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Baches Street
Sturt Estate rebuilt with warehouses fromthe 1890s. The most interesting of these are by Ernest Newton,whose father was agent to the estate:
10- 12 1891,
Baldwin Street
Old Fountain pub, an isolatedmodest Georgian survival.
Baltic Street
Named for the timber trade
Hatfield House
White Lyon Court, with a crane, and a buildingwith cast-iron windows.
Stables forWhitbread's Brewery in use until 1992;three storeys with typical small windows, decorative plaque withthe date 1897. Concrete jack-arched floors on iron columns, withhorse ramps.
Banner Street
Banner Estate 1965 L.C.C. housing
Quaker Court the best part of the estate. Quite pleasant four-storey maisonettes with a rhythm of boxed-out bays, with an intriguingvariety of customized doors as recent counterpoint. An openingthrough to a garden made from part of a former Quaker BurialGround.
Society of Friends Memorial Building 1881. Was Bunhill Fields Meeting House and offices of the Bedford Institute Association. Bombed and only one wing remains. By W. W. Lee One wing remains, the restdestroyed in the Second World War. Simple Queen Anne style,with red terracotta panel.
Braithwaite House. The rest of the Banner Estate demonstrates the extremes required of mixed development on innercity sites where high-density housing was demanded: a domineering twenty-one-storey slabof scissors-plan flats, on a bleak concrete plaza originally withgarages below
Old people’s housing
Sliced and Squeezed. Features in films 'What a Crazy World’.
Bartholomew Square
Centre of new St.Luke’s Estate and revival of old name
Bastwick Street
Finsbury and Heyworth Halls for the City University, by Sheppard Robson & Partners, 1971
Peartree Court, by Geoffrey Reid &' Associates, 1991 for City University
Bath Street
Called after ‘peerless’ or ‘perilous pool’ between here and Peerless Street. Originally called Pest House Lane. Banner family owned land 1789 - carpenters, and plumbers. Another healing well.
Site of first Turkish bath
Institute of Ophthalmology 1989-92 by GMW Partnership. Dignified brick four-storey street range, articulated by bays projecting above a recessed ground floor and a tall off-centre entrance with gable. Taller upper parts set back, under a long pitched roof.
Alleyn Almshouses
Girdlers Almshouses
Hospital for French Protestants 1708 in Bath Street/Pest House Row, for the relief of distressed French Protestants. Like an almshouse and called ‘La Providence’. Now at Horsham. Behind the hospital was the spring and ‘perilous pool’. 1598 W.Kemp, jeweller.
Peerless Pool. This was an existing pond, which was converted in 1743 by Jeweller William Kemp. It was behind St.Luke’s hospital. Used for swimming, by the Bluecoat boys, etc. It was 262 ft long and used as a fishpond and as a reservoir. Trials took place here in 1762 by the Royal Society of Arts on the resistance to rolling of ships’ hulls. The Pond was railed off. In 1860 it was built over
Drinking fountain
19 Kelpra Studios, Prater silkscreen printer
Cope House
Godfrey House
26 Swedenburg lived
Bonhill Street
1-3 surprisingly impressive industrial survivor. Surprisinglygrand; red and black engineering bricks, giant Ionic pilasters withPortland stone capitals
Bunhill Fields
Cemetery. A non-parochial cemetery, which was in use until 1853 where there were some 18,036 burials in its three parts. It is the most celebrated Nonconformist burial ground in England, crowded with monuments and the only cemetery left in the City. The site was originally part of oneof the three great fields of the Manor ofFinsbury, which was part of the prebendal estate of St.Paul’s. Three fields of Finsbury Farm were called Bonehill, Mallow, and High and there were three windmills here. It is named after ‘Bone Hill’ but there is no hill. It was also called ‘Tindall’s burying place’ – does this mean it was a prehistoric burial mound? The earliest version also says this is where Whittington stopped. It became a burial ground afterbones from the Charnel House in St.Paul'sChurchyard were brought here in 1549. In 1665 an area was put aside for plague victims, but it was not used so it was given to the dissenters as a burial ground. The cemetery was extended in 1700 and taken over by the Corporation of London in 1781. The gates and railings to City Road date from 1869, with big granite piers and gateposts which list the dissenters buried here. . It was left as pre-Victorian style burial ground. Memorials: near the centre is the Bunyan Memorial of 1862, by Papworth; a stone obelisk erected to Daniel Defoe in 1870; a simple shaped headstone to William Blake 1827, and his wife; Susanna Wesley was buried here on August 1st, 1742 with verses byCharles Wesley, but because of weathering it was replaced about 1828; severalmembers of the Cromwell family; Isaac Watts; Bradbury; Buxton; Thomas Hardy of the London Corresponding Society; Dr. John Lettsom; Thankful Owen; Heston Savory. . Ancient London planes and an old mulberry shade the grassy expanses between the tombs, and there are clouds of crocus and daffodils in spring. On Midsummer's Day 2000, sculptor Andy Goldsworthy deposited his giant snowballs, frozen from snow that had fallen the previous winter here. A sample of 248 burials were recorded from within the 'Lower Ground', and retained for analysis by the osteologist. Features in films 'Dirty Pretty Things’.
Quaker burial ground. Grave of George Fox 1690. Closed 1885 & road widened.
Artillery Company parade ground. Armoury House faces it. . Old archery ground. Garden dates from around 1641. It has been suggested that as early as 1785 a balloon flight from the Ground, which used gas made from coal. The Honourable Artillery Company received requests for use of it as a place to launch balloons from as early as 172. In 1763 they turned down a request to use it for an experiment with a ‘machine to sail against the wind’. Montgolfier ascended from the Artillery Ground in a hot air balloon in 1782
One surviving archery mark is at the Honourable Artillery Company's headquarters.
Honourable Artillery Company. The first origins of the company are unknown, but it was incorporated in 1537 by Henry VIII as the Guild or Fraternity of St George and from it were chosen the officers of the City Trained Bands. Milton, Wren, and Pepys are among the famous men who have served in its ranks. The company has been established on its present ground since 1642. Since 1660 the captain-general has usually been either the Sovereign or the Prince of Wales. The H.A.C., though a territorial regiment, provided many officers for the regular army in the two World Wars. It takes precedence after the regular army and is one of the few regiments privileged to march through the City with 'bayonets fixed, drums beating, and colours flying'. It also takes all salutes from the Tower of London and claims the right of furnishing a guard of honour when royalty visits the city. In the Gordon riots they defended the Bank of England. The Troop of Colour is held annually in July. The Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company of Boston (Mass.), the oldest corps in America, was founded m 1638 by emigrant members of the H.A.C.
