The Wards of Old London: Lime Street - "Foreigners" in the City

The main road running through London from west to east passes from the Ward of Bishopsgate Within, briefly through Lime Street Ward. It is one of the city's smallest wards, one 18th Century commentator remarking that, though it includes "parts of several parishes, there is not even a whole street in it." In American terms, it constitutes little more than a "block." It is thought to have been named for the sale of lime, for the building trade, but this activity had long since ceased by the time that John Stow completed his Survey of London in 1598.

18th Century map of Lime Street Ward (image is in the Public Domain).

On the corner of Gracechurch Street and Leadenhall Street, there once stood a large lead-roofed house, which gave its name to the latter. In 1309, this was owned by Sir Hugh Nevill, who opened up the grounds to serve as an open market, popular with poulterers and cheese-mongers. It later passed into the hands of Sir Richard ("Dick") Whittington, who ultimately gave it to the City. A new market complex was developed in the 1440s, built by the master-mason, John Croxton, who also built London's Guildhall. This included a grammar school, and a public granary, as well as a market, and is shown on the 16th Century Agas Map as having turrets and battlements, probably to defend the city's grain supply in the event that food shortages required rationing and provoked rioting. Two centuries later, as the forces of Charles I threatened the City with a siege, this was one of many buildings requisitioned by the Parliamentary Commander, Philip Skippon, for the storage both of food supplies and of armaments.

Although the sale and purchase of most goods was tightly controlled by the City Livery Companies, there were always exceptions. The Worshipful Company of Bakers, for example, held a monopoly over the sale of bread, but this did not seem to extend to "wafres" (waffles), consumed on special occasions, including weddings and saints' days, but also, ironically, in times of grain shortage (but only, of course, by those who could afford them). In William Langland's 14th Century poem, Piers Plowman, the character of Haukyn the "Active Man," an itinerant minstrel and waffle-maker, describes a visit to London:

15th Century Manuscript of Piers Plowman, National Library of Wales (image is in the Public Domain).

"At London, I leve,
Liketh wel my wafres;
And louren wan thei lakken hem.
It is not longe y passed.
There was a careful commune,
When no cart com to towne
With breede fro Stratforde;
Tho gonnen beggaris wepe,
And workmen were agast a lite;
This wole be thoughte longe.
In the day of oure Drighte,
In a drye Aprille,
A thousand and thre hundred
Twies thretty and ten,
My wafres there were gesene
When Chichestre was maire."

Wafering irons dating to c 1481. Waffles, being made with eggs and milk, were more expensive than bread, but could be consumed by those who could afford them in times of relative scarcity of grain. Photo: Victoria and Albert Museum (reproduced with permission).

Haukyn was, in City terms, a "foreigner" - not a Freeman of London, and without an attachment to a Livery Company. Leadenhall seems to have emerged at an early stage as the one quarter of the City in which such people were allowed to trade.

De Marskramer (The Pedlar), by Hieronymus Bosch, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen (image is in the Public Domain).

This arrangement, informal in the 14th Century, was, by the reign of Henry VII, becoming official, and it applied not only to foodstuffs, but also to other commodities and goods. The following motion was passed in the Guildhall in 1503:

"Please it, the Lord Mayor and Common Council, to enact that all Frenchmen bringing canvas, linen cloth, and other wares to be sold, and all foreigners bringing wolsteds, sayes, stiamus, coverings, nails, iron work, or any other wares, and also all manner of foreigners bringing lead to the City to be sold, shall bring all such their wares aforesaid to the open market of the Leadenhall, there and nowhere else to be sold and uttered, like as of old time it hath been used, upon pain of forfeiture of all the said wares ..."

Drapers' stall, from a 14th Century manuscript of the Tacuinum Sanitatis, Bibliotheque Nationale de France (image is in the Public Domain).

Croxton's Leadenhall Market was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, but a new one was erected in its place, and there has been a market on the site ever since.

Leadenhall Market in the 19th Century (image is in the Public Domain).

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.

Post-Script (added on 28th January 2016). For information on London's most significant recent archaeological discoveries, including a spectacular early Roman building in Lime Street Ward, please see http://on.natgeo.com/1OB3SBC#.VqiVvdf9v1U.twitter

The Wards of Old London: Cornhill - A City Market for 2000 Years

The main road running through London from west to east passes from Poultry via Bank Junction into Cornhill, so called, as the 16th Century chronicler, John Stow, tells us, after "a corn market, time out of mind there holden." His wording implies that corn was no longer being sold here in Stow's time, and there is little in his chronicle to suggest that corn or flour were being traded to any great extent within the City of London at all. Bread and ale were certainly sold in great quantities, but the bakers and brewers presumably bought their raw materials directly from millers and grain merchants in the countryside surrounding the city.

