This Is London - From Dawn Till Night [antikvár]

EARLY MORNING CREEPING DOWN THE THAMES Estuary breaks along the Essex marshes, over the Kentish heights and advances steadily upon London. Upstream, with the wind north-easterly and riding on the tide, the coaster and merchant ships bring in their cargoes of pit-props, molasses and bakelite trays. For the river is London's oldest and most majestic gateway. Nearly equi-distant from the main marketing centres of Norfolk, the Upper Trent Valley, the Cotswolds and Dorset, no trace of an outer wall nor broad circular street warns the traveller (as he passes a thousand similar villas) that he is about to enter a great and dirty city. There is no wall or street, gateway or arch, to mark the place where the ignoble becomes noble, where suburban impertinence changes to accumulated permanence. But for the sea-traveller it is different. The river banks stir with memories. Here the Romans came in their wooden boats sailing past the long desolate stretches to their station at the mouth, Reculverand later submerged. Here at Tilbury oars dipped in rhythm and courtiers lying back, their hands trailing in the clair pellucid waters, remembered momentarily the Spanish Armada and turned their thoughts once more to love: 'Sweet Thames! run softly, till I end my song'. Here a century ago adventurers brought back their spoils from the Orient while mud-larks scavenged on the flats at low-tide for coal, selling it at less than a farthing a pound. For the waterfront had altered: the buildings had become less interspersed with green: the meadows had turned to factories. The street-ends with their water-steps had grown closer: the gaps between them had narrowed : the wharves had become one vast linking brickwork. For the Thames made London, and London grew with the centuries to being England's largest market city because it was also the port of the Thames.