Report, Improvements and town planning committee to the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor : aldermen and commons of the city of London, in Common council assembled, on the preliminary draft proposals for post-war reconstruction in the city of London.

  • City of London (England). Court of Common Council.
Date:
1944
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report, Improvements and town planning committee to the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor : aldermen and commons of the city of London, in Common council assembled, on the preliminary draft proposals for post-war reconstruction in the city of London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ( It ] to watch that the rules were observed. The Commissioners of Sewers were constituted and continued to carry out a wide range of duties for the health, cleanliness and improvement of the City for over 230 years before being merged into the Corporation as the present-day Public Health Department. Under legislation in the 18th century they introduced the numbering of houses, the erection of street names, and the lighting of streets; further powers for the widening of streets were also obtained and dangerous structures brought under control. During the century, the City saw the completion of the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Cathedral and of many churches, as well as the erection of the Mansion House. In the 19th century, the Corporation pursued a long and vigorous programme of major improvements within the City (apart from its many other works), sometimes by special Acts of Parliament (see Plate C). Perhaps the most spectacular was the Holborn Valley Improvement (which consisted principally in building Holborn Viaduct as the first “‘ fly-over ” junction and the development of the adjoining lands, including Smithfield, under the advice of the Engineer to the Commissioners of Sewers, Colonel W. Haywood), and the rebuilding of Smithfield Market with direct connections to the main-line railways. The erection of Tower Bridge, rebuilding of Blackfriars and London Bridges, the con- struction of King William Street, Cannon Street, Queen Victoria Street and the eastern end of the Victoria Embankment (the last two in conjunction with the Metropolitan Board of Works) are other improvements from a long list which punctuated the progress of the — last century. The same policy has since been continued. The outbreak of war prevented us from pursuing investigations which, we anticipated, would have led us to recommend the Court of Common Council to undertake new and substantial proposals mainly arising out of the Greater London Highway Development Survey, 1937. Subsequent events have given rise to this present Report and opportunities now exist for a further vigorous programme of improve- ments which overshadows anything we had previously contemplated as a whole, although the area of devastation is neither so great nor so concentrated as it was in 1666 (see Plate A). May it be possible, after the reconstruction of the City as outlined in the following pages to write in terms corresponding to those used by John Woodward, M.D., Gresham Lecturer in Physic, in 1707 in a letter§ congratulating Wren on the part he had played in the rebuilding : i . however disastrous it (the fire) might be to the then inhabitants, had prov 'd ‘infinitely beneficial to their Posterity ; conducing vastly to the Improvement and Increase, as well of the Riches and Opulency, as of the Splendour of this City. Then, which I and every Body must observe with great Satisfaction, by means of the Inlargements of the Streets ; of the great Plenty of good Water, convey’d to all Parts; of the common Sewers, and other like Contrivances, such Provision is made for a free Access and Passage of the Air, for Sweetness, for Cleanness, and for Salubrity, that it is not only the finest, but the most healthy City in the World.” § « A letter to Sr. Christopher Wren, Knt., Occasion’d by some Antiquities lately discover’d near Bishops- Gate, London,” written 1707, published 1713. As quoted by T. F. Reddaway.