The City is London's main financial and business area, also known as 'the square mile', bordered by Temple and Holborn bars (two of the old City of London gates) on the west, Aldgate and Tower Hill on the east and Smithfield and Moorfields on the north. The River Thames forms the southern boundary.

The area represents London's lost 'downtown', where the commercial city began, at the lowest point the Thames could be forded and then bridged and where the first urban settlement sprang up. As a result of the Fire of London in 1666 and subsequent waves of development, it has lost much of its cosy feel. As the poet or would-be poet of city walks around the present-day City of London, he or she may be lucky enough to find small relicts of nature: bosky gardens, urban groves and orchards – indicators of a city in balance with itself.






photographs © Susan Grindley Finn
poems © the individual poets
text and poetry essay concept © Sally Crawford
historical data garnered on Poets of London Poetry Walks

Books on the history of London include the following:
Ackroyd, Peter. 2001. London: The Biography. London: Vintage; Fallon, Steve. 2003. Lonely Planet London. Footscray, Vic.: Lonely Planet Publications; Inwood, Stephen. 1998. A History of London (Foreword Roy Porter). London and Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan; Porter, Roy. 1994. London: A Social History. Harmondsworth: Penguin/Hamish Hamilton; Stow, John. 1994 [1598}. A Survey of London (Introduction Antonia Fraser). Dover, NH: Alan Sutton Publishing; Weinreb, Ben and Hibbert, Christopher (eds). 1883. The London Encyclopaedia. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan – now Palgrave Macmillan; White, Andrew (ed.). 2001. Time Out Book of London Walks, vol. 2. Harmondsworth: Penguin.