Armoury House. The Honourable Artillery Company was given a royal charter in 1537. Its oldest building is c18, approached through gates by George Dance, 1793, and faces the parade ground. Designs by Thomas Stibbs were approved in 1729 and Built 1734-6. Yellow brick with stone quoins. Palladian composition of five bays with slightly projecting three- bay centre with Doric portico, and tall arched first-floor windows with keystones. The parapet has five exploding cannon balls instead of the usual vases. A flagstaff rises from a central turret. Lower wings of five bays added c. 1828, with third storey of 1894. Inside, the central entrance hall was remodelled in the 1930s with a barrel vault, and iron gates of c. 1740. Behind, a broad dog-leg stair with closed string and column-and-urn balusters leads to the Long Room along the front. This has panelling of 1919, but c18 pedimented door cases and chimneypieces of c. 1800. Above them the company arms and royal arms, 1736. On the side, small musicians' gallery, late c18, added by Richard Pepys. Court Room with mid-ci8 decoration: panelling with a broad frieze with monochrome trompe-l’oeil trophies painted by Francis Holman in 1758-9 contains the Great vellum book and signatures of members. . Excellent chimneypiece with carved panel with trophies; above is a medallion of George II in a Rococo frame. Behind the President's chair a rather Batty Langley ogee canopy on trefoil columns. Coade stone royal arms above. At the rear on the ground floor, an austere mid-c19 drill hall with simple iron- trussed roof. Jennings collection of arms. In the museum are many torn and tattered flags, suits of old armour, portraits, etc
Barracks of 1857 by J.J. Jennings, demonstrably alluding to a Heroic national past: a heavily rock-faced castellated fortress front with angle turrets and a broad gatehouse, refurbished 1994. Wilfully exclamatory angled link to the older buildings, faced in striped stone and granite, punched by openings of arbitrary shape. By Arnold & Boston, 1993-4.
Barracks frontage onto City Road. 1857. Rock faced castellated fortress demonstrably alluding to a heroic past.
Moorfields School. More usual ILEA type: three unassuming low single-storey linked blocks, built on the 'rationalized traditional system, using standardized components, c 1965-70-
Bunhill Row
15 small warehouse with a crane
16-19 Adam style houses remain
20-29terrace neat early c19 terrace,
100-101 Turnberry House. 1990s Postmodern, not too large, threestoreys and mansards, striped stonework with upper canted bays;
124 warehouse on the site of house where John Milton, wrote ‘Paradise Lost’ , ‘Paradise Regained’ and ‘Samson Agonistes’ and died. Demolished. RSA plaque
A crushingly mediocre group: a crude comerblock clad in grey marble and crimson trim,
Artillery Arms. Called after Artillery Co. Modest c19 comer pub,
Featherstone Buildings: Bombed.
Finsbury Tower. Reclad 1990. Ungainly slab-on-podium
Gavrelle House 1990, a long front whose monotony is notalleviated by its harsh contrasting panels of plain yellow andmoulded red brick
Northampton Hall, 20 storey GLC built tower as student residences for the City University. GLC Architect's Department H. Bennett
Thomas Delarue Paper Factory. Star Printing Works 1874. All bombed except Anchor Lane and building onto Dufferin Street.
Buttesland Street
60-75
Haberdasher’s Estate Terraces of c. 1823-30 remain
Central Street
Gas Light and Coke Co Works. The Brick Lane gas works in what is now Central Street. ‘The Great Gas Manufactory’ . Before gas manufacture began on site, it is shown as a 'cooperage' belonging to Golden Lane Brewery. The street plan of Peartree Street, with its little kink, was much the same then. Between the site boundary and Seward Street was a burial ground and north of Seward Street was a ropewalk.
Built in 1814. The works had no rail or river access. Closed for gasmaking in 1871 but holders retained and kept in use until 1898. A large portion of the site still in use by British Gas, although the 1859 office block and frontage on Goswell Road have since been demolished and were in other use. Clegg built it. There were 16 gasholders, some in wooden tanks, which were there until 1843. Telescopic holder 1835. 1836 Windsor Jnr. was superintendent and had to get help. Croll was later superintendent there. 1859 offices on Goswell Road. Works rebuilt at the end of the site and old works used as coal store. 1871 closed and part of site sold. Offices became Gas Light and Coke Company’s distribution HQ. Governor house kept going until 1939. In 1915 became Industrial Gas Showrooms. Transco on site.
183 Finsbury Distillery Co Ltd. made gin and Stone’s ginger wine. An edge runner there now. Use powdered ginger
105 Central Sorting Station. Carter Paterson & Co. occupy premises known as "Central Street Sorting Station" and "Return Empty Yard"
Chapel Place
Indifferent Neo-Georgian offices of the late 1980s incorporating theformer Congregational Tabernacle. Three-bay pedimented centre, stucco-trimmed
Charles Square
Name from lessee William Charles. 1770 set with trees and fruit. Mostly post-war flats. This was a favourite open-air preachingplace in the 1740s. When Whitefield wasthe preacher, the gentlemen's houses weresometimes filled with their City friends,drawn by the prospect of an entertainingspectacle 'as though they had come to seebears and monkeys'. Wesley preached herein the face of various discouragements: aheavy storm, attempts to drive an ox into" the thick of his congregation, and even avolley of stones. Later in the century JohnNewton, the slaver-turned-evangelical, livedin the square. Attempt to make a posh bit of the east end which failed.
16 was the Shoreditch County Court House. Pre 1726. Survives. The early character is represented by one good survival, quite an ambitious house of c.1725, five bays and three storeys, formerly with lower wings. Red brick, with the middle bay a little projected. Thick cornice above the first floor, stone keystones, doorway
5-6 built 1770, followed by 7-12
13-14 built after 1774 called Crocker’s Row
15-17 wings to no 16 but by 1922 used as factories
Chart Street
Haberdasher’s Estate Terraces of c. 1823-30 remain
17-23
Chequer Street
Peabody Buildings
Christopher Street
Buckler’s Hotel
15-23, a tall late Georgian terrace with an unusual rhythm,widely spaced pairs of first-floor windows within blind arches.
