Great Tower Street

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Great Tower Street, looking southeast towards All Hallows-by-the-Tower and Tower Hill .
Great Tower Street, looking northwest.

The Great Tower Street , formerly Tower Street is a street in the City of London . It leads from Tower Hill to the west through the City of London.

Great Tower Street is part of an east-west connection through the city. Originally it connected the Tower of London in the east with the Eastcheap in the west. The construction of the Metropolitan Railway in 1882-1884 changed the city's road system. The Byward Street since then cuts the Tower Street. Now this ends as a street at Byward Street and the church All Hallows-by-the-Tower and continues as an unmarked footpath to the tower. The Tower Ward district of the City of London is named after the street .

history

Tower Street appears for the first time in documents in 1250. While it seems obvious that it is named after the Tower of London, it is also possible that there was another tower in the street. Over the centuries, the street developed into part of the processional procession of British monarchs on ceremonial occasions related to the Tower.

Originally, Tower Street was home to seafarers, ship chandlers and other Londoners involved in seafaring. The street front was mainly lined with offices and representative shops, while workshops and less representative shops stood in the small side streets of Tower Street. Tower Street has long been the center of Tower Ward in London. It wasn't until the boroughs were redesigned in 2003 that Tower Ward lost most of Tower Street, which was slammed into several other boroughs.

In January 1649, there was a huge explosion on Tower Street. The ship outfitter Robert Porter had 27 barrels of gunpowder stored overnight in his house, which he planned to bring to a ship in the Pool of London the next day . A fire broke out in Porter's house and the gunpowder reached it. The barrel explosion destroyed several buildings in the area and killed 67 people. At the time, these explosions and consequences were known as the "Great Fire of London" 17 years before the Great Fire of London took place.

In addition to the ship outfitters, there were numerous pubs and cafes in the street. The Dolphin Tavern was one of Samuel Pepys' regulars and appears in his diaries accordingly. The pub at 48 Tower Street was a pub that Peter the Great frequented while studying shipbuilding in London and was later called Czars Head . Edward Lloyd's cafe on Tower Street was the meeting place for boatmen and traders. The latest news from the sea was traded there, and over time a trade for ship insurance developed here. From this cafe both the Lloyd's of London Insurance Exchange and the Lloyd's Register of Shipping arose .

Pepys also watched the end of the Great Fire in London from Tower Street. English Army engineers destroyed houses at the east end of the street, creating a firebreak that stopped the Great Fire. The Tower and All Hallows-by-the-Tower were spared the fire.

As one of only a few streets in the City of London, there are still individual apartments on Great Tower Street.

buildings

Large office buildings from the 20th and early 21st centuries are characteristic of today's skyline on Tower Street. The 1991 Minster Court takes up much of the north side of the street to the east. A little further west is Plantation Place from 2004.

Not quite so large notable buildings on the street include Millocrat House (1951–1954) and the Harrison & Crosfield office building from 1911. On the south side are several red brick buildings dating from the first half of the 20th century can also all be used as office and administration buildings.

The eastern end of Tower Street now leads as a footpath and right-of-way directly through the Tower Place building on Tower Hill, and is no longer marked as a street.

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c Great Tower Street in: Ben Weinreb, Christopher Hibbert: The London Encyclopedia, Julia Keay, John Keay, 3rd, Macmillan, ISBN 978-1-4050-4924-5 , p. 347
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Ian Youngs: Streets of London: Tower Street , BBC News Online, May 10, 2004
  3. ↑ a b Paul Hartley: Tower Street , Maps of Early Modern London
  4. ^ Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner: London 1, The city of London, 1997, London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-300-09624-8 , pp. 512-513

literature

  • Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner: London 1, The city of London, 1997, London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-300-09624-8 , pp. 512-513

Web links

Commons : Great Tower Street  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 35.8 "  N , 0 ° 4 ′ 53"  W.