The Origins of Diagon Alley

A question from pharnabazus got me thinking about this

The first question, of course, is where it is.. As he points out, though the nearest bus route passes along Charing Cross Road, it is not necessarily on Charing Cross Road. There is a pub very like the description on Oxford Street just across from Centre Point and next door to Virgin Records that fits in many ways, but regretfully I don’t think this is the correct one.

A lot of the question of location depends, I think, on date. The general "feel" of the buildings in Diagon Alley is pre Fire, but that says nothing one way or the other - it could be in the heart of the City and the Fire would not have affected it. So let’s look at it logically.

Basically, when considering London, there are two, possibly three places:

1. The City. The walled area corresponds to both the Roman city and the medieval one. This area may or may not have been abandoned during the "Dark Ages"; there is a layer of "black earth" that British archaeologists have traditionally viewed as signs that there were no buildings at the time, but continental ones view it as denoting habitation. A distinct possibility is that it represents rubbish mixed with decomposed thatch.

2. Be that as it may, in the intervening period there was a substantial settlement in the Aldwych area (about 20 years ago the archaeologists in the London area were going round kicking themselves: "Aldwych... Old Vicus... DUH!"). I washed some of the daub from the wattle-and-daub walls: marks of the wattle on the inside, layers of limewash on the outside, just like my mother and grandmother used to do with outbuildings every year or so. This was the earliest definitely Saxon settlement. Whether or not there were still Romano-Brits inside the walls is anyone's guess, but after the mid 6th century epidemics the Saxons went right off living inside walled towns.

3. Possible, but a source of argument: a settlement predating the Roman foundation. Part of the argument is the likely name "Londonion". If it existed, exactly where it was is anybody's guess, but is unlikely to be inside the City walls as this was not the normal procedure. It might have been a significant distance away, and even have been Ambresbury Banks, which is a sort of hillfort on level ground, if that doesn't sound too peculiar.

The big question is whether they built inside the City, or accessible to the City, and when. Somewhere on the Aldwych/City boundary could be a good area as being in an ambiguous place to start with. If you look at:

London street map

that will give you the location of Maiden Lane, the place from which I was processing the finds.

That would put the Leaky Cauldron back into the 6th/7th centuries... not long after the disasters that rocked the world of Late Antiquity, and about which I have uncomfortable ideas that I’m developing in a fic. Briefly, they were caused by someone who would make Voldemort look like Neville Longbottom on an off day.

That still leaves the question of whether a Diagon Alley equivalent existed during the Roman period. That would entail the British wizards "buying into" the Roman urban lifestyle, which I have been assuming (OK, for my own reasons) they did not; if I'm right about wizarding/Roman relations, it would have taken exceptionally wild horses to drag them into Londinium.

We're into socioeconomic, not to mention archaeological, territory when it comes to the question of whether anything like Diagon Alley was needed earlier. There were never big oppida in Britain like the ones in France and Germany, and even the German ones suffered badly in the aftermath of the Gallic Wars. The possibility is that, for wizards as for Muggles, items were supplied by travelling craftsmen.

I suppose to summarise the way I see it is:

1. Stone Age through to Iron Age: wizards effectively rule Muggles: itinerant craftsmen

2. Roman Conquest: persecution crisis: towns (especially Londinium) avoided; itinerant craftsmen

3. 5th century: departure of Romans, persecutions reduced after Constantine come to an end; state of flux

4. 6th century: disasters. Londinium ceases to function as a city.

5. Late 6th century on: Saxon settlement grows up just outside Londinium. Diagon Alley constructed in area between.

6. In subsequent centuries, new shops open and rebuilding takes place. Diagon Alley not affected by Great Fire

The Ministry of Magic won't go all that far back but the Wizenagemot will date from the early Saxon period, and may well be contemporaneous with the construction of Diagon Alley. Given the Great British Climate I would anticipate a hall not visible/enterable by Muggles.

St Mungo's has the typical name of a hospital that started off as a monastery, whether it actually did or not. St Mungo himself belongs to the same period as I am suggesting - he died in 612 - and interestingly is the Pictish pet-name of Kentigern.

It strikes me as possible that the original route into Diagon Alley was via the church. During the Reformation it might well have become inadvisable to use it, and a change made to using a tavern - the other place that anybody might be likely to wander into without anybody noticing. Possibly the back wall of the yard behind the Leaky Cauldron was originally part of the church. There would certainly have been problems for the hospital at that date if within the knowledge of Muggles - see what happened to hospitals in places like York: after the Dissolution, Henry VIII not only had to take his own cook to York, he had to take his own food.

Even if the hospital has moved to a new building the church may still be there. If I am right about wizarding opposition to the Normans, it might even still be the Saxon building, which is rather a nice though. I'm not sure how a Saxon church would have a Scottish saint (well, a "man of the North" anyway), but I'm sure there's a good reason

This seems to hang together almost too nicely. If the assembly hall of the Wizenagemot is seen as ancestral to the Ministry of Magic, all three institutions would date from the same period. I definitely do like the idea of them being in a boundary area, as boundary areas are notorious for having peculiar properties.

As to why Diagon Alley in the first place, I suspect that relates to the Floo powder problem. My own suspicion is that it was something like cement - invented by the Romans, lost, rediscovered (possibly by people who didn't even realise it was a rediscovery). I suspect the original source of the powder was the hearth of the Temple of Vesta, but it couldn't possibly supply the whole later empire so there might have been local centres of production, enabling the Brits to go on using it initially, until the 6th century disasters. If it was lost in the course of the disasters, this would make sense of the construction of Diagon Alley, being a place that only wizards could reach, but without needing either Apparating or using Portkeys.