Under the Underground

Peter Ackroyd's London Under is a study of underground London, its original springs & streams, Roman amphitheatres, Victorian sewers, gang hideouts and modern tube stations.
In extending the Underground Rail system, engineers have found a 12th century quay, an Iron Age settlement, a 13th century gatehouse, a 900-year-old Cistercian monastery, sites which have been hidden for thousands of years.
As a long established city, there's heaps of history piled layer upon layer beneath London - the bodies, the buried rivers, the sewers all preserved in mud and clay.



While the book is a history, Peter also tells the stories that parallel this history - there are 44 'dead stations' abandoned by the Tube ; 'Toshers' the scavengers who prowled the sewers looking for item to sell ; the folly of the Thames Tunnel.
The book is only a slim 182 pages, and could have benefited from some colour photographs, but it is already popular with local borrowers already placing Holds on our copy.