City Road
City Road is a broad thoroughfare, once of factories and warehouses. It was projected in 1760 by timber merchant Robert Dingley allowing 'an easy and pleasant communication from the eastern parts of the City to all the roads between Islington and Paddington and from thence down to Oxford Road and the Great Western Road, thus avoiding the necessity of travelling three miles over the stones'. It is a one mile long and was originally a toll road built in sections and united as a through route in the 1860s when the toll gate was removed. At one time it was the scene of rivalry between competing omnibus companies. Part of the c18 bypass around London, divides theformer boroughs of Finsbury and Islington. Opened 1761, but notbuilt up until c. 1800. The west part retains a residential character, theEast end, nearer the City, was more commercial.
Tollgate was near to the current site of Old Street Station.
Turners bed sacking and wadding makers. 1817
City and Finsbury sawyers’ society in 1825.
1 Lowdnes House dignified Edwardian. With arusticated front.
124-130 Edwardian,five storeys and attics, has strong buttresses all the way up.
152-160, Kemp House, was built as a German YMCA (160) and hotel (158) 1908-10 by George Gr W. Charles Waymouth. Brick with stonedressings. Free Baroque with steep gable and elaborate Venetian window with an upper window tied in. Elongated scrolls andother fanciful Mannerist detail.
190-196 City House 1895 ill proportioned. ByKing & Co. very large, late c19 commercial range: elaborate Neo-Jacobean upper parts above giant archesConverted to apartments 1997.
47 Wesley’s House. Wesley Museum - a museum of the last years of Wesley’s life in his eighteenth century house. It is on the site of The Royal Foundry, owned by John Bagley where in 1716 guns captured from French recast and they exploded in damp moulds. 17 were people killed, the foundry was resited in Woolwich. The house was occupied by Wesley himself and restored as a museum in 1897-8. It has four storeys, built of brick with stucco and Coade stone dressings. There is Simple but elegant c18 joinery inside. On the first floor Wesley's bedroom was in the back room, with his prayer closet opening off. On the landing is stained glass by Osborne & Philips, 1947. It was used as a clinic & dispensary and there was a school for 60 children. Wesley had electrical machines in the house..
Forecourt with c18 iron gates,
A bronze statue of Wesley, 1891 by Adams-Acton. Preaching with arms outstretched and a book. On the plinth ‘the world is my parish’. Erected on the centenary of his death.
Obelisk to Susannah Wesley, 1870 by Albert
BRS depot overhead crane
Eagle dwellings on the Eagle pub. Eagle 1825 ex-Shepherd and Shepherdess balloon ascents. In the garden. Coronation gardens 1832. Now Salvation Army. 176l London Cricket Club there was Frederick Prince of Wales was hit on the head by a ball and died. Eagle had a Grecian theatre and Marie Lloyd worked there as a waitress.
Empire House 1901. Built as the Alexandra Trust Dining Rooms by King & Co. c. 1901, rather fussy Neo-FrenchRenaissance, with three big floors with mullioned windows, allpainted beige, which does not help.
Finsbury Barracks. Built in 1857 as the HQ of the Honourable Artillery Company second most senior regiment in the Territorial Army/
Foundry Chapel; rebuilt in 1899, top lit like a billiard room, with Wesley's own chamber organ and seating from the original foundry building. Men & women separate, hymns not accompanied, tuning fork only, eighteenth century fire
Gilray House, interwar Art Deco, c. 1930-1 by A. Scarlett; four-storey front with giant polygonal columns to upper floors; steel windows in between
Leysian Centre in the Benson Building of 1880, refurbished 1993 by Watson Partners, with meeting rooms and offices.
Leysian Mission. Now Imperial Hall. 1901-6 by J.J. Bradshaw of Bradshaw & Gass. The third home of the mission founded by old boys of the Methodist Leys School, Cambridge, in 1886 toprovide opportunities for involvement insocial work. Beginning in a mission hall inWhitecross Street, west of Bunhill Fields, itmoved in 1889 to gabled purpose-builtpremises at the corner of Errol Street andLamb's Buildings. One of the foundationstones was laid by the headmaster W.F.Moulton. The end gable still bears thespurious school arms, which preceded theauthentic grant of arms in 1914. The building is now used by a drama school.The mission moved again in 1904, whenits extensive red-brick premises at thejunction of Old Street and City Road wereopened by the Prince and Princess of Wales(the future King George V and QueenMary). . Intended for a mixture of secular and religious activities and so with a deliberately commercial-looking front to its offices and accommodation. Tall, exceedingly sumptuous, with plenty of terracotta, a central dome and scrolly Arts and Crafts ornament. After serious war damage, the premises were reopened in 1955 by QueenElizabeth the Queen Mother. Great Hall behind, originally seating 1,750, rebuilt in 1953-5 by W.H. Gunton after war damage. The original staircase remains, with stained glass by W.J. Pearce. The Mission was amalgamated with Wesley's Chapel in 1989, and the building was remodelled as flats by Planning Design Development in 1994.
London Hydraulic Power station, only one not near the Thames.
London Rifle Brigade
Manse of 1898. Three storeys, s porch with Doric columns in antis.
Moorfields Eye Hospital. Founded in 1805 by John Cunningham Saunders as the world’s first specialist eye hospital. Promoted because of by trachoma among troops retuning from the Napoleonic Wars. It is an amalgamation of three 19th ophthalmic hospitals founded on different sites in 1804, 1816 and 1834. The main building is of 1897-9 by Keith Young & Bedell with a restrained classical front of red brick above rusticated stonework. There is also the long spread-out King George V Extension, built 1933-5 by Alee Smithers, with a tall front to Cayton Street, built as a steel frame faced in buff faience. Above the entrance is a small stone sculpture, ‘Christ healing the Blind Man’, by Eric Gill. It has been extended and replanned inside, with new outpatients' facilities, by Watkins Gray of the International & Devereux Partnership 1979-88. Three of the nursery rhyme tile pictures made for the Eye Hospital in High Holborn were transferred here. There is a chapel with a stained glass slab and concrete by R. E. Rutherford, 1971. Features in films 'The Day of the Triffids’.
