What's the Oldest House in London?
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- čas přidán 22. 07. 2024
- I'm sharing 8 old buildings in search of the oldest house in London. This is a bit more straightforward than my oldest pub episode (watch it here; • What's The Oldest Pub ... ) and the criteria is 1) when was it first built 2) how old is most of the building's fabric and 3) is it still a home today?
We talk about Walthamstow's Ancient House, 41-42 Cloth Fair, 52-55 Newington Terrace, Queen's House in the Tower of London, Sutton House in Hackney and more quirky places you may not have heard of before...
View them on a map: www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/vie...
For more information on some of the buildings, I have blog posts here;
Newington Green
lookup.london/52-55-newington...
Sutton House, Hackney
lookup.london/sutton-house-ha...
Bromley Hall
lookup.london/bromley-hall/
Walthamstow's Ancient House
lookup.london/walthamstow-anc...
For more info about walking tours and latest blogs, sign up here;
eepurl.com/ge-hfj
View the latest walking tour availability here;
lookup.london/walking-tours/
All images are either my own or available to reuse via creative commons license from wikimedia creative commons
My ancestors in central Norway have lived in the same house since about 1100, before Christianity had arrived there. I visited 5 years ago, its like a museum.
Wow!! 😮
Nonsense
Why didn’t you post a video on your channel than? 😮
Why didn’t you post a video on your channel then? 😮
@@tuckingfwit wrong. Denmark was the first country to convert in Ca 950. Norway converted later..
I grew up a short walk from the Ancient House in Walthamstow, and used to pass it on my walk to my piano lessons every sunday morning. I remember how it looked before its recent restoration, the roof was tilted to one side, and it really looked very ancient! Its nice that they restored it, as it plays an important part of the feel of the village
I grew up on Melbourne Road in Walthamstow and can remember the Ancient House, though I didn't know the name of it until now. Glad I watched this, I've just been taken back 30 years to old haunts.
Piano lessons with Mrs Sanger?
@@kcagnew4863 No, Mr Sukarloo on Merton Road
I lived in Cheam Village (became part of Greater London in the 60s) as a child and we were proud of our old building there, called Whitehall, built around 1500 and now a museum.
I've been! There's a blog on my website all about it here: lookup.london/whitehall-historic-house/
Watching the section on Walthamstow, I said "What about the Tower of London?" I didn't know that you were going to talk about it, but I love that the next thing that was said was about the Tower of London.
Your channel is made with such a love of history and of the city of London. It's a pleasure to watch.
I am an American, but I have heavy English ancestry, and London has always fascinated me. I love the architecture and am glad so much has survived. I love all of England! Thanks for the tour.
I would add the Dean of Westminster's house, which presumably dates back to the Founding of Westminster Abbey - it is still the Dean's private residence. There are also medieval homes off Dean's Yard hat are used as apartments by teachers at Westminster School - these are as old as the adjacent Abbey cloisters.
When you started I was surprised to realize that there are houses in the US almost as old as the first house you mention. In Ipswich, Massachusetts there are a lot of homes from the late 1600’s. I think the oldest may date to the 1660’s.
Thank you this was so interesting and you presented it fantastically, I'll certainly look for more.
Yeah interestingly because of the fire of London, there are way more houses far older than this in the rest of the country but not in London.
What a great host/guide/narrator you are lass! You make every effort to explain things! Excellent.
Thank you for a very nicely curated list! So good to see poor old Bromley Hall there. In the 90s, I had a chance to look around it & there's much more of the Tudor structure than you might think. Although the exterior details look largely 18th century, in fact the small, dark bricks of most of the walls are Tudor, as are the polygonal buttresses at the corners, which would likely originally have risen above the roofline of the original building. The two-storey projecting 'bump' on the left hand outside wall is actually the Tudor staircase oriel window, now bricked up & rendered over, but from inside, on an upper flight of the current staircase, you can open a hatch in the wainscot & shine a light down into the unlit internal void & spot the traces of the window mullions - it's extraordinary!
You can also get down into the cellars of the earliest part of the building - because of later changes in floor-level, it's only half height, so you can't stand, but I remember seeing what I imagine were 16th century earthenware tiles on the floor & the remains of a masonry staircase leading upstairs, but now truncated by the later floor above.
