The Survey of London

In 1598, a retired tailor with an obsessive love for his native city sat down to document London before it disappeared. John Stow spent decades compiling everything he knew: the names of every ward, the customs of every alley, the bones of ancient churches swallowed by new buildings. What he produced was the first urban survey ever published, a work so meticulous and passionate that it remains indispensable four centuries later. Stow captured London at a pivotal moment, on the eve of rapid transformation. We see the city as he knew it: the maze of streets where Shakespeare walked, the guildhalls where power brokered, the suburbs spreading beyond medieval walls. This is not dry antiquarianism. It is a living portrait painted by someone who understood that cities, like bodies, forget themselves. And Stow was right to worry. Within decades, the Great Plague and Great Fire would remake London entirely. What survives is largely what Stow preserved.