Up to the 1840s, the area surrounding the Guildhall (between Cheapside, London Wall, Saint Martin Le Grand and Coleman Street) did not feature any major east-west avenue, but rather a hodgepodge of narrow lanes. In 1845, Lad Lane and Cateaton… Read More »Gresham Street
Both the street and market in this part of the City are named after a prominent building, the Leaden Hall, which is first recorded in 1292. It was originally owned by the Neville family and included both a large building… Read More »Leadenhall Street and Market
Both New Bridge Street and the Victoria Embankment are relatively late additions to the City’s largely medieval street pattern. New Bridge Street was created in 1764, essentially following the course of and covering over the Fleet Ditch, leading to the… Read More »New Bridge Street & Victoria Embankment
The locations named above comprise the area bordered to the west by the Temple, to the north by Fleet Street, to the east by New Bridge Street (built over the Fleet River) and to the south by the Thames. ‘Bridewell’… Read More »Bridewell & Whitefriars
Cornhill is one of the streets that fan out from the Bank intersection ‒ the City’s of London’s financial heart. Running roughly west to east from Bank Junction, it meets the intersection (anciently know as ‘carfax’) between Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate… Read More »Cornhill
Bishopsgate is the name of a major City street as well as one of its wards and derives from gate that once stood upon it. Bishopsgate was one of the seven double gates that afforded passage through the medieval walls.… Read More »Bishopsgate
Together with Ludgate Hill, to the east, and the Strand, to the West, Fleet Street forms the main thoroughfare that connected the cities of London and Westminster. Indeed, in earlier times, the Fleet Street name probably covered the whole way… Read More »Fleet Street
Lombard Street is perhaps the single most iconic address in the City of London, synonymous with banking and providing the title for Walter Bagehot’s seminal 1873 work on the money market. Bagehot wrote that “The briefest and truest way of… Read More »Lombard Street
Well into the late 18th century, this northern extremity of the City contained ‘moor fields’ (marshy, open land). After being drained and provided with paved paths, this open space became used for everything from laundering to military drill to raucous… Read More »Finsbury Circus & Moorfields
The uninterrupted street that bears the name Poultry at its eastern end and Cheapside at the western one marks the border between Cheap and Cordwainer wards, which in the Middle Ages were the wealthiest commercial districts of the City. Together… Read More »Cheapside & Poultry