please empty your brain below

Even this part of the City’s boundary has been tweaked since London was founded.

Reclamation of land from the Thames has allowed the southern edge of the City to move further down the map over the last two thousand years. The Roman riverbank was more or less where Lower and Upper Thames Street are now.
Aren't the heraldic beasts Griffins rather than dragons? I could be wrong...
@tony Yeah, you're wrong:

http://www.civicheraldry.co.uk/great_london.html#london%20city

:-)
Actually, the City Bridge Trust-whose trustee is the City of London Corporation-owns five bridges:Tower, London, Blackfriars, Southwark and took over the Wobbly Bridge ten years ago.
But there is a disconnect between what the City owns and what is a part of the City. Blackfriars and London Bridge are considered to be within the City, the other bridges are only owned by the City's Trust. Otherwise you'd consider Hampstead Heath to be a part of the City.
And the Embankment moved the river bank south too. Originally the Strand was just that, a beach by the river.
Of course the land had been drained and built up to a significant extent before the Embankment was built, otherwise the Temple and other medieval buildings along the north bank of the Thames would not be there.

Are you aware of the drainage plans of the painter John Martin, including cleaning up the Serpentine and an embankment? Predates Bazalgette by some decades.

When did the City of London get jurisdiction outside the city walls?
@Chz Indeed. Which is why I said "owned". dg says "Blackfriars Bridge is the other London bridge owned wholly by the City of London Corporation" which appears to imply only two are owned by the City. Perhaps that's just my reading of it.

Anyway-here's a link so anyone attempting the walk doesn't get caught out by the tides:http://www.pla.co.uk/display_fixedpage.cfm/id/11
I can never walk past John Carpenter Street without humming the 'Halloween' theme to myself!
Great post - which feels a bit like a breath of fresh air after so many Olympics-themed entries. Looking forward to the rest.
Nice return to the old style dg blogs. It is recommended going to see the city exhibition in the new building opposite Cannon Street. They show a great film from the 1970s extolling the virtues of all the new "modern" improvements to the city which nearly everyone hates nowadays e.g Barbican Highwalk and that horrible dual carriageway to Blackfriars.
And worth mentioning that part of Southwark today was incorporated into the City, as the ward known as Bridge Without up until the start of the 20th century.
@ KissenMe

Alas, the excellent Devloping City exhibition closed on 9 September.

PS I like the Highwalks!
Oh I am so going to have to go and be "distracted by the funicular railway" now I know it's there!
In fact I can't wait to do this walk now! Scrabbling around on the foreshore and Harry Potter-esque backstreets is just my sort of thing!!
On the southern tip of Blackfriars Bridge is Rennie Gardens, owned and maintained by the City. I don't know for sure if it's part of the official borders, but it does nestle right up to them.

http://londonist.com/2005/08/londonist_loves_12.php
I've updated the Blackfriars Bridge paragraph to avoid ownership/inclusion issues. Thanks!
Just echoing other comments, that after all the sporting excitement it's good to be back poking around under bridges 'n stuff.
Fleet River -where it enters Thames, definitely only seen with some difficulty! Thanks to your details of Fleet River walk some time ago, I finally saw it.
Agree with previous comment, keep poking around uhder bridges!
I stand corrected...
Oh - hadn't spotted the googlemap link in the first post. There is a different dragon-centric one at http://www.emminlondon.com/2011/08/city-of-london-boundary-dragons.html










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