Singer Building, corner Tabernacle Street
Small graveyard with plain chest tombs and a taller one with pyramid top and urn to Wesley 1791.
Wesley’s Chapel. 'The Mother Church of World Methodism'. John Wesley established his London headquarters at the Foundry, Moorfields, in 1739. By the 1770s the movement had outgrown the small converted building, and Wesley laid the foundation stone of the new chapel himself, at the age of seventy- four, in 1777. The cost was met by subscription. Large broad oblong of stock brick, with two storeys of round-headed windows in five bays, a pediment over the centre three. Shallow stone apse. Greek Doric porch of 1815. Stone dressings, and probably the outer wings, by Elijah Hoole, 1891 and 1899. The interior has galleries on three sides, enlarged c. 1800 by curved comers, and an elaborate geometric ceiling with putti heads. The later enrichments give the room a c19 flavour: reseating by W. W. Pocock in 1862-4, who also created the vestibules; further work by Charles Bell after a fire in 1879; major restoration in the 1890s by Elijah Hoole, when the timber gallery columns were replaced by columns of jasper and the ceiling was raised to allow for tiered gallery seating. Some of the original Tuscan columns (made from ships' masts given by George III) are preserved in the vestibule. Original fittings include the communion table, rails and especially handsome mahogany pulpit the top tier of a three-decker, lowered in 1864. Stained glass, mostly late c19 pictorial, but three more dynamic designs by Frank Salisbury, St John, by H. Holiday, 1900; gallery the Wesleys by James Powell & Sons, 1924. Many minor monuments several of the early c19 ones by Manning, e.g. Joseph Butterworth 1826, with woman kneeling by a cross, and Lancelot Haslope 1838, woman reading a Bible beneath a palm tree; both delicately carved. In the 1880s portrait busts were popular: among them W.M. Punshon 1881 and Gervase Smith 1882, by E. Onslow Ford, twin busts beneath a pair of marble Gothic canopies; W.F. Moulton 1898 has a bespectacled bust in an odd classical aedicule, by. Adams-Acton. F.J. Jobson 1881, also by Adams-Acton, is in profile, in a niche.
Corsham Street
Sturt Estate rebuilt with warehouses fromthe 1890s. The most interesting of these are by Ernest Newton,whose father was agent to the estate:
18-24 of 1899 are an especially lively design. Stock brick is mixedwith blue brick trim and stone keystones; arched windows alternate with segment-headed loading doors, with taller entrance baysat the ends.
25-33 are similar, built slightly later; they faceanother good group not by Newton.
Cowper Street
1833 William Allen of Stafford Allen essential oils
Central Foundation by the Corporation for Middle Class Education Central Foundation School for Boys. Founded 1866. Plain c19 buildings of stock brick; the centre of three storeys and eleven bays with Doric porch at the end; a lower seven-bay range with arched top-floor windows, a three-bay science extension of 1894. Extensions by Ley, Colbeck & Partners, 1966.
Crescent Row?
Was Middle Row Domingo Street Named for the timber trade
Dufferin Street
Dufferin Court built as Costers’ Buildings, for Peabody. A moreunusual group built ascostermongers' dwellings, yellow and red brick, with barrow shedson the courtyard side.
Dufferin Buildings
124 Home of John Milton wrote Paradise Lost and died. Warehouse gone RSA plaque
East Road
Sturt Estate
49-69 long warehouses five-storey warehouse is of 1901-8, byErnest Newton with Arthur Keen a fellow pupil from NormanShaw's office, also carefully detailed, but in a more Neo-Georgianmanner: channelled brick quoins; dentilled cornice.
Epworth Street
21
Errol Street
Leysian Mission. Corner with Lambs Buildings. Beginning in a mission hall inWhitecross Street, west of Bunhill Fields, itmoved in 1889 to gabled purpose-builtpremises here. One of the foundationstones was laid by the headmaster W.F.Moulton. The end gable still bears thespurious school arms, which preceded theauthentic grant of arms in 1914. The building is now used by a drama school.The mission moved again in 1904 to the junction of Old Street and City Road
Fann Street
80 Edward Crawshaw & Co., manufacturing chemist, 1885
Coates Printing Ink HQ until 1930s
80 Edward Crawshaw, & Co manufacturing chemist 1885
NCEDRS buildings. Coats Painting Ink HQ until 1930s
Farringdon Market?
Was on St.Bride’s Pauper Burial Ground
Featherstone Street
London Hospital l740 Whitechapel l748. Building 1751. Ex 1830 and 1850. Georgian style recognisable. Hidden from hospital l934
Philpot Street.
Finsbury Fields
Chapel at St.Paul’s churchyard - pulled down in the year 1549: the bones of the dead, couched up in a charnel under the chapel, were conveyed from thence into Finsbury field amounting to more than one thousand cart-loads, and there laid on a moorish ground; in short space after raised, by soilage of the city upon them, to bear three windmills. (Stowe)
First London theatre built by Burbage in 1576. It was a circular wooden structure and cost £600. Called The Theatre and looked like a galleried inn. In 1576 had been a private playhouse for Richard Farrant for the Children of the Chapel, Windsor. 20 years use until it was pulled down by Burbage’s sons in a quarrel over the lease. Shakespeare first worked there and associated with Richard Burbage, Henry Condell and John Heminge. It belonged to Burbage and was used in connection with the Globe Theatre. Eventually destroyed in 1655.
Area outside Moorgate, waste land kept for archery practice
Drained by the work of various mayors in 1500s.
Finsbury Pavement,
In the 15th a manor house stood here at the corner with Chiswell Street. Almost a new thoroughfare - the Lord Mayor broke the City walls so people could get to Islington. Had been a Rubbish dump, which raised the ground above the surface of the marsh. Called Finsbury Pavement from London Wall to City Road. Name means Fen. It is the Western course of Walbrook under west side. The Eastern course skirts it on the east side
London General, old omnibus relics, previously called The Ship
79 Aged Pilgrims Friend Society
Area outside Moorgate, waste land kept for archery practice
Drained by the work of various mayors in 1508s.
