Bishopsgate Street

Bishopsgate Street

North from Leadenhall Street and Cornhill to Norton Folgate (P.O. Directory). In Bishopsgate Wards Within and Without, with a few houses in Cornhill Ward (O.S.).

First mention: March, 1910 (L.C.C. List of Streets, 1912).

Former names: "Bishopsgate Street Within." "Bishopsgate Street Without" (Hatton, 1708–March, 1910). "Bishopsgate Street" (Agas, (G)–Greenwood, 1827). "Bisshopesgatestrat" (Ct. H.W. I. 352), 1329.

Stow seems to confine the name "Bishopsgate Street" to the part within the gate (S. 165).

So called of the gate (S. ib.).

In Strype's time (1720) the Fire of London not having destroyed this street, many of the old timber houses were still standing at that date (ed. 1720, I. ii. 107), but much of it was destroyed by fire in 1765.

Many of these old houses were in existence in the middle of the 19th century, and the Rev. T. Hugo in his itinerary of the Ward of Bishopsgate drew attention to several of them, notably Nos. 81–85 Bishopsgate Street Without, erected 1590 (L. and M. Arch. Soc. Trans. p. 158), Sir Paul Pindar's house and the adjoining houses, Nos. 170 and 171, Nos. 174–176 and 36–39, Nos. 26, 18, and Nos. 7 and 8 (ib. p. 158, et seq.).

At No. 66 Bishopsgate Street Within was a finely groined undercroft of the 14th century (ib. p. 168).

The street has now been entirely rebuilt.

A tesselated pavement was discovered 13 ft. below the street level in 1839 under No. 101, 53 ft. from the street, and 15 ft. from the Excise Yard (R. Smith, 54). A Roman pavement was found under the south-eastern area of the Excise Office, 6 ft. 10 in. deep in Broad Street, and another at a depth of 13 ft. 6 in. in Bishopsgate Street in a bed of coarse concrete 6 in. thick laid in the gravel (ib.).

A Roman pavement was also found in 1908 at the rear of Nos. 31 and 33, 6 ft. below the level of the roadway here, and 9–10 feet below the level of Bishopsgate.

Gaulish pottery was found near Sun Street in 1843 and cinerary urns in Artillery Lane and Widegate Street.

Bishopsgate street, is divided into two Parts: 1. Bishopsgate str. within, is a spacious publick Str. betn the Gate Nd, and the meeting of Grass church str. with Cornhil S. L. 400 Yds. 2. Bishipsgate-str. without (the Gate) … [see Bishopsgate Street Without].

Bishopsgate Street is large, long and spacious, and generally well inhabited. But the Fire of London, 1666, not coming into these Parts, the Houses for the most part are old Timber Buildings and nothing uniform. The like are the Parts without the Gate, but not so good, except in some places, as Devonshire Square, &c.

Bishopsgate street extends from Cornhill, thro' the gate, to Norton Falgate, that part between the gate and Cornhill being called Bishopsgate street within, and all without the gate, Bishopsgate street without.

Bishopsgate Street Within, between Cornhill and Camomile Street, and so called from being within the walls, as Bishopsgate Street Without was so called from being without the walls.

The southern half of this street, including the church of St. Martin Outwich, was destroyed by fire November 7, 1765. The flames commenced at a peruke maker's, and nothing but the wind shifting suddenly saved Crosby Hall and the church of St. Helen's. The four corners of Cornhill, Bishopsgate Street, Leadenhall Street, and Gracechurch Street, were on fire at the same time. There is a plan of the houses destroyed in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1765.

It may be convenient, in order to indicate the position of the more noteworthy sites and buildings (many of which have separate notices) to take the two sides of the street separately. West side.—Three doors from Cornhill (No. 123), the London Tavern, famous for its turtle, dinners, wines, charity meetings, and auctions. It was taken down in 1876, and the site is now occupied by the large and costly fabric erected for the Royal Bank of Scotland. A few doors further is the house (No. 119) in which, in 1780, George Crabbe lodged with Vickery the hairdresser. The house is still a hairdresser's and peruke maker's, Ross and Sons, perhaps the most noted of the kind in the City. It was from here that Crabbe wrote his celebrated letter to Edmund Burke. Two doors beyond, at the angle formed with Threadneedle Street, stood the Church of St. Martin Outwich, taken down in 1875 for street improvements, and on the site of which stands the Capital and Counties Bank. At the opposite corner of Threadneedle Street is the former South Sea House. Next to this, Nos. 110–113, is the splendid building, with columns of the Roman-Corinthian order with relievos over the doorway and windows, and statues on the summit, erected in 1866 from the designs of Mr. J. Gibson, architect, for the National Provincial Bank, the handsomest building of its kind in the City. To make way for it was demolished the old Flower Pot, a well-known starting-place for short stages and omnibuses. Passing the Baltic and other Chambers, some of them noteworthy for their size and architecture, we come to (103) the entrance to Gresham House, which extends through to Old Broad Street, and marks the site of the sumptuous residence of Sir Thomas Gresham, who gave the Royal Exchange to his fellow-citizens, entertained Queen Elizabeth, and, dying suddenly at his house here, was buried in St. Helen's Church on the opposite side of the way. Next to the rather handsome building (No. 95), Gothic of the year 1861, known as Crosby House, are Palmerston Buildings, a huge pile which also stretches back to Old Broad Street, and contains nearly 200 separate offices. Here stood the Bull Inn, "a famous place for the performance of the pre-Shakesperian plays." When Antony Bacon left Gray's Inn in 1594 and came to live in Bishdpsgate Street, his mother was in much distress, fearing "the neighbourhood of the Bull Innn."¹

The Blacke Bull in Bishopsgate Street, who is still looking towards Shoreditch to see if he can spy the carriers coming from Cambridge.—A New Booke of Mistakes, 1637 (quoted in Huth's Prefaces, Dedications, and Epistles, p. 358).

No. 86 was the famous Green Dragon Inn, and at Nos. 83 and 84 is a very smart new building, calling itself the "Old Four Swans," and usurping the place of the picturesque coach-yard inn that bore the sign of the Four Swans. Another large block of offices, Ethelburga House, containing over 100 offices, is so named from standing opposite the church of St. Ethelburga.

The East Side of the street has been entirely renewed at the Cornhill end within the last few years by sweeping away the plain old shops and substituting lofty blocks of offices. The quaint red brick office of Messrs. Baring Brothers, designed by R. Norman Shaw, R.A., and the Wesleyan Centenary Hall are the chief buildings here. Farther on are Crosby Hall, the fine old church of St. Helen's, Great St. Helen's, and St. Helen's Place, the Church of St. Ethelburga,² and (No. 54) the Marine Society's House, all of which are noticed under their respective headings. Bishopsgate Street fortunately escaped with little injury from the Great Fire, and in the London Gazette of September 8, 1666, the first published after the Fire, is the announcement that "The General Letter Office is now held in Bishopsgate Street, at Sir Samuel Bernardiston's house, the same that Master Sheriff Hanson sometime kept his Sheriffalty in."