Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Bankside's theater scene vanished in the 1640s, closed by a Parliament dominated
by hard-line Puritans. Drama seemed to portray and promote immoral behavior, and act-
ors—men who also played women's roles—parodied and besmirched fair womanhood.
Bearbaiting was also outlawed by the outraged moralists (to paraphrase the historian Tho-
mas Macaulay)—not because it caused bears pain, but because it gave people pleasure.
View of the Thames
From the Cotswolds to the North Sea, the river winds eastward a total of 210 miles. Lon-
don is close enough to the estuary to be affected by the North Sea's tides, so the river level
does indeed rise and fall twice a day. In fact, one of the reasons Romans found this a prac-
tical location—even though it was about 40 miles inland—was that their boats could hitch
a free ride with the tides between the sea and the town twice a day. But tides also mean
floods. After centuries of periodic flooding (spring rains plus high tides), barriers to reg-
ulate the tides were built in 1982, east of Tower Bridge. The barriers also slow down the
once fast-moving river.
The Thames is still a major commercial artery (east of Tower Bridge). In the previous
two centuries, it ran brown with Industrial Revolution pollution. Today it's brown because
of estuary silt—the Thames is now one of the cleanest rivers in the industrialized world.
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Fifty yards west of the Globe, spanning the river, is the...
