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St Paul's Cathedral - The Pagan History of Ludgate Hill There have always been stories of pre-Roman scared sites on the hill where St Paul's Cathedral stands today. Recent evidence of Bronze Age settlements not far from the area are the first physical indications that such stories may be more than legend. Building scared sites on hilltops was customary for such early settlements and while Ludgate is hardly noticeable as a hill today, in the past it was a hill of some note in the marshy lands bordering the Thames. That the hill would have been seen as special to early Bronze Age settlers takes no stretch of our imaginations. Legends of a scared gathering place, and less credible, a stone circle, atop Ludgate Hill have followed the area throughout the ages. The Historia Britonum, written around 833 AD and which claims to relate the history of the inhabitants of Britain from earliest times, states that "The island of Britain derives its name from Brutus, a Roman consul who conquered both Spain and Britain." The legendary King Brutus, often called Brutus of Troy, is generally thought to be either the son or grandson of Ascanius. There are various stories of how he came to land around 1074 BC on the island now known at Britain but most agree on his expulsion from Italy, his voyage to Greece, and his saving of a group of enslaved Trojans who then traveled with him. In time Brutus landed in Britain, named it after himself and became it's first King. Legend has it that during his voyages Brutus spent a night sleeping in the ruins of a temple to Diana and she sent him a vision of the land he was destined to settle. When he arrived in the area now know as London Brutus named the city Troia Newydd or New Troy. It's said in thanks he founded a temple to Diana on the hill where St Paul's Cathedral now stands. (In 1830 an alter to Diana was found close by in Foster Lane and various excavations have uncovered a plethora of cow and stag bones and horns which are believed to have been sacrifices to her.) This is generally considered the first (semi?) recorded "scared" use of Ludgate Hill.
It's name comes, probably, from a King Lud (or Ludd) (73BC) who was said to have undertaken the rebuilding of the city that King Brutus had founded. King Lud, in full royal modesty, renamed the city Caerlud, (City of Lud). Over time the name was corrupted to Caelundein, which the Romans chose to call Londinium. Lud Gate, constructed around 200 AD in the Roman wall once surrounding the city, gives it's name to Ludgate Hill. There are statues of King Lud and his two sons which used to be on Lug Gate preserved today in the porch of St Dunstan-in-the-West on Fleet Street. There are also references to a Celtic god Lud and a lost temple to him built on a hill overlooking the Thames. Christopher Wren excavated St Paul's after the Fire of London (1666) and found ample evidence of a Roman occupation on the spot. While he did not find, or did not look deep enough to find, direct evidence of a Roman temple "common knowledge" states that there was indeed a Roman temple to Diana built on the spot during the time the Romans made a home of Londinium. There was reputedly yet another a Pagan temple on the site which was destroyed around 597 AD to make room for the first Cathedral built on the site in 604 AD.
While physical proof is scarce, and not likely to ever be found without the destruction of St Paul's Cathedral itself, many historical books and reports mention various people worshiping and building on this perennially sacred bit of hilltop. Even today with the breathtaking grandeur of St Paul's dominating the hill, there are Pagan and "New Age" worshipers and trackers of Ley lines that look to Ludgate Hill as a source of ancient earthly power.
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But Ludgate Hill has
other pagan associations.
Christianity
then reigned over the site briefly until 616 when King Aethelbert died and the
population of the
city of London quickly reverted back to their beloved Pagan ways of
worship. Christian clerics were forced to flee the city and Pagan gods
ruled over the site once more for another 50 years.