Internally, the house was relatively plain, though with spacious rooms & surprisingly little sense of the Blackwall Tunnel Approach outside the front door. There was a ground floor room with a fine ceiling of well moulded beams, which must have been a fairly high status space (this was before they uncovered the carved door frames). I think the existing details & staircase were Regency, though I have a vague recollection the top floor parts of the balustrade might have been 17th century.
There are also photos of the house in the early 20th century, some taken from the surviving walled garden at the back (now all concrete!), with the house emerging from lawns, flowers & trellised walls...... So sadly evocative!
Me thinks you nailed it with the roman hypocaust. What a delightful tour of as old as it gets in London.
If I ever make it back tothe UK and to London I would certainly seek you out as a tour guide!! Excellent knowledge and beautifully presented in clear and fluent English - as it should be! 😀 PS I have been a tour guide and a tour operator over many years myself!
Thank you! That's a lovely thing to say :)
I love this stuff. My ancestors skeedattled on out of there in 1635, but before that we had been there a few minutes. I know 15 generations back, our patriarch was Sir William Locke. He was knighted for a good deed and was in Henry VIII privy council. Think he may have had a stint as Sheriff of London too. 400 years before that another direct ancestor John Locke was also Sheriff of London.
I would cherish information about what William's life may have been like in Henry's trust. Rumor has it that he may also have been the CFA to the Boleyn family, soooooo.......probably why I am a poor woman living in a shack in VT USA. Hahahaha
Really makes me appreciate how devastating the Great Fire of London must have been!
Great video, thank you.
Your videos make me want to Visit London again after decades!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I’ve emigrated from London ro Vancouver, I used to enjoy telling everyone that my mums front door is older than this whole city.
I visited the house in the City of London and recognized it in your video! I would have loved to have seen the one built in the 1430's! I did visit the Tower of London a few weeks ago and was amazed by the servant's quarters, not knowing just HOW old they were. Very interesting video, I wish I had seen it before I left London last week!
Greetings from Auckland, New Zealand 🇳🇿 My parents emigrated to NZ after WW II in 1949.
There's nothing much in NZ older than 200 years! You dont know how it feels to be a European of Anglo-Saxon descent, living at the tail end of civilisation.... NO ancient history anywhere.
So far from home.
Even our indigenous Maori have only been here since the early Medieval period.
They built marae, but not of stone, so those early dwellings have not survived.
This is as close as I'll ever get to my ancestors! Thank you for your good work ❤❤❤❤❤❤
Very interesting to watch, Thank you.
I remember watching a Time Team special, when the did a big dig in London. I believe they showed that exact bath house.
And i don't remember it exactly, but they said the Vikings built their houses according to a specific width, twelve or thirteen metres.
Those houses are long gone. But their dimensions remains.
So, if you were to go to Viking area of London with a measuring tape and measure the width of the shops, you can still tell which building have a Viking footprint.
It's not exactly the same, but nevertheless so cool!
Great stuff .I was born in York .I always look at buildings . Fascinating. I lived in London for part of my life .in mid and late and early 70s .I loved the elegance of the buildings . And the history . Thanks for the journey with you . Most intriguing
Thanks David! So glad you enjoyed it, I visited York a few months ago and that is a fabulous City, couldn’t believe how many truly old buildings survive!
@@LookUpLondonI'm from Derbyshire got admit I haven't been to cities in the South of Britain for some Years always go North on the M1 .to York if I need my fix of history and other Northern Cities. Sorry.
Just stumbled across your video series and absolutely love it -- great subject matter and wonderfully presented, with a not-too-fast cadence and rather soothing voice that makes every video akin to a fireside chat. Definitely hooked :)
Absolutely fascinating video and subject matter. I’ve been bingeing your videos and they are excellent. Hope to see new videos soon and when I visit London next, I’ll definitely be booking a tour with you!
Just subscribed. I love your historical thoroughness. As an American with old family roots weaving in and out of London at various times, I relish your channel and the cozy content as we explore our collective past in old Londinium. 🙏
Fantastic information of old London houses.love your great video thankyou.
