Aldwych

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Aldwych (pronounced /ˈɔːldwɪtʃ/) is a place and road in the City of Westminster in London, England.

[edit] Description

Aldwych, the road, is a crescent, connected to the Strand at both ends. At its centre, it meets the Kingsway. Along its length are the Waldorf Hilton hotel, the Indian High Commission, the Australian High Commission at Australia House, the Aldwych and Novello theatres, the Bush House headquarters of BBC's World Service, and the London School of Economics. Nearby, in the Strand, is the now-disused Aldwych tube station.

Note that the road is not named "Aldwych Road" or "Aldwych Street". Rather, it is simply called "Aldwych" or "The Aldwych".

[edit] History

The name, "Aldwych", derives from the Old English eald and wic meaning 'old settlement'; the name was later applied to the street and district. It was recorded as Aldewich in 1211. In the seventh century, an Anglo-Saxon village and trading centre named Lundenwic ("London settlement") was established approximately one mile to the west of Londinium (named Lundenburh or "London Fort" by the Saxons) in what is now Aldwych. Lundenwic probably used the mouth of the River Fleet as a harbour or anchorage for trading ships and fishing boats.

Lundenwic was 'rediscovered' in the 1980s after the results of extensive excavations were reinterpreted as being urban in character. These conclusions were reached independently by the archaeologists, Alan Vince and Martin Biddle. Recent excavations in the Covent Garden area have uncovered an extensive Anglo-Saxon settlement, covering about 600,000-square-metre (150-acre), stretching from the present-day National Gallery site in the west to Aldwych in the east. As the presumed locus of the city, Lundenburh, was moved back within the old Roman walls, the older settlement of Lundenwic gained the name of ealdwic: "old settlement", a name which evolved into Aldwych.^[1]

A statue of the nineteenth-century prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone, was installed in 1905 near St. Clement Danes church.

On 18 February 1996, an improvised high-explosive device detonated prematurely on a Number 171 bus travelling along Aldwych, killing Edward O'Brien, the IRA operative transporting the device; it also injured four others.