Royal Mint Street

Royal Mint Street

East from Sparrow Corner, Minories, to Cable Street (P.O. Directory). A small portion only in Portsoken Ward.

Former names "Hoggestrete" (39 Ed. III. 1366, Cal. Close Rolls, 1364–8, p. 212). "Heggestrete" (Temp. Ed. III. Anc. Deeds A. 2647). "Hoglane" (36 H. VIII. 1544, L. and P. H. VIII. XIX. Pt. 2, p. 180). "Hogge-lane" (Agas., c. 1561). "Hogstreate" (S. 126). "Rosemary Lane" (Ryther, 1608–Elmes, 1831). "Rag Fair" (from the old clothes sold therein in the centre of the street). First called Royal Mint Street in 1850.

It seems probable that Hogstreate is a corruption of "Hegge strete," and that this was the original form of the name.

Rag Fair was held here at one time, where the railway depôts now stand.

The Royal Mint stands on the south side of the street, hence the later name.

Rosemary lane, betn Little Tower hill W. and Knockfergus (near Well close square) E. L. 460 Yds, and from T L. NEly, 330 Yds.

[Rosemary Lane or Hog Lane.] The Tower is a Parish of it self ... and it hath some Territories without, as Little Tower Hill; which was therefore called, The King's Soil of Little Tower Hill; adjoining to which was a Place called, The King's Wast of Rosemary Lane or Hog Lane.

Rag Fair, Rosemary lane. Here old cloaths are sold every day, by multitudes of people standing in the streets; there is here a place called the 'Change, where all the shops sell old cloaths: it is remarkable that many of the old cloaths shops in Rosemary lane, where this daily market is kept, deal for several thousand pounds a year.

Rosemary lane, extends from the bottom of the Minories to Wellclose square, and is chiefly taken up with old cloaths shops.

Rosemary-Lane, Tower-Hill,—near the N.E. corner, commencing near 81, in the Minories, and extending to Cable-st. Wellclose-square.

Rag-Fair, Rosemary-lane, is the nickname for the centre of the lane, which is the grand mart of the metropolis, in the article of old clothes, which, however contemptible the trade may appear, is a source of great wealth to many who embark in it. A large building on the north side is called the Clothes' Exchange.

Rosemary-Lane, Tower-hill, is near the north-east corner of the square and extends from the bottom of the Minories to Wellclose-square.

Rag Fair, or, Rosemary Lane, now Royal Mint Street (so named from its passing along the back of the Royal Mint), runs from Sparrow Corner, Tower Hill, to Cable Street, Wellclose Square, a place where old clothes and frippery are sold.¹

The articles of commerce by no means belie the name. There is no expressing the poverty of the goods; nor yet their cheapness. A distinguished merchant engaged with a purchaser, observing me to look on him with great attention, called out to me, as his customer was going off with his bargain, to observe that man, "For," says he, "I have actually clothed him for fourteen pence."—Pennant, p. 433.

Where wave the tattered ensigns of Rag Fair.—Pope, The Dunciad.

Thursday last one Mary Jenkins, who deals in old clothes in Rag Fair, sold a pair of breeches to a poor woman for sevenpence and a pint of beer. Whilst they were drinking it in a public house, the purchaser in unripping the breeches found quilted in the waistband eleven guineas in gold, Queen Anne's coin, and a thirty pound bank note, dated in 1729, which last she did not know the value of till after she sold it for a gallon of twopenny purl.—The Public Advertiser, February 14, 1756.

Royal Mint Street has hardly so evil a reputation as Rosemary Lane, but it is a squalid place, lined with old clothes' shops and stalls, and on Sunday mornings the aspect of Rag Fair, as it is still commonly called, is anything but edifying.

