London Is a Place of Pilgrimage, Outwards

The sense of the city as having multiple entry and exit points is something you can even trace in the legacy of, for example, children's stories. So Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims gathered at the Tabard Inn on the south bank of London in order to travel outwards. In doing that they were materially through their bodies connecting the city to other sacred sites. And the dark counterpoint, if you like, to Chaucer's vision of pilgrimage outwards is T.S. Eliot's vision of London in the wasteland where he describes the way that the city sucks people in.