards creak, fires crackle, a kettle hisses on the hob. Visitors step through the frame of time, like entering an old master painting. As we move from room to room on a tour you will never forget, we follow the Jervis story from the days of the Georges and the Regency to harsher Victorian times - and even to the attic room of Scrooge himself.

Do you remember the docks? In its heyday, the Port of London was the biggest in the world. It was a sprawling network of quays, wharves, canals and basins, providing employment for over 100,000 people. From the dockworker to the prostitute, the Romans to the Republic of the Isle of Dogs, London's docklands have always been a key part of the city. But it wasn't to last. They might have recovered from the devastating bombing raids of the Second World War – but it was the advent of the container ships, too big to fit down the Thames, that would sound the final death knell. Over 150,000 men lost their jobs, whole industries disappeared, and the docks gradually turned to wasteland. In London's Docklands: A History of the Lost Quarter, best-selling historian Fiona Rule ensures that, though the docklands may be all but gone, they will not be forgotten.

Just across the River Thames from St Paul’s Cathedral stands an old and elegant house. Over the course of almost 450 years the dwelling on this site has witnessed many changes. From its windows, people have watched the ferrymen carry Londoners to and from Shakespeare’s Globe; they have gazed on the Great Fire; they have seen the countrified lanes of London’s marshy south bank give way to a network of wharves, workshops and tenements – and then seen these, too, become dust and empty air. Rich with anecdote and colour, this fascinating book breathes life into the forgotten inhabitants of the house – the prosperous traders; an early film star; even some of London’s numberless poor. In so doing it makes them stand for legions of others and for a whole world that we have lost through hundreds of years of London’s history.

Eldon House is a distinctive element in the historical townscape of London, Ontario. By the mid-nineteenth century, its original owners, John and Amelia Harris, were prominent members of society in that dynamic community. Their children grew up in the affluent and cultured setting of a family whose increasing prosperity advanced with that of London and western Ontario. If London had an elite, the Harris family was part of it, and Eldon House was an important focal point of the social regimen of the day. A considerable corpus of family papers within the Eldon House and prominent among these papers is a collection of diaries that are excerpted in this volume, encapsulating the personalities, activities, and voices of the Harrises of London. These diaries are valuable because of the details of the warp and woof of daily life in the nineteenth century. But, more importantly, they are women's diaries. As such, they speak to us of the verities of personal, domestic, and societal life in the neglected voice of women. Together, they provide a fascinating perspective of these women's lives in, around, and beyond Eldon House.