Finsbury Place
25 Fuller and Cubitt office
Fortune Street
Fortune Theatre hence blue plaque. London Electricity Board Sub station
St.Mary’s Tower
Galway Street
Garratt Street
Gee Street
Called after John Gee
Stafford Cripps Estate Finsbury Council 1953. By Emberton, 1953-6. A high-density development achieved by three twelve-storey11 blocks, each with sixty flats, cheap and without frills. The landscaped foothills are little compensation for poor details and hopelessly cramped site.
Alfred Place
Cotswold Court
Parmoor Court
Sapperton Court
Golden Lane: Goldeslane 1274, Goldyng lane c.1290. Golden lane 1317, Goldyngesiane 1361, probably "lane of a family called Golde or Golding'.
Fortune Theatre Mission Housing
Fortune Theatre, 1600. Brick foundations and wooden framework. Stage 43’ wide. 1601 opened with Lord Admiral’s men who became the Princes Men. Burnt down 20 years later. Rebuilt of brick.
Golden Lane Brewery with Gasworks 1806-1826. Pemberton built it. Lit Golden Lane & Beech Street. Promoted by Alderman Wood. 1820 oil gas plant. 1826 went over to public supply. Site now housing for Peabody H.A.
Golden Lane Housing Estate merging with the Barbican is the slightly older Golden Lane estate, by Chamberlin, Powell & Bon, built in 1953-62. It lies largely outside the City boundary. Its characteristic feature' is the butterfly wings of the water tank of the one tower block - the first time that such arbitrary, purely decorative or purely expressionist motifs appeared in London. The estate was intended to be filled with plants and flowers. There are still plenty of window boxes, and pots but the common open parts are now bare expanses of concrete, with just a small roof garden above the leisure centre. The roof garden on top of the main tower is not used. It is guarded by a strict entryphone system.
Great Arthur House. Features in films 'Born Romantic’.
Great Eastern Street
Firehouse. Fillingthe snub-ended wedge between Paul Street and Tabernacle Street, a restaurant in a former LCC Fire Station off1895-6. A lively twin-turreted red brick chateau, six storeys withmansarded centre. Engine doors are still recognizable
GraniteColumn marks the junction with Old Street.
Helmet Row
1-3 18thmodestc18survivals
5 was the Caslon works, William Caslon the elder (1692-1766) the type founder, lived here. He is regarded as a pioneer in typography.
12 old vicarage former c18 vicarage; five bays withlate c19 bay window and side entrance.
Honduras Street
Named for the timber trade, source of mahogany
Ironmonger Row
Ironmonger Row Baths. Includes Turkish baths. 1931, reopened 1985. Swimming pool added in 1938. Built by the baths experts A. W. S. & K. M. B. Cross. Stone-faced, in Roman revival style; two-storey front with patterned glazing to the upper windows, cornice, pantiled room. Interior refurbished c. 1988. Laundries were a common feature in early baths in modern automated form, such a facility is still in existence at the interwar Ironmonger Row Baths
13-17 Europa House
Lagonier House
Telephone Exchange Clerkenwell 1923.
Britannia Pub 1936
60 William Caslon the elder (1692-1766) the type founder, lived here He is regarded as a pioneer in typography.
Finsbury Leisure Centre. 1972. By Dere Lovejoy. Large red brick windowless sports hall,
Laid out 1825. Built same time as Northampton Square, became very poverty stricken, bombed tower blocks 1963 King Square is a sad case of neglect ending in demolition which, could its fate have been decided only a few years later, might have been spared. Early in the 1820s the rapidly growing parish of St Luke's, itself newly created only a century earlier, subdivided to create the first of the area's new parishes with a Commissioners' church on the borders of Clerkenwell. Building of the square began on the north side with a single house in 1822, still only three in 1823 and 1824, filling gaps. The square was largely completed in 1825, in extent slightly larger than Northampton Square, on the opposite side of Goswell Road. Unusually, it was entered not on from streets at each corner, but also from the centres of this gave it a remarkable number of corner houses, further increased by siting the church in the middle of one side. The houses were of the pretty New River estate style, with circular-headed sunk panels above their first floor windows, and blind panels on the return walls to the small streets cutting in. Its history seems to have been uneventful. During most of the 19th century the square, like much of the surrounding area, was occupied by small master clock- and watchmakers, and other workers in the local metal trades. King Square was not in a prosperous neighbourhood. Flanked by monotonous parallel streets linking Goswell Road and Brick Lane by the yearly days of this century it was in decay, and by 1930 it had become very poor. At that time 575 families needed to be rehoused. In the Fifties its doom was sealed, and a new 13-acre housing estate was planned on the site. By 1960, part had been demolished, and in 1963-5 the square's garden was attractively landscaped and extended to include three playgrounds, the streets were flattened, and tower blocks designed by Embenon, Franck Tardrew were dotted about in a fashionably random manner. Between 16 and 17 storeys, they contained 293 flats, and were given names with a local flavour Barnabas, Rehire, Macclesfield and President, the last three covering the obliterated streets of those names.
Turnpike House, containing a further 162 flats, named after the former turnpike gate on Goswell Road on which it fronts. It is supported on a broad arch to first floor level, through which can be glimpsed both green and church. The flats, costing £1 million, went up quickly, partly using pre-fabricated methods for, it was claimed, "greater accuracy and better finishes,” and reducing maintenance costs. Alas, before long cracks appeared, and by 1978 there were roof problems and fractured heating mains, especially in Turnpike House, which took a considerable, time to repair. The estate is spacious and not unattractive but one must regret the policy which dictated demolition of an existing amenity rather than rehabilitation of low-rise houses as, a few years on, would probably have happened.
