Addison Lee is proud to sponsor The Ancient World in London series.
“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.
For there is in London, all that life can afford.”
The River Thames has wound its way through Britain since time began.
The Celts called it the dark one, the Romans bridged it,
Saxons and Vikings waged war on its shores and
Normans stamped their fearsome mark upon it.
We are born, grow old and die beside the river, but it
will always be. Without the river, there is no life.
And with no life, there is no London.
Natalie: Tell me, what does London mean to you?
“London's home, for me.”
“Place to come to work.”
“Centred around the river.”
“It's a good city – we got lots to do here.”
“The atmosphere you get from being in London.”
“Financial centre, where I have my career”
“My second home!”
“It's where I come to go shopping.”
“Oh, I don't know!”
“Big trading centre.”
“You can meet a lot of friends here.”
“History.”
“I think it's one of the best cities in the world.”
My name's Sean – I'm a writer here at Heritage
Key – and this is Sam, she's a film-maker.
Together we'll be making videos about the Ancient World. We're just
about to start our Ancient World in London series,
but in truth it's a lot more than just
the videos – there's events, quests, competitions.
Kind of an online festival.
Yeah.
So, because it's a web thing, we decided that we're going
to our auditions for our presenters for the series online.
So we did a little video, we put it out on Youtube
and there were three in particular who caught our eye.
Check them out!
I'm Nicole, and I came here from Kent – the Garden of England - on the
train and I'm now going to take you on an adventure of a lifetime!
Aah, I'm Jamie! And I'm poised to take you on an Ancient London
voyage of discovery. And I have to say, I'm jolly excited!
My name's Natalie, and I don't know enough about London. I grew up
here and it's just been on my doorstep and taken for granted.
I'm ready for an adventure
We thought that for the first little adventure, we'd
send them to the most obvious of places
where we all are just trying to discover the
ancient world and that is the British Museum.
After we sent them there, we decided that
we wanted them to really explore London,
and if you're going to do that, you need to see
the places and things that people don't normally see.
So we took them to something called the London Stone.
It's sometimes called the Brutus Stone, named after Brutus of Troy, who
was the medieval reincarnation of the guy from the Trojan wars.
It used to be part of a church called St Swithin, but in the war, St
Swithin got bombed and completely decimated, and all that was left were the stones.
If you ever move it, the whole of London will fall.
We're in Cannon Street, and we're looking at the London
Stone, which is a very, very old stone.
And how many people see the London Stone every year, because
it's right here in the centre of Cannon Street
and I think it'd be really interesting to
see people's views on this as well.
And see how important they think this is as
an integral part of the history in London.
I'm a tiny bit disappointed, I have to say, I did some research on
the stone and was really looking forward to coming to see it today,
and I almost walked straight past it because, it's like, trapped
into the wall and I can barely even see it!
Don't be mistaken by this dinky little stone set into a
really ugly wall, set behind some rusty old, grumpy grate
this is a real London artefact and we should be excited about it.
You see, if this was the Rosetta Stone stuffed behind
here, people would walk past that everyday too!
So this little stone, we should celebrate – it's really exciting!
So, if you want to find out more about this
little London artefact, check it out at heritage-key.com!
So that was the first of 25 videos about the Ancient
World in London, so join us for our next adventure!