Bedale Street

Bedale Street is a short, shadowed lane barely a hundred metres long, pinned between Borough Market’s cast-iron sheds and the railway viaduct that carries trains out of London Bridge. The street is not wide enough to sunlight the pavement when trains pass overhead. At its heart stands the Globe Tavern, a distinctive Gothic building that opened in 1872 and has served market traders, workers, and curious visitors ever since. The lane was not always called Bedale Street—it takes its name from a Yorkshire town, and that naming only came in 1891.

2008

Bedale Street

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

2013

View along Winchester Walk from Bedale Street

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

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Historical image not found

Today

Street sign, Green Dragon Court SE1 — near Bedale Street

Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

The street takes its name after Bedale, Yorkshire; it was formerly York Street after Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany but was changed in 1891 to avoid confusion with similarly named streets; further back still it was Foul Lane, a descriptive epithet. Bedale derives from ‘Beda’s Halh’, which means the corner or piece of land of Beda—a place name with Anglo-Saxon roots. The renaming to Bedale Street was part of a broader London County Council effort to rationalise metropolitan street names that had become hopelessly confused after centuries of local variation and private naming.

Bedale Street’s history is inseparable from Borough Market and the arrival of the railways. For centuries, this was a modest lane with its own character, known variously as Foul Lane and then York Street. The street’s real transformation came in the 1860s. In April 1856, the St Saviour’s District Board petitioned the Metropolitan Board of Works to create a new street to run between the South Eastern Railway terminus at London Bridge station and the West End. The street was the first to be made by the Board and was completed in 1864. This was Southwark Street, not Bedale itself, but the building of that thoroughfare and the railway viaduct that followed fundamentally changed the locality.

Bedale Street is fundamentally a working lane, not a destination in itself. Its character is defined by proximity to Borough Market and the relentless railway traffic overhead. The Globe Tavern gives the street a focal point for market traders and early-morning workers. The narrow confines and overhead viaduct create an almost cathedral-like atmosphere—industrial and confined, yet possessing a particular London character that attracts both locals and visitors.

Bedale Street remains a working market lane, hemmed in by the railway viaduct and the modern glazed entrance buildings of Borough Market. The street sees early-morning deliveries to the market, workers hurrying from London Bridge station, and steady foot traffic of food shoppers and tourists. The Globe Tavern continues to operate, and the lane retains its functional, unglamorous character despite the gentrification that has transformed much of Southwark. The viaduct above carries an endless succession of trains, making conversation difficult and sunlight rare.