London's lost medieval streets brought back to life in AI images

Daniel Coughlin's YouTube channel The Curious Compendium of Architectural What-Ifs traces the capital's changing landscape through periods of demolition and rebuilding.

He uses AI visuals along with old maps and archive photos to reconstruct vanished buildings and imagine how they might look in the modern streetscape.

A view of Wych Street before it was demolished to make way for the Aldwych development in central London. (Image: Daniel Coughlin)

One video follows the buried Fleet River from its source on Hampstead Heath out to the Thames.

Another reconstructs the area around Wych Street and Holywell Street between Covent Garden and Aldwych.

Mr Coughlin, who grew up in West Hampstead and went to school in Parliament Hill, said: "I reconstruct the extraordinary old medieval streets that once ran between the Strand and Drury Lane before they were swept away in the early 1900s for the Aldwych redevelopment."

Wych Street as it might look today if it had survived demolition in the 1900s. (Image: Daniel Coughlin)

His channel springs from an obsession with alternate history, presenting an "alternate reality" that is grounded in "real streets, buildings and history".

"My interest in the area comes from my grandfather Jeremiah Coughlin who was born in 1894 in a very poor locale called Little Wild Court off Little Wild Street," he adds.

"He ended up becoming the station master at Covent Garden Tube where he saw the ghost of the Victorian actor William Terriss which really spooked him."

Vere Street before the clearance - Edwardian London planners wanted to ease congestion through the city and sweep away pockets of poverty they considered slums. (Image: Daniel Coughlin)

Mr Coughlin's grandfather wasn't the only one to spot the apparition of a tall man wearing a top hat, opera cloak, and gloves, thought to be the actor who was murdered outside the Adelphi Theatre on the Strand in 1897.

Which loops back neatly to the area explored in the video which was demolished between 1901-1905 by London County Council as part of the Aldwych and Kingsway development.

Vere Street is reimagined as a hip quarter full of boutiques, artisan bakeries and coffee shops. (Image: Daniel Coughlin)

In the video Mr Coughlin explains how this "dense knot of historic streets, courts and inns was swept away" when "Edwardian planners wanted to drive a broad road through one of central London's most congested and decayed areas".

To them it represented progress to clear the slum tenements and ease congestion but it involved demolishing narrow medieval lanes full of taverns and bookshops with timber-framed Jacobean houses that had survived the Great Fire of London.

Holywell Street was once a notorious lane of bookshops selling racy pamphlets but is reimagined as a tourist attraction with bookstores and a Harry Potter magic shop. (Image: Daniel Coughlin)

Wych Street was an ancient lane running from near St Clement Danes toward Drury Lane while Holywell Street ran parallel but had gained notoriety for bookshops selling radical pamphlets and later, erotic literature.

In the video Mr Coughlin explains: "In a few short years an entire neighbourhood of London disappeared.

"But what if the scheme had never happened and the streets had survived. What if this shabby Jacobean quarter was later restored and turned into one of London's most atmospheric historic districts?"

The video reconstructs buildings such as the Rising Sun pub in Wych Street, the New Inn and Vere Street which is now a hip area of artisan bakeries and coffee shops.