22 During the first decade of this century no less than three clergymen lived there, including the vicar
33 it was also the home of small dedicated organisations: the Finsbury Conservative Association
38 Society for Organising Relief and Repressing Mendicity
28 and by 1913, a 'Pioneer Preachers' Hostel For
38 Many years before the Second World War was a 'Home of Service'.
29 George Baxter lithographer, who lived in no less than three Finsbury squares.
St.Clement’s. built as St Barnabas. 1826. Bombed and reopened 1954. Pulpit from Marylebone Chapel. Built in 1826 by Thomas Hardwick and pleasantly restored after war damage. . Four-column giant Ionic portico without pediment. The needle-thin obelisk spire was intended to refer to the mother church of St Luke. Originally with a plain galleried interior. After Second World War damage reconstructed by Norman Homes, reopened 1954. Grand, spare spaces of nave, aisles and sanctuary divided by four cruciform piers with giant Corinthian columns; flat ceilings. Altar below a classical baldacchino. Nice hexagonal pulpit c18, from St Marylebone Chapel. The church, created to carve two parishes from one, was in its turn to be united in 1954 with St Clement's, a Victorian Anglican church in Lever Street, damaged in World War II, and subsequently demolished. St Barnabas was then renamed St Clement's. St Barnabas (1822-6) was built on part of the Peerless Estate, belonging to St Bartholomew's Hospital and became part of a new square. The architect was Thomas Hardwick, His church combined an Ionic portico with a blocking could substituted for a pediment, and a square tower ending in a tapering octagonal spire - a freakish combination of classical with quasi-Gothic which drew the condemnation likewise criticised the sunk panels placed above the circular-headed windows, like "attic windows bricked up to avoid the window duty". "Built more for use and duration than particular ornament,” indeed its durability has at least outlasted its surroundings. Although damaged in 1941 it was restored in 1954.
Turnpike House. Named after gate on Goswell Road. Built of precast concrete units on a specially developed system. Flats not maisonettes and precast balconies to prevent staining. Lubetkin’s assistant C.L.Franck. Tallest tower completed 1965 forms the west side of thereconstructed square. Is quite daringly opened up by a big arch atground level.
Six-storey flats on columns, with privatebalconies facing the square.
18th 16, 17, 25 quite ambitious.
5-6 l770/5 fashionable open air preaching place in 1740s. Peoples visited the houses to hear Whitfield. Wesley preached there despite an ox in the congregation.
John Newton evangelical ex-slaver lived there. St Barnabas
29 36 Finsbury Kitchen for Mothers
Barnabas House
Macclesfield House
President House
Telfer House
Rahere House
Lever Street,
Nineteenth century working class housing.
Guinness Court. Site of Guinness Flats, 1892. Clockmakers, Thwaites & Reed moved out of London
Chadworth Buildings. 1906 Spare free classical detail. Early rehousing efforts are now led only by this block. LCC flats, probably by G. Stephenson. Classical detail marred by reglazing. Four and fiveround a courtyard entered by a big archway.
Finsbury built flats byFranck & Tardrew, 1959-63. Five randomly grouped blocks of sixteen to nineteen storeys are sited where space available. They are built largely of precast concrete unitsdeveloped system, F. Samuely & Partners, engineers, and contain flats, not maisonettes, hence the insistent rhythm oflong balconies on every floor. Balconies are of concrete precastpanels, fluted to avoid staining.
Pleydell Estate
Lever Buildings
St.Luke’s Labrary
Ratcliffe Grove
St.Clement’s Buildings
Lamb’s Buildings
Also called Dyehouse Buildings
St.Joseph’s RC church
Herald House
Leonard Circus
Hitchcock’s Reel. By John Edwards, 1996, a large painted 'reel' tocommemorate a century of film making.
Leonard Street
Was Tabernacle Row
The domestic buildings in these streets have mostly gone. They included early examples ofphilanthropic housing. Langboume Buildings, 1863, financed bySydney Waterlow, founder of the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company.
Shoreditch County Court. Built as the City and Guilds of London Technical College 1881. 1881-3 by E. N. Clifton. Three storeys, ground- and first-floor windows arched. Porch with columns in antis and pediment carved with scientific books.
33-34 Furniture Mill
55-63 65-83 terrace of furniture warehouses 71-83 built to look like a single building. Glass roofs for maximum light. 85 94-106 Finsbury Technical College. First tech in London. Robert Paul Cinema Projection 1895 demonstration. First tech in London threestoreys unified by the use of giant piers between the windows, some prominent wall cranes.
71-83 Like the Charlotte Road worksliops, this row was built to look like single building. But in the East End, the demand was for small low-rent premises. This group, built "on spec' in the late 1870: provided a large number of workshops, each with separate street access. The ground floor and basement extend backwards from the block, giving additional access onto Blackhall Street behind. There was an extension of glass roofs, to take the most of what light there was.
Lassco in St.Michael’s Church also Westland and Co.
Former Whitfield Tabernacle Now used by the Central Foundation School for Boys. By C. G. Searle & Son, 1868. Built to replace Whitefield's famous c18 Congregational Tabernacle at Moorfields. Ragstone Gothic, a huge and rather coarse decorated window in the gable over the triple entrance. Adjoining Sunday School with smaller gable. Inserted floors. Congregational Chapel built by members, 1741. Sunday School
Three mills on a rubbish tip
There was once philanthropic housing here. Demolished Langbourne Buildings 1863, financed by Sir Sydney Waterlow. 94-106
Leverton Place?
One side of the Assembly House’s Yard. One old house still left there
Macclesfield Street
Mallow Street?
Mitchell Street
Normals building, Layton’s gate.
Nile Street
Improvements included the now demolished model dwellingsof 1896-7 by Rowland Plumbe, some of theearliest local authority housing.
Outside of Borough housing 1st pub. 1896/9 111 electric from the start.
Old Street
'ancient paved road'; as an important artery to and from the City, the street is referred to as ancient in early records – ‘Ealdestrate’ c.1200, ‘Eldestrete’ 1275, ‘Le Oldestrete’ 1373.
The main route through the parish of StLuke's, which eventually, with other names. goes to Old Ford on the line of an ancient British trackway. It was developed as part of an 18th residential suburb on the fringeof the City but only a few traces of this domestic period remain. It was an early ribbon development beyond the City. It became commercial and industrial in the 19th and an areato the North was extensively reconstructed after a combination of wardamage and slum clearance.
12 The Old Rodney’s Head, was a pub and has a bust of Rodney under an arch. Dated 1876, an elaborate Venetiancornice and balustrade.
2-4 late 19th buildings listed Grade II. Warehouse built 1872 for Thomas Mabe, colour merchant. Four storeys, with an elaborate unified elevation;giant pilasters, pairedwindows and patterned brickwork between floors.
20-24 remarkable. 1898. More like Glasgow or New York 1880 Ford & Hesketh, specialists in warehouse design. Built for Samuel Haskins, manufacturer of window blinds and rolling shutters. Seven bays, with six bays added 1896-8. A five-storeyedfrontage with bands of iron arcades framing the windows, as onemight expect to find in Glasgow or New York rather than London. Attractively detailed with pierced decorative spandrels, the groundfloor treated similarly but with doorways and broader arches for shop fronts.
