Upper Marsh

Upper Marsh takes its name directly from its position on the old road across Lambeth Marsh. When Westminster Bridge Road was driven through the settlement in 1750, it cut the existing road in two, leaving a northern stretch and a southern stretch. The northern stretch became Upper Marsh; the southern became Lower Marsh.

The name is also a reminder of what the area had been before that division: open, undrained marshland, only developed afterwards. The marshes were drained through the later 18th century, and building spread across the area from the 1780s.

Before the marsh was drained, the ground near Upper Marsh had a grimmer use. Curtis's great botanical garden stood nearby on a spot where, in earlier times, a lazar-house — a hospital for people with leprosy — had once stood.

Industry arrived early and stayed late. Thomas Field founded a soap factory on Upper Marsh before 1642, and by 1800 the business had passed to his descendants John and Charles Field, trading as candle makers. Through the 1850s the Field works made candles and nightlights, though by 1887 no member of the Field family remained on its board, and the factory finally left for Wimbledon in 1941, becoming part of Aspro-Nicholas Ltd in 1960.

Pubs on the street have a documented pedigree too. London County Council deeds traced the Canterbury Arms Tavern — formerly the Kings Arms — back to 1781, and the Duke's Head stood at 43 Upper Marsh by 1869, before the street was renumbered. By the 1860s the wider area held a dense mix of soap works, potteries, courts, alleys, boat-building and timber yards, much of which was cleared for the construction of the Albert Embankment between 1866 and 1870, built as a flood wall for the low-lying ground around Waterloo, Vauxhall and Kennington.

Entertainment crowded onto this short street. The Bower Saloon, near the junction of Upper Marsh and Stangate Street, staged crude melodrama and variety through the mid-19th century. Nearby, the Bower Music Hall, attached to the Duke's Tavern on Stangate Street, was rebuilt in 1875, reopened briefly as the New Stangate Theatre, and ended up as a candle warehouse by 1877.

The Canterbury Hall's own site had history behind it: the Illustrated London News reported in 1856 that the ground had for centuries held a place of public resort — the Canterbury Arms, formerly a hostelry in the marsh near Lambeth Palace.

Thomas Field set the street's industrial character in motion, founding a soap factory here before 1642, a business his descendants carried forward as candle makers.

Charles Morton brought a different trade to Upper Marsh. He opened the Canterbury Music Hall, in 1849 by the Survey of London's date, the venture that would be rebuilt three times over the following decades into a full theatre before its wartime destruction.

Upper Marsh sits within the northern edge of Lambeth, close to where it meets Southwark near Westminster Bridge Road. The soap works, the taverns, and the music halls that once crowded the street are gone, but its name still marks the line a bridge road drew through a marsh nearly three centuries ago.