London, England : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about London. You may be able to find further references to London in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
London capital of England and the principal town of the British Empire Bartholomew
LONDON the metropolis of England Imperial

This additional information from our descriptive gazetteers is for locations within the parish or parishes associated with London.

Place Type of entry Source
CHRISTCHURCH-NEWGATE-STREET a parish Imperial
Whitefriars' Precinct parish Bartholomew

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. We treat London as a special case because it was constantly mentioned by travellers wherever they were. For example, James Boswell mentions London in every single chapter of his tour of Highland Scotland. Conversely, detailed descriptions of the metropolis seldom mention "London", only districts within the city. These links take you to the beginnings of detailed descriptions of London.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Paul Hentzner Arrival and London 6
William Adams London in the Fifties 1
Henry Broadhurst In Journeyings Often 1
William Camden Middlesex and London 1
Daniel Defoe Letter 5 (London), Part 1: Overview and Suburbs 1
Celia Fiennes London, part 1 1
Robert Gammage Becoming a Chartist speaker, and first leaving Northampton in 1840 1
Karl Moritz Chapter 2: Entering London 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Moorfields 9 1
Cripplegate 3 0
Billingsgate 3 0
Aldersgate 3 1
Bishopsgate 3 1
Newgate 2 0
Glasshouse Yard 0 2
Charter House 0 1
Smithfield 4 0
Aldgate 4 2
Finsbury 1 2
Spitalfields 13 5
St Luke 0 3
Inner Temple 1 1
Norton Folgate 0 2
Clerkenwell 2 2
Tower of London 0 6
Saffron Hill 1 2
Borough 0 2
Furnivals Inn 1 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for London. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
CAERLUNDA Paul Hentzner Travels in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Cassell, 1892).
CAIER LUD Paul Hentzner Travels in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Cassell, 1892).
LONDON John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).
LONDRES Paul Hentzner Travels in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Cassell, 1892).
TRINOVANT Paul Hentzner Travels in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Cassell, 1892).
TROJA NOVA Paul Hentzner Travels in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (London: Cassell, 1892).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.