27 Mary Dean manufacturing jeweller, Michael Murray silversmith
49 Webb’s Juvenile print warehouse
78 Brayfield House. 1989 transparent steel and glass by Patrick Dairies of Hanscomb Davies Ltd. Anelegantly transparent steel and glass front in a slot between drabneighbours. An angled curve. White cladding, also to therear which has a slight curve and some triangular windows
80-86 1989 Postmodernhas giant arches, but too flat to be effective
88 1900 busily decorated with terracotta, breaks up its sixstoreys by linking the middle ones in pairs, with a faster rhythm ofwindows to the top floor.
90 c18 domestic buildings
109-115 modest c18survivals,
110 Pugh enamellers
116 late 19thfront and central arched window with large central arched window, pilasters and decorative cornice.
118, c18 domestic buildings
120 domestic c18 domestic buildings.
123 Henry Grace warehouse and colour works in a partnership trading as Grace, Yallop & Co. The Old Street works had been in existence since at least 1794 when a beam engine, with sun and planet gear and a cylinder of 16-inch diameter and 4-foot stroke, was purchased by Rowland Yallop. Richard Grace and Huet Johnson from Messrs Boulton & Watt.
142 Churchill House although rewindowed, is astone-clad Edwardian building with very tall giant pilasters toground and first floors.
148 Royal Mail 1970 modernism at its dullest brown clad andbrown glazed
148-166 Bovril Co. HQ west corner of Old St
174-180 Classic House art deco and modernist, in 1930s style, is more fun, with itsArt Deco and modernist touches: a recessed stair-tower and aframed black entrance a curved comer andupper floors with ribbon windows contrasting with the verticals ofthe stair-tower.
188 Genesis Books
207 211 at firstentirely later c20. The first, inhumanly scaled monster is a speculative 1970s tower, sleekly reclad for BritishTelecom offices in 1984.
262-264 Lord Nelson
323
325-329
340-342 Listed Grade II. Early C18 double-span terraced house.
Anchor House
Bartholomew Court
Bouette violin maker
Braithwaite House. Domineering 21 story slab block.
196 City Cloisters are the former St Luke's Parochial Schools, now offices. This was built in 1870, with a wing of 1887 by John Groom. Tall and gaunt, the main part with gables, and a top floor with Gothic arches rebuilt after a fire in 1881. There are niches for statues of a Charity Boy and Girl from the previous building – they are now in St Luke's Church of England Primary School. However the front of the building is most informative and proclaims its history in some detail by means of a number of plaques which read 'St Luke's Parochial Schools founded 1698', 'Removed from Golden Lane to this site 1870', 'New Wing added 1887, J T Redder Esq Chairman', 'The Telfer Wing erected 1887, J T Pedder Esq. Treasurer', 'Erected for 400 children, James Telfer Esq treasurer', 'St Luke's School moved from this site 1972'.
The City of London Maternity Hospital, at the junction with City Road, was the oldest hospital of its kind in the country, founded in 1750, but rebuilt in the 19thcentury and much damaged by bombing.
Cope House
Dog Houses eastern end
'Finsbury Van & Wheel Works’ prominent cement sign on the south side of Old Street walking west from the roundabout on a late-Victorian building and there is a pointing hand. This sign is formed with the letters recessed into the concrete and they would probably have been filled in with black paint.
Godfrey House
Golden Hind on the corner of Golden Lane. Extension in front of older buildings.
Golden Hind three-storey c18 domestic terrace.
Gottleib lutemaker
Granite obelisk by Metropolitan Board of Works 1876
Middle Level interceptory sewer beneath it
More and Co. brewery bought by Watney in 1888
Newland Court
Northampton Hall
Roundabout, created as part of a street-widening scheme, was notorious for its dismal underpasses andaggressive concrete ventilators of the 1960-70s. The showy skeletal arches belong to a facelift of 1993-4 by Hanscomb Davies Ltd.
Old Street Station. 17th November 1901. Between Angel and Moorgate on the Northern Line. Between Essex Road and Moorgate on WAGN. Built by the City and South London Railway and on 1904 became the Great Northern and City Railway. This is a Northern Line station in 16’ diameter tunnels built to take main line stock and Great Northern trains to the City. Electric lights all through and electric lifts.
Paterson Court
Priestly House L.C.C. 1964
Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, the earliest in Britain (1804), rehoused in 1899
Royley House
Shops in Old Street part of the estate
St Luke. The parish was formed in 1733 from part of St Giles Cripplegate, and the church was funded by the Fifty New Churches Act. It was built 1727-33 to designs by two of the Act's surveyors, John James and Nicholas Hawksmoor. Redundant by 1960, and unroofed by the Church Commissioners, it was left derelict after no buyers emerged and became a ruin. The organ case and font went to St Giles Cripplegate, reredos and altar rails to the chapel at St Andrew Holborn. In 1999 Conversion for the London Symphony Orchestra by Levin Bernstein Associates began. The body of the church is of stone and of unusual dignity, with a fine Venetian window in the wall, and the remarkable tower. Its spire is a fluted obelisk and the tower rises soundly and sturdily from the ground from a fragmentary pediment a little behind its front. The entrance in the tower is flanked by staircase wings with doorways. The interior had tall unfluted columns, and galleries on three sides. It is used for the LSO’s education and community programme.
St Luke's Estate, shopping parade with flats above,part of on the site of St Luke's Hospital. This is a total post-war remodelling of an area. The estate extends on both sides of Bath Street whose namerecalls Peerless Pool. The hospital was one of the two early London madhouses, founded in 1751, rebuiltby George Dance Jun. in 1782-4, with a restrained but harmonious front 493ft long. For lunatics who couldn’t get into Bedlam. Voluntary contributions. Originally in the foundry. . Statue of the girl, which came from the Greycoat School. Converted to the Bank of England Printing House, 1917—20. Demolished 1963 after wardamage. The new housing is by the GLC, in two phases. Eastof Bath Street is the earlier part, completed 1969, on the mammoth scale still in vogue in the 1960s and at the high density prescribed for innermost areas by theCounty of London plan. Behind the block with the shops, threelinked ten-storey slabs with scissor-plan flats, and one separatetaller twenty-storey tower. Yellow brick and concrete, the concretein places quite sculpturally handled, see the open arches belowthe tower. New landscaping and gates etc. by Pollard Thomas &Edwards, 1988-9. West of Bath Street are more intimate L-shapedfour-storey blocks in red brick of the 1970s, clustering aroundprivate and public spaces, clearly displaying the influence ofDarbourne & Darke's Lillington Gardens, Westminster
St Luke's Printing Works of the Bank of England, was in a building erected in 1782-4 by the younger Dance as a hospital for the insane.
