Cheapside, EC2V

Road in/near City of London, existing until now.

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(51.51411 -0.09418, 51.514 -0.094) 
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Road · * · EC2V ·
JANUARY
29
2021
Cheapside is a street in the City of London, the historic and modern financial centre of London.

Cheapside links St. Martin’s Le Grand with Poultry. Near its eastern end at Bank junction, where it becomes Poultry, is Mansion House, the Bank of England, and Bank station. To the west is St. Paul’s Cathedral, St. Paul’s tube station and Paternoster Square.

In the Middle Ages, it was known as Westcheap, as opposed to Eastcheap, another street in the City, near London Bridge. The boundaries of the wards of Cheap, Cordwainer and Bread Street run along Cheapside and Poultry; prior to boundary changes in 2003 the road was divided amongst Farringdon Within and Cripplegate wards in addition to the current three.

Cheapside is a common English street name, meaning "market place". There was originally no connection to the modern meaning of cheap (’low price’, a shortening of good ceap, ’good buy’), though by the 18th century this association may have begun to be inferred.

Many of the streets feeding into the main thoroughfare are named after the produce that was once sold in those areas of the market, including Honey Lane, Milk Street, Bread Street and Poultry.

In medieval times, the royal processional route from the Tower of London to the Palace of Westminster would include Cheapside. During state occasions such as the first entry of Margaret of France (second wife of King Edward I), into London in September 1299, the conduits of Cheapside customarily flowed with wine.

During the reign of Edward III in the 14th century, tournaments were held in adjacent fields. The dangers were, however, not limited to the participants: a wooden stand built to accommodate Queen Philippa and her companions collapsed during a tournament to celebrate the birth of the Black Prince in 1330. No one died, but the King was greatly displeased, and the stand’s builders would have been put to death but for the Queen’s intercession.

On the day preceding her coronation, in January 1559, Elizabeth I passed through a number of London streets in a pre-coronation procession and was entertained by a number of pageants, including one in Cheapside.

Meat was brought in to Cheapside from Smithfield market, just outside Newgate. After the great Church of St. Michael-le-Querne, the top end of the street broadened into a dual carriageway known as the Shambles (referring to an open-air slaughterhouse and meat market), with butcher shops on both sides and a dividing central area also containing butchers. Further down, on the right, was Goldsmiths Row, an area of commodity dealers. From the 14th century to the Great Fire, the eastern end of Cheapside was the location of the Great Conduit.

Cheapside was the birthplace of John Milton, and Robert Herrick. It was for a long time one of the most important streets in London. It is also the site of the ’Bow Bells’, the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, which has played a part in London’s Cockney heritage and the tale of Dick Whittington. Geoffrey Chaucer grew up around Cheapside and there are a scattering of references to the thoroughfare and its environs throughout his work. The first chapter of Peter Ackroyd’s Brief Lives series on Chaucer also colourfully describes the street at that time. Thomas Middleton’s play A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1613) both satirises and celebrates the citizens of the neighbourhood during the Renaissance, when the street hosted the city’s goldsmiths.

Cheapside was extensively damaged during The Blitz in late 1940 and particularly during the Second Great Fire of London. Much of the rebuilding following these raids occurred during the 1950s and 1960s and included a number of unsympathetic contemporary attempts at recreating the centuries-old architecture that had been destroyed. In recent years many of these buildings have themselves been demolished as a programme of regeneration takes place along Cheapside from Paternoster Square to Poultry.

Cheapside today is a street of offices and developments of retail outlets. It can no longer be described as "the busiest thoroughfare in the world" (as in Charles Dickens’ day) and is instead simply one of many routes connecting the East End and the City of London with the West End.




Main source: Wikipedia
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CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LOCALITY

None so far :(
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Comment
Wendy    
Added: 22 Mar 2024 15:33 GMT   

Polygon Buildings
Following the demolition of the Polygon, and prior to the construction of Oakshott Court in 1974, 4 tenement type blocks of flats were built on the site at Clarendon Sq/Phoenix Rd called Polygon Buildings. These were primarily for people working for the Midland Railway and subsequently British Rail. My family lived for 5 years in Block C in the 1950s. It seems that very few photos exist of these buildings.

Reply

Steve   
Added: 19 Mar 2024 08:42 GMT   

Road construction and houses completed
New Charleville Circus road layout shown on Stanford’s Library Map Of London And Its Suburbs 1879 with access via West Hill only.

