London’s Fleet Street, a brief history!
Fleet Street starts at The Strand and carries on up to Ludgate Hill.
It takes its name from the Fleet River, which used to run where Farringdon Road does today. It soon became a major thoroughfare, and attracted senior figures from the Catholic Church. Many major residences were built along its length, which in turn attracted the learned booksellers.
St. Bride’s church – the parish church of the nation’s papers – is on the right-hand side as you walk past the Temple. There are several memorials to journalists killed-in-action – most recently during the Gulf War of 2003. There is also a memorial tree for Reuter’s photographer Dan Eldon, whose diaries formed the cult book The Journey Is The Destination.
Archaeologists believe that the original building, burned down in the Great Fire of 1666, may have occupied the same spot as London’s first-ever church – built by St. Bridget i
n the sixth century AD. The crypt now contains a small museum with the rich history of printing, and relics of these previous buildings.
St. Dunstan’s is just 180 years old, but an earlier version dates from at least the 12th-century. It survived everything that history could throw at it but had become so dilapidated by the 1820s that it was demolished during the widening of Fleet Street.
Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is the name of a 17th-century pub that still stands today. It is famous for the literary boozers that once propped up the bar – Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and Samuel Johnson are all said to have drank here at one time or another.
Other writers to supp from the pumps include Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Thackeray and James Boswell.
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