The incredible pictures that show the UK's capital city's transformation 100 years ago.

Once it was the largest and most important city in the world but beneath its’ rapid expansion and prosperity was an underbelly of poverty and depravation.

Now a spectacular new coffee table book featuring over 300 striking black and white photographs powerfully brings to life images of old London.

From one of our leading living historians, Philip Davies OBE, “Panoramas of Lost London: Work, Wealth, Poverty and Change 1870 to 1945”, beautifully captures the phenomenal expansion of the city between 1870–1945 from  aristocrats in top hats and ladies in white gloves right down to grubby faced street urchins.

Mr Davies said: “For many, London was a hard, unyielding place, but for those who made it, the city offered independence, opportunity and freedom. 

“This was a time when, one third of all Londoners – about 1.8 million – lived below the poverty line. For a further 1 million, life was precariously balanced with just a week’s wages between respectability and pauperism.”

The startling images depict our capital city in the throes of transformational change from a horse-drawn Victorian and Edwardian city with its East End slums and ritzy Regent Street department stores, to the devastated streets of the wartime capital. 

The photographs show London at a time of huge growth and include the building of Tower Bridge in 1883, Admiralty Arch in 1910, the original buildings of Euston station and department store Liberty.

Then there are the faces who kept London running: the blacksmiths, butchers, bookmakers, shopkeepers, seamstresses, pharmacists and chimney sweeps, all photographed in their places of work, as well as  the nurseries, mothers and children outside their homes.
While the photos featured in the book were taken between 1870–1945, many of the buildings date much further back to the 16th and 17th centuries, such as the wooden weatherboard townhouses, coaching inns, verandaed taverns and two storey cottages in central London, buildings since destroyed or developed in the 20th century.  

Among some of the pictures in the book are the Tower Bridge Under Construction 1883.Now an iconic London landmark, the Grade I listed bascule suspension bridge was designed by City Corporation architect, Sir Horace Jones and John Wolfe Barry to allow the passage of large ships into the Pool of London. At 940 feet (290 m) long including the abutments, it consists of two 213-foot (65 m) bridge towers connected at the upper level by two horizontal walkways, and a central pair of bascules that can open to allow shipping to pass under.

Three Colts Street in Limehouse, 1900s. London at the dawn of the 20th century with its setted streets, (paved with small, rectangular, quarried stones cut to a regular shape, providing better grip for horses) weatherboarded houses and local shops in old vernacular buildings looks more like a quaint seaside village. Today only few fragments remain of these streets as they were then remain.

Lyceum Theatre,1909. Built in 1834, the theatre was one of London’s leading theatres where the likes of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry performed. Rebuilt in 1903 with the portico of the original theatre retained, after the threat of closure, it is now a flourishing venue for musicals, currently home to The Lion King.

 13 & 14 Archer Street, Soho, 1908. The upper floors of many Soho houses were given over to workshops.  Here, two women are engaged in upholstery making for the furniture trade using traditional spinning wheels that hadn't really changed much in hundreds of years. Soho was home to numerous small-scale manufacturing industries including a significant presence of both furniture making and seamstresses.

Edwardian Nursery, 34 Albury Street, Deptford, 1911. An evocative view of the nursery in the crammed ground floor rear room. Note the wooden rocking horse by the table and the copy of Goosey Gander on the mantelpiece. The staff are all dressed in smart uniforms with crisp white aprons and the younger children sleep in wicker baskets on the floor.

Nile Street, Woolwich, c1900. An elegantly attired proprietress stands in the doorway of The Ferry Eel and Pie House. To her right are picturesque timber- framed 16th century cottages that were soon to be demolished and a woman wearing widow’s weeds (traditional heavy black clothing) as a mark of mourning.

Euston Road, Camden, 1912. Catching the bus was very different before WW1. The ‘Royal Blue’ horse omnibus transports passengers and features an advertisement for Selfridges, but at least there was still Boots the Chemist. The last horse drawn omnibus ran just as WW1 began marking the true end of an era.

Piccadilly Circus, 1895. The heart of the Empire, Piccadilly Circus features Albert Gilbert’s Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain (Eros)which symbolises the philanthropic love of the Earl of Shaftesbury. A lively intersection of commerce, entertainment, traffic and street life in the heart of London just as it still is today.

Slaters, Kensington High Street, 1909. The jams and pickles counter was typical of shop interiors of the period, with elaborate Art Nouveau glazing, and mirrored walls. Slaters was an exclusive grocers serving the well to do and famous for its elaborate food displays.

Lynedoch Street, Shoreditch, July 1920. Terraced houses built shoulder to shoulder, two storeys high and 18ft wide. Beneath the drab exterior lay vibrant working class communities offering each other support in times of acute need. The houses on Lynedoch Street  were built in the mid to late 19th Century with the street itself coming into existence around the same time the new Shoreditch Workhouse was built. 

* Panoramas of Lost London is published in Hardback on 23rd of November. Available from all good bookshops at £40 – get it while stocks last.