St. Luke's Vestry Hall. Demolished. This Italianate building of 1865-7 was partially designed by William Christie, the vestry surveyor, who, unable to complete the designs. Enlisted the help of the Westminster architect F.Warburton Stent. It was demolished c.1986.
St.Luke’s Churchyard, Toffee Park. Good railings
Steadman House
Thomas Delarue Paper Factories, Star Printing Works 1874, all bombed except Anchor Lane and building onto Dufferin Street
Vickery Court
Warehouses. Tall, late c19
Wenlake House LCC 1905.
Wessex House
Rotten Row at Western end.
Young’s Buildings
Oliver’s Yard
City Garden Row. Falcon Court. 1970s infill.
Paul Street
2-4
36 Binani House
64
72-74
79-97 South Shoreditch Studios
94 Fellows’ Medical Manufacturing chemist 1900
Peabody Estate
Banner House
St.Luke’s House
Shaftesbury House
Peartree Street
St.Paul’s Church, bombed
Peerless Street
Called after ‘Peerless Pool’. Marie Lloyd born here 12thFebruary 1870.
Radnor Street
Housing by Finsbury Borough Councilis easily recognizable. 1959-60 by Emberton, Franck & Tardrew. Galway House and Grayson House are two formal seventeen-storey blocks, austere, brick-faced, with curved porches providinga little light relief. Like King Square constructedlargely of prefabricated parts, without exterior scaffolding, an earlyexample of this technique.
Galway House. Formal 17 storey block
Gastigny House
Palyn House
St.Luke’s Church of England Primary School. Inscription stones from the old building and inside are the boy and girl figures from the original building 1780 in Golden Lane. By Sheppard Robson and Partners, completed 1974. Low buildings with an intimate entrance courtyard in which are displayed the inscription stones.
Roscoe Street
Was Coleman Street
21 was Society of Friends Meeting House associated with George Fox
St.Luke’s Church Centre. No pretensions 1977 by Biscoe & Stamon. A replacement for the c18 St Luke's.
Silbury Street
Cobbled passage
Singer Street
Tabernacle Street
Features in films 'Eyes Wide Shut’.
Whitefield's first Tabernacle. 1753; rebuilt 1868, which gave the street its present name, stood on the left north of Leonard Street.
1894 first Bell Punch factory of Bell Co Fire and moved out
41 Blacksmiths Company
St.Agnes Le Clair. Swimming bath burnt down in 1845. Roman remains found and a spring 14’ down. Water went through a Roman aqueduct. The date on the baths was 1502.
Foundry - Immediately on the right, between Worship and Bonhill Streets is the site of the Foundry. Marked by a plaque on the rear of the former Epworth Press building opposite. In Wesley's day thearea to the north of London Wall was opencountry. At the north-west corner of Moorfields stood the derelict Royal Foundry, wrecked by an explosion in 1716. Wesley bought it for £115and turned it into a preaching-house, withrooms for a day school, dispensary andalmshouses, and accommodation for him-self and his preachers. Here his motherSusanna spent her closing years and thefirst Conference of preachers was held in 1744. It served the London Methodists fornearly forty years, until replaced by 'theNew Chapel in the City Road' in 1778.Some of its furnishings are preserved in theFoundry Chapel at City Road.
Timber Street
Was Norway Street, Named for the timber trade
Underwood Street
39-43 Features in films 'TheCriminal’.
Vestry Street
Cut through slums in the 1890s by Shoreditch Vestry.
2-18 continues the Newton-Keen scheme.
Westland Place
3 Features in films 'Closer’
15 Fifteen Restaurant. Features in films 'Bedrooms and Hallways’.
Whitecross Street
‘Whitecruchestrete’ 1226, ‘Whitecrouchestrate’ 1310, ‘Whitecrosse Strate’ 1502, so named from a white stone cross mentioned in the 13th century. In the 15th white crosses defined Templar owned land. By the 1890s a new lay-out of regularside streets had replaced most of the crowded courts and alleys. On its east side is a redevelopment offices of c. 1980which replaced Whitbread's later buildings this includes plain brown brick flats over a pedestrian shopping precinctand a covered market. Features in films 'What a Crazy World’.
101 Golden Lane Campus. Includes a primary and infants school, special school and community resource. Nicholas Hare 2008.
Peabody flats tall, close-set blocksof working-class flats of the 1880s, five and six storeys in the usualstriped brick, evidence that this area was a major focus of slumclearance in the later c19.
British Queen. Claims to have been a market pub for centuries
Coltash Court
Cooper House
Cowheel Alley
Forsters Buildings
Free Library
Gloucester Court
Goat Yard. In 1742 Samuel Whitbread bought the Goat Brewhouse where he produced porter. He soon moved to Chiswell Street.
Market . Whitecross Street Market caters for working people. It is open during weekday lunchtimes to pick up a thriving trade from local office and shop. With increased trade in the 16th and 17th centuries new markets appeared coinciding with the banning of street markets within the City walls
Nichols sale room set up as a Temple of Reason in 1796
Prior Weston School
Shrewsbury Court
Site of ex-debtors prison which became British Road Services goods yard
Spread Eagle
Two Brewers
Whitecross Street Mission
Wither’s Court
Railway yard on site of Comptor. Goods Midland Railway. Destroyed by bombing. Site of Hydraulic Pumping Station
Fifteenth century crosses defined templar land
Site of ex-debtors prison which became British Road Services goods yard
Site of ex-debtors prison, which became British Road Services goods yard.
Spread Eagle
Windsor Terrace
David Copperfield lodged there. 1733 parish had been a marsh for skating. Then a park for archery. Then l66 fire refugees camped there. 1700 a suburb. Architect not known. Roof taken off & in the churchyard. Boundary marks in the front gates.
