Review by Liz Dexter
“Having been lost in the Great Fire and again to the Blitz, Christ Church has now arguably been lost again, figuratively, to London’s neoliberal appetites.”(p. 35)
This superbly crafted book manages to incorporate a history of London through twenty-five themes, arranged chronologically, as well as wonderful details about the lost buildings it describes. After a Preface which introduces Knox’s method, seeing buildings in the context of phases of growth and change, and informed by archival and field work but also his involvement with designers, builders and groups, he expands on this idea, discussing how “the see-sawing of capital from one set of opportunities to another” (p. 2) leads to buildings being taken down and new ones being put up, or buildings changing use and eventually disappearing, through patterns of consumption and planning. He draws out other common factors in destruction – disaster, war – including, of course, the Great Fire of London which gave a tabula rasa to start again. This short history of planning and regeneration covers the major movements, including social ones, that have affected London, and introduce our buildings, some major, some “ordinary”, and then we’re into the twenty-five main chapters.
We start with Christ Church, Greyfriars, and although this was built in 1704 and destroyed in 1940, which led me to be a bit confused about the timeline of the book, Knox talks in this chapter about the backstory to the building that goes back to mediaeval and earlier history and includes notes on the role of the church and the beginning of the debate on historic preservation, which is a theme that’s woven through the whole of the book. There’s also a note at the end of the chapter explaining that the remaining church tower, designed by Christopher Wren, was approved for conversion to residential use and opened in 2018 as a multi-million pound private residence (hence the quotation above).
Knox then moves through themes such as the history of hospitals in the capital, via Old St Thomas’s Hospital, Southwark; the formulation of office accommodation via East India House, Leadenhall; the role and home of lawyers via Clifford’s Inn, Holborn; gentlemen’s clubs via the Army and Navy Club, St James’s; pubs and local high streets via The White Horse, Poplar; futures markets via the Baltic Exchange in the City; cafes via a wonderful chapter on Lyons Corner House on the Strand and roadhouses via the Ace of Spades, Surbiton; ending up with social housing via Burtonwood House, Hackney; always moving generally chronologically.
This means that we go through history time and again but through different lenses, not repeating anything but growing our knowledge in depth and breadth: it’s a very effective and different way of looking at London’s social, political and architectural history. Empire is covered briefly, mainly in the description of East India House, where Knox mentioned that there’s nothing to mark this company, “perhaps because of contemporary attitudes to colonialism and empire” (p. 51; he does exhibit these attitudes when discussing slave-owning, etc., it’s just not a focus of the book, and there are other books to be written on that, where this is just one twenty-fifth of the volume).
There are some lovely details and touches in the book, which is obviously painstakingly researched: did you know that the construction of the original Crystal Palace trapped a small population of birds, to remove which sparrowhawks had to be procured (“historical accounts are silent on what happened to the hawks when their work was done” (p. 152))? Or about the Necropolis Railway taking bodies to be buried outside the city, which included a branch line to take mourners and bodies to different chapels? The theme of the development of conservation organisations pops up throughout, with some buildings saved for a while and others not, and the Epilogue bringing together the theme of conservation and preservation, tackling the questions of fashions and “values” of buildings and discussing listing. Knox summarises everything beautifully, pulling together the themes and the main buildings featured. My only small argument with this outstanding book is that Knox is not keen on Brutalism, a favourite style of mine, but we can’t all love everything and he keeps to just one comment on the Home Office building that replaced Queen Anne’s Mansions in Westminster.
The hardback version of the book is a thing of beauty in itself, printed on heavy paper with a sewn binding and with many lovely clear illustrations, several for each chapter. There are numbered notes with their page headers describing the pages they belong to (so useful!) and a select bibliography, list of illustrations and index. This will be one of my books of the year and I urge you to buy it for yourself or as a gift for anyone interested in London and/or social, political and architectural history.
Liz Dexter lived in London for the requisite eight or so years and retains an interest in its buildings, lost and otherwise. She blogs about reading, running and working from home at https://www.librofulltime.wordpress.com.
Paul Knox, Lost London: From Crystal Palace to Heston Airport, a History in 25 Missing Buildings (Yale University Press, 2026) 978-0300282085, 403 pp., maps, ill.
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