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¹ Pope, Note to the Dunciad

Rag Fair / Rosemary Lane, the location of Queen Dulness's "Guildhall" in Pope's Dunciad, was a poverty-stricken street just east of the Tower. For Pope the unfortunate street represents the ruination of the nation as darkness and idiocy spread over the land. Grubstreet author Ned Ward's description of the place, where one may see "the very Scum of the King­dom in a Body," is no brighter:

... we came to a Heathenish part of the Town, distinguish’d, as we found by Enquiry, with the ap­plicable Title of Knock-Varges, adjoining to a Savory place, which, in Ridicule of Fragrant Fumes that a­rise from the Musty Rotten Rags, and Burnt old Shoes, is call’d by the sweet Name of Rosemary Lane; where such a Numberless Congregation of Ill-favou­red Maukins were gather’d together with their Hand-Baskets, that we thought a Fleet of French Prote­stants had been just Arriv’d, and were newly come on Shore with Bag and Baggage, to implore the Cha­rity of English well disposed Christians, to shelter them from the terrible Persecution of Rags, Lice and Poverty: But, upon a true Inquisition into the meaning of this Tatter’d Multitude, being Assembled in this Surprising manner, we were inform’d by a little Draggle-Tail Flat-Cap, it was Rag-Fair, held every Day from between two and three of the Clock in the Afternoon till Night; where all the Ragg-pickers in Town, and such as swop Earthen Ware for Old Apparel, also the Cryers of Old Satin, Taffaty or Velvet, have Recourse to Sell their Commodi­ties, to Cow-Cross Merchants, Long-Lane Sharpers, and other Brokers, who were as busie in Raking in­to their Dunghills of old Shreds and Patches, and ex­amining their Wardrobes of decayed Coats, Breeches, Gowns and Petticoats, as so many Cocks upon a Pile of Horse-dung, scraping about the Filth to find out an Oat worth picking; or like a Parsons Hog, on a Monday Morning, routing about a Church-yard to find a S—nce worth snapping at.

Of Rag Fair Thomas Pennant wrote in 1790:

The articles of commerce by no means belye the name. There is no expressing the poverty of the goods: nor yet their cheapness. A distinguished merchant, engaged with a purchaser, observing me to look on him with great attention, called out to me, as his customer was going off with his bargain, to observe that man, For, says he, I have actually cloathed him for fourteen pence.

Of London, 1790

Pat Rogers describes Rosemary Lane in terms of its literary connections to Alexander Pope's Dunciad:

In any list of black spots drawn up from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the name of Rosemary Lane, with its environs, is sure to figure. Strype, in 1720, describes the mean alleys in the district, as well as the 'small, nasty and beggarly' streets around the Minories, just to the north. He tells of the fair held on Little Tower Hill. Goodman's Fields, whose insalubrious reputation was not improved by the coming of the theatre in 1728, lay immediately adjacent. Sir John Hawkins was particularly severe on the matter:

...What was apprehended from the advertisement of plays to be exhibited in that quarter of the town, soon followed: the adjacent houses became taverns in name, but in truth they were houses of lewd resort; and the former occupiers of them, useful manufacturers and industriuous artificers, were driven to seek elsewhere for a residence.

This process was beginning, we should note, in the very year during which the first version of The Dunciad appeared. But it is doubtful if Rosemary Lane itself had ever harboured many "useful manufacturers and industrious artificers." As late as Mayhew, indeed, we find the Irish community singled out for a comment in this locality—always the sign of a depressed area. For the earlier period, however, Mrs George provides abundant evidence of the standing in this quarter. Rosemary Lane is named along with East Smithfield, Houndsditch, Petticoat Lane and Goodman's Fields as 'a deplorable district', and a 'dangerous neighbourhood'. In the late eighteenth century, we find an account isolating the most unhealthy regions of London. The writer speaks of

the wretched inhabitants of some streets in St Giles' [in the Fields] parish, of the courts and alleys adjoining to Liquor Pond Street, Hog Island, Turnmill Street, Old Street, Whitecross Street, Grub Street, Golden Lane, the two Brook Lanes, Rosemary Lane, Petticoat Lane, Lower East Smithfield, some parts of upper Westminster, and several streets of Rotherhithe, etc.

...A seventeenth-century sources names as centres of prostitution

St Giles [in the Fields], Turnbul Street ... Long Acre near the Mews, Drury Lane, Sodom and all her painted drabs, ... Ratclife Highway, Rosemary-lane, Shore-ditch, Morefields, White-cross-street, Golden-Lane, every street twixt that and Clarken-well, Cow-crosse, Smith-field ... and all the country girls.

Even more apposite is a pamphlet of 1767, which refers to the 'cheap lodging' ... to be found in the 'dirtiest and meanest parts of the town'. These latter are, predictably, named as 'Grub Street, Golden Lane, Moor Lane, Fee Lane, Rag Fair or the Mint'.

—Hacks & Dunces: Pope, Swift & Grub Street, 41–42