London, the New Jerusalem

Have you ever considered why some of London’s oldest and most important buildings are located so? Perhaps their setting is random. After all, why should there be any pattern to the location of buildings. Surely there is no master plan to the positioning of the city’s long-standing structures?

Remarkably, there is.

London’s ancient builders had little to guide them. They had only a rudimentary knowledge of architectural techniques and geometry, and sought solace in the scriptures. Instructions within on how to build cities are quite clear. As the Book of Numbers explains:

“Ye should measure from without the city on the east side two thousand cubits, and on the south side two thousand cubits, and on the west side two thousand cubits, and on the north side two thousand cubits, and the city shall be in the midst”.

A church had been built in honour of Paul, patron saint of London, in AD 604. This was long the centre point of the old city. Architects unknown built the church of St Dunstan-in-the-East 2,000 cubits east of St Paul’s near the Tower of London. Partly ruined, it survives as a tranquil garden. Two thousand cubits west of St Paul’s the city’s ancient builders set the western gate, Temple Bar. It became the border between London and Westminster.

But why 2,000 cubits? A cubit is the length from the tip of the fingers to the elbow. Understandably, this differs from individual to individual but when building the city the chief architect’s dimensions were used. Two thousand cubits is about 2/3 of a mile, the distance from Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives where Jesus stood as when he wept over Jerusalem. It is also the furthest a Jew is allowed to travel on the Sabbath. “Up to the hill by Hebron, seat of giants old/No journey of a Sabbath Day, and loaded so”, as Milton wrote in Samson Agonistes.

Yes, yes, but why 2,000 cubits?

A thousand in Hebrew is denoted by the letter Aleph; 2,000 is two alephs. Draw two alephs together and what do you get? The Star of David.

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After the 1666 Fire of London, those in charge of rebuilding the city – Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, John Evelyn, and later Nicholas Hawksmoor – were powered not just by the latest scientific reasoning and the most up-to-date architectural fashions but by an interest in religious mysticism. The strange mix helped them keep within the strictures demanded by the freemasonry that guided them.

They saw London as the new Jerusalem – the capital of a non-Papist world. In religious terms, they felt (with some justification) that Christianity had arrived in London before it had reached Rome, and that therefore their Christianity was holier than Rome’s. Their philosophy was influenced by the fashionable idea of the time that the English were the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, who had fled west after the kingdom of Israel was sacked in 722 BC.

Consequently they set the same Biblical patterns into their calculations. Wren realigned the axis of St Paul’s so that the west end would stand 2,000 cubits from Temple Bar and the east end 2,000 cubits from St Dunstan-in-the-East. Nicholas Hawksmoor, Wren’s most gifted pupil, continued this pattern. His church of St George-in-the-East stands 2,000 cubits from the Roman wall. St John Horselydown, a now ruined church just south of Tower Bridge, is 2,000 cubits from the Monument, while St Mary Woolnoth is 2,000 cubits from Christ Church Spitalfields – both Hawksmoor churches.

The 2,000 cubits measurement was taken up in earnest in 1662 by John Wilkins, the vicar of the City of London church of St Lawrence Jewry and the 1st secretary of the Royal Society. Wilkins suggested a new measuring system be devised based on this supposedly “sacred” measurement. To make calculations easier the length would be divided not into cubits but into a thousand divisions – about a yard in length. From this the metric system was devised around the kilometre equal to the 2,000 cubits of the Bible and now the world’s standard measurement, though not ironically in London, the new Jerusalem.

Ed Glinert
Born in Dalston, London, Ed Glinert has written for Private Eye, Radio Times and London's Time Out, and is the author of various London and Manchester guide books and compendiums. He leads a variety of walks for a major London walking tours company.