Plans showing street numbering were recorded in 1888 so we can concluded the houses in Charleville Circus were built by this date.

Source: Charleville Circus, Sydenham, London

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Comment
Steve   
Added: 19 Mar 2024 08:04 GMT   

Charleville Circus, Sydenham: One Place Study (OPS)
One Place Study’s (OPS) are a recent innovation to research and record historical facts/events/people focused on a single place �’ building, street, town etc.

I have created an open access OPS of Charleville Circus on WikiTree that has over a million members across the globe working on a single family tree for everyone to enjoy, for free, forever.

Source: Charleville Circus, Sydenham, London

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Comment
Charles   
Added: 8 Mar 2024 20:45 GMT   

My House
I want to know who lived in my house in the 1860’s.

Reply

NH   
Added: 7 Mar 2024 11:41 GMT   

Telephone House
Donald Hunter House, formerly Telephone House, was the BT Offices closed in 2000

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Comment
Paul Cox   
Added: 5 Mar 2024 22:18 GMT   

War damage reinstatement plans of No’s 11 & 13 Aldine Street
Whilst clearing my elderly Mothers house of general detritus, I’ve come across original plans (one on acetate) of No’s 11 & 13 Aldine Street. Might they be of interest or should I just dispose of them? There are 4 copies seemingly from the one single acetate example. Seems a shame to just junk them as the level of detail is exquisite. No worries if of no interest, but thought I’d put it out there.

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Comment
Diana   
Added: 28 Feb 2024 13:52 GMT   

New Inn Yard, E1
My great grandparents x 6 lived in New Inn Yard. On this date, their son was baptised in nearby St Leonard’s Church, Shoreditch

Source: BDM London, Cripplegate and Shoreditch registers written by church clerk.

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Comment
Vic Stanley   
Added: 24 Feb 2024 17:38 GMT   

Postcose
The postcode is SE15, NOT SE1

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LOCAL PHOTOS
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Bank station
Credit: IG/steven.maddison
TUM image id: 1653840363
Licence: CC BY 2.0
Smithfield Market
TUM image id: 1620388545
Licence:

In the neighbourhood...

Click an image below for a better view...
"Cheapside and Bow Church" engraved by W. Albutt (1837) First published in The History of London: Illustrated by Views in London and Westminster. Steel engraved print after a picture by T.H. Shepherd.
Credit: W. Albutt
Licence: CC BY 2.0


Georg Giese from Danzig, 34-year-old German merchant at the Steelyard, painted in London by Hans Holbein in 1532
Credit: Hans Holbein
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Walbrook Wharf is an operating freight wharf located in the City of London adjacent to Cannon Street station.
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Tate Modern viewed from Thames pleasure boat (2003)
Credit: Christine Matthews
Licence: CC BY 2.0


"London Bridge from the Old Swan" by the Irish painter Hubert Pugh (1780) Shooting the tidal rapids at old London Bridge was dangerous; many passengers preferred to get off at the Old Swan, and walk. Immediately across the river in the painting is St Saviour’s Church, now Southwark Cathedral.
Credit: Hubert Pugh (Bank of England Museum)
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The shoemaker was a 1907 London comedy drama, a play "full of tears and laughter."
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View of Cloth Fair in 1884 showing the side entrance to St Bartholomew’s Priory, Smithfield.
Credit: John Crowther
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Florin Court, Charterhouse Square (2008) The building was used as Whitehaven Mansions, the fictional London residence of Agatha Christie’s character Hercule Poirot, in the LWT television series Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989–2013)
Credit: Flickr/conrad1967/
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No 37 Cheapside on the corner of Friday Street (c.1880) The ’Society for Photographing Relics of Old London’ was formed when the Oxford Arms - a traditional galleried pub - was about to be pulled down as part of the new Old Bailey development in 1875. The society subsequently campaigned to record disappearing sights, hurriedly commissioning photographs to capture buildings for posterity. Between 1875 and 1886 they produced photographic records of further buildings under threat, which were issued with descriptive text by the painter (and founder of the Society) Alfred Marks. The focus was architectural, not social; the photographs deliberately exclude signs, notices, people and traffic, to concentrate on the appearance of the bricks and mortar. Few of the streets in their images remain. This section of Friday Street was demolished after the Second World War.
Credit: Society for Photographing Relics of Old London
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Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall (1933)
Credit: Bishopsgate Institute
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