One Mile Square

Registered: 27th January 1964
Duration: 25 minutes
Feet: 2250 feet
Board of Trade Certificate number: BR/E29176
Produced for: United Artists
Production Company: Harold Baim Productions Limited

Title and Credits:

One Mile Square

The story was told by: Valentine Dyall
Director of Eastmancolor Photography: Eric Owen
Assistants:   Jack Bellamy, David Drinkwater
Produced by: Harold Baim

SCRIPT

It’s one mile square, with its strange-sounding street names some of which indicate the trades that were carried on there. It’s a square mile, the history of which is lost in antiquity.     

One square mile, it’s the City of London, within which is a strange pulsation and a sense of today and yesterday inextricably intertwined.     

Each day from the main lines and subways, countless thousands stream in.     

The City. The home of the Bank of England designed in seventeen thirty four. Reconstruction began in nineteen twenty five and it was completed in nineteen thirty eight and covers nearly three acres. It’s one of the greatest building events in the last hundred years.     

They pour in from everywhere, to work in the buildings of the new city which has risen from the old. From the greater London area and beyond, the daily influx takes place. It could be said that if London continued to expand at the same rate as New York during the last thirty years, London would be pushed into the sea.     

The offices of every national and international banking house are here.     

Here is Lloyds of London, one of the greatest insurance houses in the world.     

And at the Stock Exchange, dealings in the shares of world’s commodities are the order of the day.    

It’s hardly believable that Billingsgate Fish Market, the oldest in London, dates from the ninth century. The fish, of course, is not so old. The existing building was erected almost ninety years ago.     

They sing ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ and judging by the people and traffic that moves over it, maybe the song could come true.     

And after the fish course, what else but meat? The market at Smithfield was designed by the man who originated Billingsgate. He must have been a very food-conscious individual.     

The City is a metropolis within a metropolis, and a separate entity with a tradition of its own. If ever the phrase, the old and the new standing side by side meant anything, surely it must be more true of the City of London than anywhere else in the world? Rather sadly, the old is being obliterated by the new buildings and wide thoroughfares which every month become more evident.     

We still have Aldgate Street, Throgmorton Street, Chancery Lane, Ludgate Circus crowned by St. Paul’s.     

Fleet Street, home of newspapers and journalists, where work goes on all night so that you and I may read world news over our breakfast tables.    

Cornhill, where the roadway collapsed in nineteen twenty seven. Bishopsate was once called Bishopsgate Within and Bishopsgate Without, the city walls divided it into two.     

Traffic problems in the City are serious indeed, but in eighteen hundred and thirty one it was much worse, and that’s true. I wonder if they’ll think the same in two thousand and thirty one?    

That’s the ticket! We have one way of dealing with the problem today, unpalatable though it is.     

They poured in, now at lunchtime they pour out for the midday editions. Those who don’t want the written word can on Tower Hill have the spoken one instead.     

Drinks and lunch can be taken at inns whose names are world-famous and where the famous of hundreds of years gone by were able to do the same thing.     

On a summer’s day in the gardens of St. Paul’s, lunchtime can be sandwiches and a guards’ band to entertain.     

And there’s always another side to any big city.    

The uniforms of the City Police differ considerably from that of the rest of the London police. The Metropolitan Police, apart from helmet and buttons, wear a blue armlet. Those of the City wear an armlet which is red, with other distinctive features of helmet and uniform.     

Police cadets are given point duty instruction. Watching points on point duty in the City with its intricate intersections is a mansize job needing patience, calmness and extreme concentration.     

The women police in the square mile are the acme of smartness. They need a great deal of tact for their job is extremely specialised. Apart from that, they make excellent partners at police force dances.     

Whilst watching a typical piece of police co-ordination, let me tell you something of their remarkable history.     

They go back to the time of the Norman Conquest and probably to the sixth century, when the responsibility for keeping the king’s peace was the duty of the local inhabitants.     

In twelve eighty five, watch had to be kept in all cities and towns. Two constables being chosen for every hundred inhabitants.     

The centuries passed and various other laws and statutes were made.     

In eighteen twenty nine, Sir Robert Peel tried without success, to integrate the City Police with the Metropolitan Police and since that time other efforts have been made to amalgamate the two, but all have been unsuccessful. Today, still a single entity, the City of London Police has its own Commissioner and is divided into headquarters and three divisions with a strength of almost a thousand.     

Each man handpicked and keen on the career he has chosen for himself.     

Our suspect may well go to The Old Bailey. Built at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds the building is a hundred and ninety five feet high and within is the Central Criminal Court.     

He may well need help from The Temple, the most famous of England’s Queen’s Counsel have their chambers and where Dr. Johnson had his rooms and where was born Charles Lamb.     

Temple Church dates from eleven eighty five. The whole of the area is one of surprises that only London can reveal in the turmoil of a city. 

Not far away is The Law Society, a which speaks for itself.     