I really enjoyed this video
It’s so nice that you have taken so much time & research & came up with the oldest houses in London
If only the great fire of London had never of happened, would we actually be as proud of what remains today, if there was an abundance of these wonderful structures
It’s so sad that we choose to bulldoze historical artefacts & build new ugly homes
I live near Crewe in Cheshire & we had this 15 century inn & in the late 70’s it was taken down & people were protesting by climbing onto the roof of the building
Now it’s just a road to an ugly ASDA supermarket
I often look at pictures of it
Our heritage must be protected as importantly as books in the national archives
We need more conservation and education & let’s put a stop to this vandalism before we have nothing
We don’t all want to live with ugly plastic doors & windows
Our past was beautiful & build to last without using silicon & expanding foam
Thanks for this wonderful video
This is such a great video. Those old wooden houses are so atmospheric. I think that ugly office building should come down and we should rebuild the bathhouse!
Oh how great would that be for the bathhouse?!? Thanks Gary!
I just love the idea of actually living in the Tower of London. That's a winner for me! (Just fancy bringing your friends home to play after school to the Tower!!)
It’s great isn’t it? Chatting to the Yeoman Warders they said it’s hard to get a pizza delivered! 🤣
@@LookUpLondon oh my!!!
That was very interesting 🤔 to know about London. Thanks for sharing it. Looking forward to the next video 📹 😀
Thanks Thomas!
I would have said the Ancient House in Old Walthamstow . I worked for an approved contractor for the London Borough of Waltham Forest as a surveyor and specialised in vernacular building up to the 19th Century , the disastrous age of architecture that did so much damage to earlier buildings . Old Walthamstow itself has a wonderful timeline of buildings and worth a wander around before grabbing a beer and pie and mash at the market . There are a number of old riverside pubs and The George at Southwark that could be thrown in as points of interest but perhaps not as old as these taphouses still accommodate the publicans upstairs .
The pie and mash shop at Walthamstow market has closed and is now a sushi restaurant.
@@michaelbeswick9637
Thanks for the update , haven't been back for 15 + years !
Croydon can add "The Old Palace" which was a Summer residence for the Archbishops of Canterbury. Some parts are from the 9th century. The hall is from the 1400s. It is now a school.
How about the Whitgift Almshouses nearby? They date from 1596 and people still live in them.
Just two extra suggestions.
I loved watching this.
I love the UK. It has so much beautiful history and buildings.
Hi Katie, These are my real favourites among the videos you present, oldest, widest, longest, shortest, I love it!
I was aware of course of the house in Cloth Fair opposite St Bartholomew- the-Great church, and I still like to think of that as the oldest house in London, because Walthamstow would not really have been part of London at this time.
Incidentally the late Sir John Betjeman lived in the house next door to the one in question in Cloth Fair, a great appreciator of all that is old and quirky.
Appreciate you're point about the location of London at the time, think that's why the confusion arises so often, people choosing as and when to use 'City' versus 'London' and yes very familiar with Cloth Fair and the Betjamen Plaque, we visit on my Guts and Glory Smithfield tour! A hero!
I am so thrilled to have come across your channel.
The remants of the private Roman bathhouse was a great entry indeed! Well done!
Many thanks for this, I enjoyed it enormously.
Instant subscribe! I nearly lived in the Walthamstow Old House - a flat was available to rent just when I was looking and I went for a viewing. Sadly the flat was too small for us but I was soooooo tempted! It's a superstar building. (I've also stayed next door to the Cloth Fair house; as you probably know there are two Landmark Trust rentals on that street, one once lived in by John Betjeman.)
Just found your site. Looking forward to many, many more.👍
Well done. Thanks for posting
The rich history of England is incredible,Im a wood worker and love ole school talent ,only to be that talented!
I really enjoyed your video!! Here in Massachusetts in the US we have 17th & 18th century buildings are considered "so old" but, that's relatively speaking of course!! Although, there is a very old church in Fitchburg that does have the symbol of the rose on one of it's oldest walls....???? History is fascinating!!! Now I'm going to watch another of your videos!!
Very nicely done!
