Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Narrow Lanes—1700s London
“Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must
...
survey the
innumerable little lanes and courts,” said the writer Samuel Johnson in 1763 to his young
friend and biographer, James Boswell. These twisting alleyways and cramped buildings
that house urban hobbits give a faint glimpse of rebuilt 1700s London, a crowded city of
half a million people. After the Great Fire, London was resurrected in brick and stone in-
stead of wood, but they stuck to the same medieval street plan, resulting in narrow lanes
of brick buildings like these.
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The narrow lanes eventually spill out onto Gough Square, about a block north of Fleet
Street, where you'll find...
Dr. Johnson's House (17 Gough Square)
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” wrote Samuel Johnson, “for there is in
London all that life can afford.” Johnson (1709-1784) loved to wander these twisting lanes,
looking for pungent slices of London street life that he could pass along in his weekly
columns called “The Rambler” and “The Idler.”
