Borough High Street

Before Westminster Bridge was built, Borough High Street was the only connection from the south bank of the Thames to London. For over a thousand years, anyone travelling south from the City had to pass along this street, making it one of the most vital thoroughfares in medieval and early modern England. The Romans routed two major roads—Stane Street and Watling Street—into Southwark, which met at what is now Borough High Street. This ancient infrastructure would shape the street's character for centuries.

1812

Anonymous - The Talbot Inn, Borough High Street, Southwark - B1977.14.18370 - Yale Cent...

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2016

Borough High Street, Southwark

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c. ?

Borough high street southwark london

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Today

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As a major communications node for traffic between London and Portsmouth, Dover, and south-east England generally, Borough High Street had many coaching inns. These establishments lined both sides of the street, their courtyards and galleries still visible in the alleyways branching east from the High Street. But the name you see today arrived surprisingly late—it was only in the 1890s that the London County Council standardised it to ‘Borough High Street.’

The area was named as ‘Southwarke borow’ in 1559 and ‘borough of Southwarke’ in 1603. Thus ‘borough’ means a suburb of a city outside the wall. The name itself derives from Old English sūth and weorc, meaning “southern defensive work.” By the 12th century, Southwark had been incorporated as an ancient borough, and this historic status is reflected in the alternative name of the area as Borough.

The street which leads from London Bridge southwards through the Borough to Newington, now called Borough High Street, Blackman Street and Newington Causeway, must always have been an important thoroughfare. Stow calls the more northerly portion Long Southwark. In the Tudor period these names were subsumed as ‘Longe Southwark’ (differentiated from ‘Short Southwark’ now Tooley Street), and by the late Georgian era as simply ‘High Street’. The northern section from the junction with Duke Street Hill was renamed ‘Wellington Street’ to commemorate the Duke of Wellington. From the 1890s the London County Council started to rationalise all metropolitan street names and ‘Borough High Street’ became the name for the current route.

The Tabard Inn was established in 1307 on the east side of Borough High Street, at the road's intersection with the ancient thoroughfare to Canterbury and Dover. It was built for the Abbot of Hyde in Winchester, who purchased the land to construct a place for himself and his ecclesiastical brethren to stay when on business in London. The Tabard was famous for accommodating people who made the pilgrimage to the Shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, and it is mentioned in the 14th-century literary work The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. The Tabard was probably one of the earliest inns in this street of inns. It is certainly the most famous of the Borough inns as the meeting place of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims. Henry Bailley, M.P. for Southwark in 1376 and 1379, was then host of the Tabard.

There may have been as many as 50 inns for a visitor to choose from in the street, as well as numerous food shops and taverns. Most inns lasted well into the Victorian era, but by the 1880s, their trade had been erased by a force more powerful than fire—the railways. The many hundreds of rooms offered by the inns could no longer find occupants, as fast rail travel replaced the coach. Only the George Inn now remains in something like its original form. The rest are remembered only in the names of the dozen or so alleys, which branch off from the eastern side of Borough High Street.

The street itself has been reconfigured and rebuilt so many times that the medieval alignment survives only in fragments. The Borough High Street Conservation Area is based on Borough High Street between St George the Martyr and London Bridge. With the exception of Southwark Cathedral, the George Inn and modern intrusions, the building stock is of the 18th, 19th and early 20th century, designed on Classical principles. The George Inn is Grade I-listed and has stood since the 17th century, though its previous incarnations date back to medieval times. Dickens mentions it, Shakespeare almost certainly drank here.

Listed buildings on Borough High Street include Nos. 50–52 (including Calvert’s Buildings), the George Inn, and Nos. 91–95. The Church of St. George the Martyr stands at the corner. Calvert’s Buildings is reputed to be c.1542 and remains one of the only surviving examples of a timber-framed house with an overhanging upper floor. These hidden courtyards and 18th-century buildings speak to a street that reinvented itself after fire—a conversation between pilgrimage, coaching, and commerce frozen in brick and timber.

Borough Market's transformation from a working fruit and vegetable market into a food tourist destination has reinvented Borough High Street’s character. The street now sits at the junction of medieval preservation, Victorian heritage, and 21st-century food culture. When London Bridge Station services were extended by a viaduct to Charing Cross Station in 1868, St Thomas’s Hospital relocated and was partly demolished. Borough High Street continues southwest as Newington Causeway, where it coincides with ancient Stane Street, the Roman road between London and Chichester.

The street now hosts SE1 Direct, a vibrant online community documenting Southwark’s ongoing story, alongside the British History Online Survey of London, which provides comprehensive documentation of the street’s medieval and early modern development. The Southwark Cathedral and surrounding conservation area remain central to the street’s identity as a place of pilgrimage and reflection, despite the commercial energy that now defines its daylight hours.

Borough High Street today feels like a palimpsest. Medieval alleyways run perpendicular to the main thoroughfare—George Inn Yard, Talbot Yard, and a dozen others whose names preserve the memory of vanished inns. The Borough is a cosmopolitan area of London, with many restaurants, bars and Borough Market. The street also has many cafés and food shops. Early mornings belong to traders and cooks; afternoons and evenings to tourists following the Pilgrims’ Way from Southwark Cathedral towards Canterbury.

The street’s architecture spans Roman foundations, medieval timber frames, Georgian townhouses, Victorian warehouses, and 20th-century modernism—all within one block. Southwark Bridge Railway viaduct still crosses it, a cast-iron reminder of the coaching inn’s defeat. The Borough High Street Conservation Area is based on Borough High Street between St George the Martyr and London Bridge, and includes Southwark Street to the junction with Park Street and a small network of streets between London Bridge, the riverfront and the Cannon Street railway bridge, within which Southwark Cathedral and the Borough Market are situated. For most visitors, the street is a gateway between London Bridge and Borough Market. For historians and pilgrims, it is where the journey begins.