Wonderful video ❤️❤️❤️ I often make similar questions everywhere 😂 love it 🥰🥰
Old Wyldes farmhouse, built in 1590, is still inhabited today. It’s a stones throw from the Bull & Bush pub on the borders of the boroughs of Camden and Barnet. The best view of the farmhouse is not from the road but from the lane behind it which backs onto Hampstead Heath. There is a blue plaque to William Blake who lived there. Charles Dickens and many other interesting people stayed there. Bill Sykes while on the run in Oliver Twist slept in a hedge on its farmland (which is today the Hampstead Heath Extension).
Wonderful, to get a different slant on a tour of London!
One of my favourite themes is old/interesting shops and shop fronts. This would make a great video.
Ooh that's so true, will add it to my list!
Excellent video as always, Katie!
Thanks Rhys! Hope all's well and lovely to see you out guiding again in Windsor/Tower etc!
I visited Delft and was amazed as to how many buildings were built in the 1600’s.
You’re amazing and your channel is great .. ✌🏻
Thank you Katy. I hope one day to take one of your tours.
Enjoy this very much thank you
Very interesting & a great voice for narration.
Loved this video. Many years ago (early 1960s) I lived in a bed-sit on Colebrook Row in Islington; "only" 18th-century (I think) but it felt very historic! Creaky floorboards and all. Overlooked a skinny park created above the enclosed little river or brook. (Now, there's a theme: relics of London's lost waterways.) Anyway, very interested in the remnants of old buildings. Passed by the old buildings in Holborn with the Elizabethan facades.
I am guessing that if you take in current London urban area there are a lot of old buildings, or at least buildings with old sections. I will look up your video on old inns, since I suspect these are some of the oldest buiildings. Do they count as houses, as the innkeeper and family at least must have lived on the premises? In former centuries a lot of tradespeople or small-business owners undoubtedly lived "above the shop."
Re audio quality: I am a bit deaf, so at first rather feared not being able to enjoy the video, but I just switched on the closed-captioning. Thank you so much for very good captions, much better than most; I detect a human presence, not just a computer program guessing at words not in its databank!
Lovely comment.
Excellent discussion and history…thank you! 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏😊😉👍👍
WoW! Loved your video. I'm hooked!!! 👍🏻
Loved the look of the last one you showed. I have alot of English in me, very much a Anglophile
Great video! Thanks for sharing :)
Your a very well spoken and beautiful presenter.
Fascinating. Thank you
Absolutely loved this.
Very,very,enjoyable vid.
Thanks.
Welldone. Really enjoyed this video 🎉
Great job! Love from the 🇺🇸.
You have a really nice accent and soft voice with just a little scratch to it. Very Very Nice.
I being a Londoner (Born in St. Pancras, NOT THE RAILWAY STATION!) have not lived there since 1977. My father worked at The Royal Exchange and so Threadneedle Street and Cornhill were second home to me. We lived in North Finchley. There is a fascinating row of houses on Lodge Lane (My first job was at the Torrington Arms No.4 Lodge Lane) that whilst not that old were some of the earliest dwellings in the area. My Mother worked for the Library Service, we used to visit a house possibly in Enfield Chase or close to High Barnet of supposedly incredible age IE. pre-Doomsday Book. Sorry nearly 50 years ago. I do remember that when we were going there I used to take marbles with me as you could roll them on the floor and they may do circles or S shapes even squares before ending up in the middle of the floor.
Perhaps the Tower should be called the Town of London! I was amazed when I visited a couple of years ago, what a variety of buildings it holds.
Have you done a series on the remnants of old Palaces, like the Gate House to Richmond Palace which is still to be found on The Green or indeed No.1 The Green, Both dating back to pre-Anne Boleyn days. (edit) I see British Listed Buildings records this building as a C17 structure, with C19 gable dormers. However I wonder if anyone has carried out dating of the timbers. Also the listing advises the building as two storey. In fact it is a four storey Building, and understood to have been once an Inn in centuries past. Heeps of character and a story to be told.
Cheneygates in Westminster Abbey: still used as accommodation, was home to the Abbot of Wesrminster, was for a time lived in by Elizabeth Wydeville, wife of Edward IV, and birthplace of Edward V, one of the "princes in the tower".
