Heading home from the Barbican the other evening, I thought I'd take a photo of these tiny Cheapside buildings.  The plaque fixed to the back wall dates them to 1687, but subsequent rebuilding has seen quite a few changes (including a probable reduction in storeys).  However, this little shop is one of the few remaining examples of the 'first sort' of building permitted after the Fire of London.

In the Rebuilding Act of 1667, six men decided on the 'four sorts' of buildings that would make up London's skyline, and they were Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, Roger Pratt, Hugh May, Peter Mills and Edward Jerman (a prime bunch of real dullards).  The idea that domestic buildings could be sorted into types was not an entirely new idea, but the impact of the Fire made it possible in a way that had been unthinkable before. 

More than anything, the 'surveyors' wanted to prevent tall, rickety buildings being put along narrow lanes, and low, poor buildings being put back up along London's major thoroughfares.  They weren't entirely successful, as 124-6 show: they are only 15ft square each one, although in theory they could have been up to four storeys high.  This 'sort' was only supposed to front 'by-lanes', and Cheapside hasn't been a by-lane for about eight centuries.  The 'second-sort' front streets, lanes of note, and the Thames.  The 'third sort' fronted 'high and principal streets' and the 'fourth sort' were mansions. 

The idea London could be rebuilt in this way is crazy and marvellous.  The men who made these rules were both more, and less than human and they forgot that builders were sometimes rushing and compromising, using 'Spanished' bricks, sticking windows in at random before moving onto the next site.  They were building domestic housing for people desperate for somewhere to live, not the public monuments which now inform our ideas of the 18thC.  In the City itself, almost 8,000 buildings were put up between 1666 and 1672.  Of course, not all of London was built by cowboys, which is why it still contains some of the most beautiful and desirable housing of any city. 

Nos. 124-6 Cheapside are little more than tiny piece of forgotten flotsam washed up against the hulk of St Paul's but they are remnants of Georgian London all the same.  The next time you find yourself on a bus sweeping down Cheapside, or tottering home after a night out, do give them a wave.