ABSTRACT
One cannot very well make a Milton pilgrimage. The heart of the ‘Shakespeare country’ is a small village with no other claim to importance, but ‘Milton country’ is London, which has changed out of all recognition since his time. None of his many London houses is still standing: the Great Fire of 1666 and the Second World War between them took care of almost everything he knew except a few churches, Westminster Abbey, and part of Whitehall (see map). Still, it is possible to visit St Giles, Cripplegate, on weekday mornings. The church is now embedded in multistorey office blocks and flats on the Barbican site, but it contains a monument (erected 1793) commemorating Milton’s burial there; the original gravestone disappeared only five years after his death, when the chancel floor was raised. From St Giles, it is a short walk to Bartholomew Close, where Milton lived in hiding after the Restoration. The little streets keep their old shape, though not their old houses, and give some idea of the London he would have known.