I've been researching my family tree and discovered that we used to own Callis Court and the surrounding farmland. It was built in the 15th Century, it's still intact today in completely original condition and is still a family home.
If anyone is interested in more on the history of London, the Rivers of London book series features several of these places. (Kind of like a grown up Harry Potter but with policemen. I love it.)
When I saw the title of this I instantly thought of the Terraced Houses on Newington Green. I went to school at Newington Green Primary and the oldest part of the school is the tall building directly opposite and it was very haunted, you could hear children screaming in the stairwell leading up to the disused top classroom!
But I was wondering if you know any details of Cromwell Lodge just along from the school entrance. It's clearly a 19th century house, but we were always told that the house bearing he name was just a gatekeeper's house to the larger building to the side on the corner of Mildmay Road and Newington Green, (the actual Lodge) which is clearly older. The green used to be part of the King's Forest and that Henry VIII hunted and used the lodge building during hunts. Again as I was told Cromwell acquired it and changed the name and it became known as Cromwell's Lodge and still is to this day.
And just one thing, your videos are a little quiet compared to any others I watch, it's always noticeable when they play between others.
Cheers
Nic
Oh man, that haunted school building sounds terrifying! I'm not overly familliar with Cromwell Lodge but there's a little bit of info in the Newington Green Conservation Area Document here; democracy.islington.gov.uk/Data/Executive/201403061930/Agenda/E1%20Newington%20Green%20SPD%20Appendix%201%20-%20CA%20Statement%20SPD.pdf
They confirm the Lodge is 19th century but next door's buildings may have been part of the Tudor Bishop's Place.
Oh, sorry about the sound! Is that even with full volume? I've just moved house so each video is a bit of a game to find the best light/sounds spots until I get settled!
@@LookUpLondon Hey, the sound thing has been with the last couple of videos (since I found your channel having followed you on TikTok for months) comparable to any other channel it is at half volume, if I turn your videos up it's fine, a bit hissy but just noticably quiet. I really only mention this because people always say get the sound right, viewers are more critical of sound rather than vision and I thought I'd just point this out save you loosing viewers. Maybe try a Lav Mic they are really cheap on amazon and are perfect for your setup.
😊
@@londoncreative will do! Thanks for the advice!
IN Delft in the Netherlands they discovered a part of a house of the 1200's incorperated in a later build house, but the oldest house is from 1500. We had a big city fire in 1536
I live in Sidcup and there is a house on Halfway Street that was built circa 1400
Very interesting video, so thanks!
Have another 'like'.....😀
So many anomalies yet very interesting
Very nice video.
This is so awesome and I also love the name look up London very cool I was also wondering do they still have squatters rights in London and how does that work out thanks again for puttingThis up on CZcams have a good day
It’s great how they preserved the Roman bath when they built the office building. I bet in a lot of places in the old Roman Empire a builder would just tear it out without saying anything.
Excellent
I went to parties at Saturn house in Hackney when it Was squatted, Google the Hackney hell crew one of the wildest load of punks you ever met , I remember motor bikes being ridden round the inside and mad music . Fun times .
Extremely interesting Katie. With regard to Sutton House - many NT properties have living quarters for the administrator. Could this be the case for Sutton House, if so it is still lived in ! (Although still not the oldest)
Thanks Nick! Ooh love that tip, maybe! I only visited a few years back so would have to double check
What about Valence House in Barking/Dagenham? I took my late mum there a few years before she passed away, as she remembered it from her childhood in the area. The estate at least dates back to the 1200s.
Hi Katie on my travels I do know is a lot of old buildings maybe not as old that it that are in your video but still quite old like from the 1800 or 17
Thanks, that was very nice to see. As a related fun fact you could also ask - what is London's oldest human made structure? Cleopatra's needle on the Embankment :) Adam in Melbourne - Missing London
Thank you so much for your knowledge, and such an interesting video. Would you consider recording at a higher volume? One can barely hear you at the highest volume. Thanks so much 💮
Cool!!
great video. im wondering if you have any information on an old pub i used to drink in. it was in the town of Enfield north london, right next to the train station, called the Enfield Arms if i remember correctly. i was seriously shocked to hear it got torn down about 13 ish years ago now. just to put a slip road where it was. how is this allowed to happen? the building was seriously old, a timber frame build like the old ones you show in this video. i would have thought it would have been listed or protected? its absolutely disgusting anyone is allowed to destroy old buildings like this for any reason. if you have any information on it id love to hear it. thanks!
