Clerkenwell Green has no grass, and has not for centuries Fact. What the square grew instead is another kind of green — people gathered and murmuring.
The square of assembly
A village square since medieval times, in the modern era it became the gathering point of London radicalism: Chartist rallies met here in the nineteenth century, and labour marches have set off from this square for centuries Fact. Remember who lived in the lanes around it and the causality is natural — the clockmakers and printers of Episode 3.
Why artisans turn radical
Three conditions met. First, skilled labour that owns its tools is more autonomous than factory labour, ill-fitted to a do-as-told worldview Estimate. Second, printing is a trade of reading and writing — the circulation network of ideas itself Fact. Third, lane-level division of labour bred a solidarity dense with mutual knowledge Estimate. Precise hands and radical thought coming from the same lanes is no coincidence — and its culmination is a small building on the square’s corner: number 37a, Episode 5.