It's All In A Name

While I was walking around the City of London last week, I was reminded how many of the streets retain names they received in the dim, distant past, often related to what went on in them. Of course, Pudding Lane, where the Great Fire of London started in 1666, has gone down in history. It's sobering to find that Watling Street has a stretch remaining in the City. It is part of one of the original Roman roads and bits of it occur by name up and down the country to this day. There's also a street called London Wall. That's it. No street, road or lane on the end. Same with Bevis Marks (no idea), Poultry, Cornhill, Old Jewry, Houndsditch, New Change and Crutched Friars. We also have Milk Street, Oat Lane, Garlick Hill, Bread Street, Sugar Quay, Camomile Street, Whalebone Court, Ironmonger Lane and Threadneedle Street (also famous for being the site of the Bank of England). Frying Pan Alley sounds like a woman hiding behind the door to bang her errant husband on the head. There's a Whittington Avenue - Dick Whittington really was Lord Mayor of London - and I'm sure David Hasselhoff would be delighted to learn that there's a Knightrider Street.

South of the river, going from Waterloo Bridge east towards The Globe Theatre, the interest continues, with Upper Ground and Lower Marsh (the latter appearing in my family tree as where my grandmother married from in 1897), Clink Street (home of one of the original gaols and giving rise to the saying of being "in the clink" for "in prison"), Bear Gardens (where the bear pits and bear baiting were) and Paris Garden - a pleasure garden, no doubt frequented by ladies of ill repute. The south bank, after all, was where the brothels were located when the City authorities decreed they should be outside the City walls.

Nearer to home, in my childhood home of Deptford, the maritime history of the area is obvious from such names as Bowditch, Foreshore, Leeway, Longshore, Stowage and Ropemaker Road. Evelyn Street commemorates the fact that the diarist John Evelyn had a manor house nearby, which was called Sayes Court. The name of the house persists, and Sayes Court Street is probably the same street my maternal grandparents raised their family (it was then called Sayes Street). Czar Peter The Great of Russia resided in the house when he came to England at the end of the 17th century to learn the art of shipbuilding. Evelyn complained in his diaries about Peter playing games by being wheeled round in a wheelbarrow through the diarist's hedges, destroying his pride and joy. (Peter was a VERY big man, about 6'7" I believe).Sadly, the playwright Christopher Marlowe, a contemporary of Shakespeare's who was murdered in a pub in what is now Evelyn Street, is not commemorated by name anywhere in the area. Even the Globe Inn where he died is now a Chinese takeaway.