ABSTRACT
In 1598 John Stow, a citizen of London, completed A Survey of London containing “the original, antiquity, increase, modem estate and description of that City". Although all historians of medieval and sixteenth-century London depend heavily on John Stow’s Survey it has rarely been subjected to systematic scrutiny. Commerce and industry dominated the sixteenth-century city and are the subject of much comment in Stow’s Survey. New building was a phenomenon which fascinated and concerned Stow. Stow’s view of London represents an amalgam of what was visually arresting to an observer who perambulated the city streets and his particular concerns and prejudices. The economic morphology of London is more complex and in many ways more interesting than the pattern of housing. Perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of Stow’s Survey is the evidence he gives of sixteenth-century development in London. The population of London increased by perhaps three times in the sixteenth century.
