Whitefriars Street, EC4
A good starting point for investigating some of London’s history is the street name itself. Take Whitefriars Street which is to be found at the eastern end of Fleet Street and runs southwards towards the Thames, intersecting Tudor Street, before it becomes Carmelite Street. If you think there is a monastic feel about the nomenclature of the thoroughfares in this area, you would not be wrong.
The river Fleet ran above ground until it was forced to take a subterranean route in 1766. On either side of its banks, close to the Thames, sat two large monasteries, nestling cheek by cowl, you might say. On the eastern bank of the Fleet was the monastery of the Dominican order, the Blackfriars, whilst on the western side the Carmelites had their gaff. Because they wore distinctive white mantels over their brown habits on formal occasions, they were known as the White Friars.
The White Friars built a small chapel on the site in around 1253 and then a century later constructed a larger establishment. Eventually this was expanded to occupy land which was bounded by Fleet Street and the Thames to the north and south with what are today Whitefriars Street and Temple Lane marking its eastern and western perimeters respectively. It was described as having “broad gardens, where the white friars might stroll, and with shady nooks where they might con their missals.” As well they might.
In 1538 the Friary was dissolved by Henry VIII and a large part of the land was parcelled off to the Royal Physician who had treated Ann Boleyn for sweating sickness, Sir William Butts. When he died in 1547, the area quickly fell into disrepair, the steeple of the church was toppled and it became known for cheap accommodation and its motley collection of ne’er do wells, attracted to the place by its legal designation as a Liberty and so outside the control of the City of London. It even gained a nickname, Alsatia, defined at the time as “everlastingly the seat of war and the refuge of the disaffected.”
In 1608, the old hall in the Friary was converted into a theatre, the Whitefriars Theatre, lasting for five years before it closed. The Salisbury Court Theatre opened its doors in 1629 before taking an enforced rest from 1649 until the restoration of Charles II. Samuel Pepys was a theatre-goer, commenting in diary on 1st March 1661, “To White-fryars and saw the Bondsman acted; an excellent play.” One of the first public concerts was staged at his house in Whitefriars by violinist John Banister in 1672. Admission was a pricey one shilling.
From some time in the 17th century the area was the home of a company called Whitefriars Glass which came into its own in the 19th century because of the demand for stained glass fuelled by the Gothic revival. Later known as James Powell and Sons it later diversified into domestic and decorative glassware and specialist industrial glassware.
There was also a gas works in the area in the 19th century and inevitably its proximity to Fleet Street meant that the newspaper industry made its mark on the street, from the 1890s Associated Newspapers and the London Evening News having offices and printing works on Whitefriars and Carmelite Streets.
If you are looking for any vestige of the original Friary, you will have to search hard. In 1896 the owner of 4, Britton Court, just off Whitefriars, was having his property valued and, in the process, a Gothic vaulted ceiling was discovered, part of the Prior’s house. The News of the World bought the premises in the 1920s and the owners had the crypt restored and allowed people to see it by prior permission. In the 1980s when the building was to be redeveloped, it was decided that what remained of the Friary was in an inconvenient place and so it was surrounded in steel and moved to a place which would have been the friars’ latrine, much more convenient! With a bit of detective work you can still see it.
And finally, on the intersection of Whitefriars and Fleet Street on the right-hand side as you look towards the Thames, you will see a blue plaque informing you that this was the site of the London offices of the Anti-Corn Law League between 1844 and 1846, one of the first manifestations of a political pressure group with a popular base. The Corn Laws were finally abolished in 1846, job done.
A fascinating area.
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