Which came first, the Bank of China or the London stone? No-one knows where the stone came from, but we do know it has existed since the time of the Saxons. Mitres mark the place where the bishop’s gate once stood, hence Bishopsgate.     

A pump marks the site of Oldgate. There was Ludgate and many others in the medieval walls of London.     

Churches still bear their ancient names which mark them as being within or without the walls of the city. When the gates were closed at night, latecomers camped outside the walls close to the churches which were in range of the arrows of the bowmen stationed on the walls for guard and protection.     

A monument commemorates the Great Fire of London.     

The city has lived thorough conquest plague and pestilence. And again in nineteen forty one.     

Pointing an accusing finger at the sky, stands the gaunt tower of a church in Roman Watling Street. And so disappeared many many treasures of the past and a new city was born. A city which would have made the peasants of feudal times rub their eyes at this strange transformation.    

Bombs took their final toll of some of the city’s most famous buildings which were part of Britain’s ancient heritage. But even as they build the new semi-sky scrapers, the old is jealously guarded and carefully preserved for future generations.    

Tower Bridge still spans the River Thames as it has done for close on seventy years. This famous landmark is eight hundred and eighty feet long and the main towers are a hundred and twenty feet high.     

Not far from Tower Bridge, at the south side of Trinity Square, is the colonnaded memorial erected in the memory of merchant seamen and sailors who fell in the two world wars.     

And the macabre plaque to show what happened here years ago.     

Near to the Tower Bridge is the Royal Mint, home of the manufacture of British coinage.     

Many of the inns of the city have been spared to us. At Grays Inn is a statue to Francis Bacon who wrote…or did he?    

Staple Inn off Holborn is a retreat which one would never dream existed right in the middle of  one of London’s main east to west arteries.    

Carthusian monks founded Charterhouse in thirteen seventy one and it was named after their monastery. The famous public school started here in sixteen eleven. They moved out in eighteen seventy two and Merchant Taylors School moved in. They too have now gone, leaving Charterhouse with its memories.     

The clocks of the city are many and magnificent.     

The clock at St Mary’s at Hill.    

A squirrel decorates this timepiece.     

Many of the windows are unique. The windows of Prince Henry’s Room have been here for three hundred and fifty years.    

The clocks constantly push away the yesterdays, whilst we try to recapture them.     

The first Royal Exchange was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in sixteen sixty six. It was destroyed again by fire a hundred and seventy two years later. In eighteen forty four, Queen Victoria opened the third building. A statue of the Duke of Wellington stands before it.     

Second only to the Tower in historical interest is the Guildhall, home of the yearly Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Its handsome roof was destroyed in the last war, but the rest of the building survived.    

Just as the City is renowned for its inns, so it is for its halls, each one named after a particular trade, the members of which met there. This is the Fishmongers’ Hall, the Bakers’ Hall, the Grocers’ Hall all these have their origins hundreds of years ago.     

The gateway to the Leathersellers’ Hall, the Mercers’ Hall. The premier guild of the city existed as a fraternity in the early twelfth century. The hall is sometimes used for the wedding reception of prominent personages. It’s interior is magnificent.     

Hall of the Goldsmiths.     

Newly rebuilt, the Girdlers’ Hall is dwarfed by the buildings of the new City.     

The coat of arms over the Armourers’ Hall, and the College of Arms.    

Hidden not far away is Postman’s Park. Another surprise corner that one is apt to come across quite suddenly.     

Remains of the Roman Temple of Mithras were discovered during building operations.     

And we are thankful that some of the Wren churches are still standing. Sir Christopher Wren’s St Mary-le-Bow. St Lawrence Jewry, rebuilt by Wren after the Great Fire.     

Sir Richard Whittington’s place of worship, another Wren church, St Michael’s.     

All Hallows.     

In one great raid, no less than eight Wren churches were destroyed or damaged. Those that suffered damage were restored to their former glory, such is man’s respect for the years gone by.     

St Bride’s with its wedding cake spire.     

Erected in fourteen twenty, St Ethelburga’s is one of the smallest in London.     

Ringed by hundreds of incendiary bombs, everything around St Paul’s Cathedral was burned to the ground. A miracle saved it. The original masonry is being brought to light, soon to reveal its spectacular magnificence.     

Part of Holborn marks the City boundary. Today a mixture of ancient and modern, Holborn has undergone a complete transformation in the last fifty years.     

The Mansion House may one day be sacrificed in the name of progress, for it is included in the plans for rebuilding the City. Many years ago, people said it should never have been built.     

The climax of our film must be The Tower of London. Oldest and most renowned fortress in England. Once a royal palace, a prison and now the repository of the crown jewels, the Tower would seem to be the only link to our history which may remain.     

A strange coincidence indeed, once there was a street called Old Change, today there is one named New Change. Could it be that in the next century, not a trace will be left of the old. Are the relics of the past to be lost to us forever? Will that wonderful square mile cease to exist or be swallowed by the largest city in the world?

[End Credit]