Aldermanbury

The most conspicuous thing about Aldermanbury today is what isn’t there. A small garden with low stone kerbs tracing a building’s foundations sits beside the Guildhall, topped by a pink granite monument bearing a bust of Shakespeare. This is all that remains of St Mary Aldermanbury — a church that survived the Great Fire and the Blitz, only to be packed onto a ship and sent to Missouri. Around it, office buildings and the broad civic mass of the Guildhall make clear that this has always been the beating heart of City governance.

2011

Boris bikes in Aldermanbury St, London

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

2022

1 Aldermanbury Square London EC2V 7HR

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

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Today

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Broad pavements and a largely pedestrian character give the street a quieter feel than its medieval significance might suggest. The name, carved so deeply into the City’s history, is easy to walk past without a second thought. But it carries a very specific meaning — one that goes back to the earliest days of London’s self-government.

That specific meaning is this: bury is an Old English word for a fortified enclosure, court, or manor house. Joined to alderman — the Old English ealdorman, meaning a senior civic official — the name marks the place where London’s governing body met. As documented by British History Online in Harben’s Dictionary of London, it was suggested by the Elizabethan historian John Stow that the first Guildhall stood on the east side of the present street, and that the district received its name as being adjacent to, or containing within its precincts, the “bury or court of the aldermen of the city.”

The name is verified in documentary records as far back as the reign of Richard I, with forms including “Aldermanesbury” and “Aldermannebury” appearing in the Ancient Deeds of the reign of King John. The northern portion of the street, from Addle Street to London Wall, was separately known as Gayspur Lane until around the mid-18th century, when it was absorbed into Aldermanbury as the street was extended northward.

Aldermanbury existed as a settled street before the Norman Conquest, with British History Online recording documentary references to it in the reign of Edward the Confessor. St Mary Aldermanbury church was first mentioned in 1181 — a medieval parish at the centre of City life that grew alongside the Corporation’s own expanding powers. By the 13th century, the street had acquired a prominent water supply: a conduit in the middle of the road, commissioned by Mayor Sir William Eastfield, was completed by his executors in 1471 and supplied with water piped from Tyburn.

Sion College, a foundation for London clergy established under the bequest of the Reverend Thomas White, was built at the junction of London Wall, Aldermanbury and Philip Lane. Its hall, erected in 1885 on the site of the original college, gave the street an institutional character it retained well into the 20th century. Through all of this change, the Guildhall complex — the administrative centre of the City of London Corporation — remained the street’s dominant neighbour, anchoring Aldermanbury in civic rather than commercial life.

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The Shakespeare connection to Aldermanbury is entirely genuine, if indirect. British History Online’s records of the St Mary Aldermanbury parish document the deep civic roots of the community. John Heminges and Henry Condell — fellow actors in the King’s Men and Shakespeare’s close friends — both lived on the west side of Aldermanbury for decades. They served as churchwardens at St Mary’s, and both were buried in its churchyard. Without their work compiling the First Folio of 1623, eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays — including Macbeth, Twelfth Night and Julius Caesar — would likely have been lost.

The former churchyard of St Mary Aldermanbury, now a public garden on Love Lane, holds the 1896 pink granite memorial to Heminges and Condell, topped by sculptor C. J. Allen’s bust of Shakespeare. The monument was unveiled on 15 July 1896 in a ceremony attended by the Lord Mayor and the American ambassador. The site itself was designated a Grade II listed building on 5 June 1972.

John Heminges and Henry Condell were actors in Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, who lived within the Aldermanbury parish for much of their adult lives. Heminges, born in 1566 near Stratford-upon-Avon, was also a grocer by trade and handled much of the business of the acting company. He lived in the parish for over four decades and was buried at St Mary’s in 1630. Henry Condell, who died in 1627, also lived on the west side of the Aldermanbury street for several decades before retiring to Fulham.

In 1623, seven years after Shakespeare’s death, the two men co-edited the First Folio — the first collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays — containing 36 works arranged across Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. Shakespeare had bequeathed each of them 26 shillings and eightpence to buy mourning rings. Their monument in the former churchyard stands yards from where both men lived and worked, a rare case of a literary monument marking the actual homes of the commemorated.

The Blitz of 29 December 1940 devastated the area around Aldermanbury: Wren’s church was gutted, and many neighbouring buildings were destroyed. The post-war decades saw the street become part of a wider reconstruction of the Guildhall precinct. Following a City of London ward boundary review in 2003, Aldermanbury was formally incorporated into the expanded Bassishaw Ward, which now extends west from Basinghall Street to include the street and its surroundings. This administrative shift gave the street a clearer place within the ward that historically took its name from the nearby Basing family mansion.

The former Sion College site on London Wall and Philip Lane, which had been accessible from Aldermanbury since the 1880s, was redeveloped as part of the post-war office-building wave. The Guildhall Library, which relocated a small police museum from Wood Street police station in 2016, reinforced the area’s role as a centre for City history and records — a fitting continuation of a street whose name has always been synonymous with civic governance.

Aldermanbury today is a broad, largely pedestrian route running north from Gresham Street toward London Wall, flanked by the Guildhall complex and a mix of mid-20th-century and Victorian office buildings. The street’s most visited spot is the small garden marking the footprint of St Mary Aldermanbury, refurbished in 2024 with assistance from Westminster College, Missouri. A large stone marks where the altar once stood; the Heminges and Condell monument holds the centre of the garden.

The Chartered Insurance Institute at No. 20 remains in active institutional use, its Tudorbethan facade giving the street its most distinctive architectural moment. The Guildhall Art Gallery and Guildhall Library, both within easy reach, draw visitors whose interests range from Roman archaeology to City administration. Green space within walking distance is found at St Alphage Garden, just north along London Wall.