Goodman’s Yard is a street between Minories and Mansell Street.
There was a glasshouse here before 1641, owned by Sir Bevis Thelwell. This bottles, white and green glasses. In 1661 it provided glassware for the newly-founded Royal Society.
The glasshouse became Jesse Russell’s soap and tallow factory.
There was an early Baptist chapel in Goodman’s Yard, noted in 1682.
In 1710 a ’loyal society’ (a precursor of modern day insurance companies) based at the "Red-Lyon near Goodman’s Yard" published proposals for insurance on the birth of children, and on marriage.
Pigot’s 1824 Metropolitan Guide states that there was an ’Irish Free School’ in Goodman’s Yard, and a report a few years later states that the East London Irish School had 140 male and 120 female pupils, and was partly supported by subscriptions and partly by payments from the children.
Railway viaducts completely changed the scene. A lattice bridge over Prescott Street and Goodman’s Yard, carried the Haydon Square extension of the London & North Eastern Railway. A Goodman’s Yard depot was built but was destroyed by bombing in the Second World War.