Nice video
The house on Laurence Pountney hill has a wall that has been positively identified as Roman, making that house at least partially I think the oldest house in the City.
What a cute bloody video!
Katie you should see the state of my flat in Kilburn, it is almost medieval :(
Haha! I'll send National Trust round!
Depends where you put the borders. In Central London, Simpsons in the Strand survived the great fire 1n 1665 and still exists. Anyone got a better claim ?
London is my favourite city and lots of my family are from there! Just a quick question - I’m a wheelchair user, and just wondered, how wheelchair friendly are your tours?
Hello! Most of the public tours can be adapted for a wheelchair user, if you just let me know in advance I can reorganise the route.
The best ones in terms of access are; City: Power and Sacrifice / Guts & Glory / Kings Cross / Bermondsey but the full list is here; lookup.london/walking-tours/ and do drop me an email with any other questions! Katie
Number Six Queen's House has my vote.
What about Lambeth Palace, London Home to the Archbishop of Canterbury, built in the 13th century, across the river from the Houses of Parliament.
Does Crosby Hall / Crosby Moran Hall in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea count? It’s not in situ, having been moved from Bishopsgate. According to Wikipedia parts of it date to 1466.
Wish I was there.
Katie, do you have a Google Map with points of interest that you mention in your videos? I'm not able to come to London but I would love to be able to more accurately identify the locations of some of these wonderful places you take us. (I'm a bit of a map nerd 😜, and I live in Canada, so I'm not familiar with the boroughs and suburbs of London)
She names at least 6 of them in the description under the video. Just do a Google search of each address/place name and it will have a link to a map with the location pinpointed.
@@Sgirl yes, the problem is that as I'm not familiar with the accent or the locations, I can't find some of the places because I can't spell them (finally figured out that Walthamstow is not spelled Wolfhamstone or anything like it). Maybe if she could put location notes in the comments, I could certainly (and happily) look them up myself.
@@lynnesullivan49 Yes, what I was trying to explain is that there's a description under the video where it's written out. Right under the video screen to the far right there's a "^". Click on it and there's a listing of many (not all though) of the places. It's a start 🤗
Hi Lynne, I was thinking of doing that actually so have put a map together here; www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1SVg5hSV0uEBZFVQYcpl9ZI0Jf99zBD63
Hope it helps!
Katie
@@Sgirl Have put one together now so it's all in one place :) www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?mid=1SVg5hSV0uEBZFVQYcpl9ZI0Jf99zBD63
Fleet St near Temple Bar?
Incredible how the oldest houses in London are actually so recent. The oldest is from 1400? That’s day before yesterday in historical terms. Go to Italy and you’ll find tons of houses that are way older than that, some stretching back to 2000 years ago if not older.
The same is true of Malta. My house is 500 years old. There are many like it.
@mrmaxemme Agree, but no one can help where they were born, or what country.
I love ancient history, and yet I live in New Zealand. Our oldest stone building is just over 200 years old.
That's it.
I'm glad that you appreciate Italy's built heritage, I loved my time there for the same reason.
But if you want modern, come down here!
There's nothing else 😂
This would be worth re-recording when you’re over your chest / throat infection, as it’s really interesting but the fading voice problems were distracting. Would genuinely love to see more like this from you though (when well enough). The Cathedral City of Wells in Somerset is a wonderful place to visit for anyone interested in old houses, it is packed with medieval houses, many with later Georgian facades, and even has the oldest complete medieval street in Europe (Vicar’s Close, dating to 1348).
My natural voice is fairly husky so I can't do too much about it but I accept the mic/sounds isn't the best either! Wells looks so beautiful, I have actually bee before (ironically to sing in the Cathedral way back in my youth!!) but I should revisit as well :)