We were on the south side of the Thames and looking across he river we could see St Paul’s Cathedral beneath a darkening sky. There is a huge amount of building going on the north side of the Thames, and the crane on the right of the picture is only one of many.
We saw an exhibition about the Great Fire of London in 1666 which destroyed so much of that part of the city, including the old St Paul’s and I couldn’t help but think that three hundred and fifty years ago there would have been a similar frenzy of building after the calamity, including the cathedral we see today. Of course there wouldn’t have been the massive cranes and the machinery we have now but for the time there would have been just as much skill, craft and innovation in the rebuilding of the city.
Seventy-five years ago in 1940, the city north of the Thames was ablaze again during the Blitz when the German Luftwaffe bombed the London. It was the night of December 29th, the 114th night of the Blitz, when all the area surrounding St Paul’s was destroyed and set on fire by the bombs. Just imagine what it would have been like at the time, night after night of death raining down from the sky, throughout the autumn, and winter of 1940 and the spring of 1941, from September 7th until May 10th, including a period of 57 consecutive nights of bombing. By some miracle the cathedral escaped this time, but it wasn’t until after the war that rebuilding was able to begin… and once again, looking across the Thames from the south bank, the city skyline would have been full of cranes.
Lois Elsden 