Cornhill has been in almost continuous use as a market-place since around 80 AD, when the Roman Governor, Gnaeus Julius Agricola, rebuilding the city of Londinium twenty years after its destruction by Boudicca, chose it as the location for the city's forum, incorporating a basilica (combining the functions of a city hall and a law court) and both open and covered spaces for the sale of everything from meat and fish, to wine and olive oil, clothing and ceramics.

A model of the Roman Forum of Londinium (2nd Century AD), Museum Of London. Photo: Xomenka (licensed under CCA).

Within a few decades the city had outgrown its forum, and a new, much grander version had replaced it. A modern visitor, walking up Cornhill (and it is, noticeably, a hill), unknowingly steps over the north-west corner of the basilica, the rest of the complex hidden beneath the streets that lie to the south (Lombard Street, Gracechurch Street, Clement's Lane).

The original "Cornhill" was presumably established either in late Saxon or early Norman times, the abandoned Roman city of Londinium having been re-occupied on the orders of King Alfred the Great, after the Vikings briefly made use of its still robust walls in their war against the English. Stow tells us that, "in the year 1522, the rippers of Rye and other places sold their fresh fish in Leadenhall Market upon Cornhill, but foreign butchers were not admitted there to sell flesh till the year 1533." This is significant, in that it suggests that the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers had been prevailed upon to bow to popular pressure to allow the sale of cheaper fish by "foreign" merchants (meaning people from outside London, who were not members of the company), whilst the Worshipful Company of Butchers held out. Stow records that meat prices actually went up, rather than down, following the decision to admit "foreign" butchers, but this may simply indicate an increasing demand for meat in the context of economic growth.

The arcades of the Victorian Leadenhall Market stand on the same space in which John Stow recorded the 16th Century fluctuations in the price of fish and meat. Photo: Diego Delso (License CC-BY-SA 3.0).

Within Stow's lifetime, a new and elaborate mercantile "forum" was erected by one of London's most prominent citizens, Sir Thomas Gresham. Stow describes the opening of this "bourse," by Queen Elizabeth I: "In the year 1570, on the 23rd of January, the queen's majesty attended with her nobility, came from her house at the Strand, called Somerset House, and entered the city by Temple Bar, through Fleet Street, Cheap, and so by the north side of the bourse, through Threadneedle Street, to Sir Thomas Gresham's in Bishopsgate Street, where she dined. After dinner her majesty returning through Cornhill, entered the bourse on the south side; and after that she viewed part thereof ... which was richly furnished with all sorts of the richest fares in the city, she caused the same bourse by an herald and trumpet to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, and so to be called from thenceforth, and not otherwise."

The Royal Exchange in 1569 (image is in the Public Domain).

Gresham had business interests in the Low Countries, and his Royal Exchange was styled on market-places he had seen Antwerp and elsewhere. This building was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 but, such was its importance, that a replacement was opened just three years later. During the course of the Restoration years, the sale of stocks, shares and futures, together with insurance, rapidly out-paced the direct sale of goods and commodities as the basis of London's economy. Some provision was made for these activities (which had previously taken place in coffee-houses) in the rebuilt Royal Exchange, but they soon forced other trading interests out. Lloyds of London took up home there in 1774.

The Royal Exchange and Cornhill, 1837, by J. Woods (image is in the Public Domain).

Lloyds Subscription Room, 1809, by Thomas Rowlandson & Augustus Charles Pugin (image is in the Public Domain).

The 17th Century Royal Exchange burned down in 1838. Its Neoclassical replacement was opened by Queen Victoria in 1844. By this time, the Stock Exchange had relocated, and insurance had become the main focus of activity within the building. Insurance remains one of the City's most important industries today, but transactions are now conducted from high-tech spaces in modernist skyscrapers: the Royal Exchange building is, once again, a retail space, home to various restaurants and boutiques.

The Royal Exchange in 1955. Photo: Ben Brooksbank (licensed under CCA).

London is, literally, a layered city, the Roman streets stratified beneath the Medieval streets, which in turn are stratified beneath the various modern streets: few areas demonstrate this more clearly than Cornhill, which has preserved its essentially commercial character over the course of more than eighty human generations.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.