Borough High Street

Borough High Street was the only connection from the south bank of the Thames to London before the building of Westminster Bridge. It continues southwest as Newington Causeway, here co-inciding with ancient Stane Street, the Roman road between London and Chichester. Every journey south began here: merchants, pilgrims, soldiers, and eventually the coaches that made this street the busiest thoroughfare in southern England.

1812

The Talbot Inn, Borough High Street, Southwark

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2007

Borough High Street from Southwark Street

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c. ?

Borough high street southwark london

Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Today

Contemporary photo not found

Today the street still carries the ghost of that heritage. The George Inn is the only surviving galleried coaching inn in London, standing as a living reminder of a lost world of travel. The name tells the whole story—not of a family or landmark, but of the place itself: the borough at London's gates.

'Borough' itself comes from a district named 'Southwarke borow' in 1559, the 'borough of Southwarke' in 1603—the word meaning 'suburb of a city outside the wall'. The earliest recorded name for the street is simply 'The Borough' which was the part between the fork of the street and London Bridge. South of the fork it was called 'St. Margaret's Hill'. These names were subsumed in the Tudor period as 'Longe Southwark' (differentiated from 'Short Southwark' now Tooley Street) and by the late Georgian era as simply 'High Street'.

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 street's nomenclature thus reflects its own history—a gradual consolidation from local place-names into one coherent urban identity, formally recorded at the moment when the Victorian city was imposing order on medieval geography.

The Romans routed two Roman roads into Southwark: Stane Street and Watling Street which met in what is now Borough High Street. Excavations have proved that there was a Roman settlement in Southwark. The remains of houses have been found on either side of the High Street from the river to the vicinity of St. George's Church. By the medieval period, Southwark developed and was one of the four Surrey towns which returned Members of Parliament for the first commons assembly in 1295.

Borough High Street is one of the oldest roads in the London area and from the earliest times of which we have any knowledge it has been well supplied with inns for the convenience of travellers. A number of these were used in the 18th and 19th centuries as depots for carrier wagons and for passenger coaches to and from Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire. There were twenty-three in total, including the Bear, the Queen's Head, the King's Head, the Catherine Wheel, the Tabard, the White Hart, and the George. Many of them dated back originally to the mediæval period, and were in use as coaching inns up to the mid-nineteenth century, when this mode of transport was superseded by the railway. These inns were very famous and receive mention in the work of such literary giants as Chaucer, Shakespeare and Charles Dickens, though are now all gone—apart from the George.

The shocks came with the railroads and modern improvements. The building of London Bridge Station in 1843–4 (partly rebuilt in 1847 and subsequently enlarged) and the formation of the Charing Cross Railway line between London Bridge, Waterloo and Charing Cross in 1862–3, crossing Borough High Street just south of St. Saviour's led to the line cutting right across the ground and buildings of St. Thomas's Hospital, forcing it to move from the site which it had occupied for over 600 years.

The Tabard is certainly the most famous of the Borough inns as the meeting place of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims. The pilgrims to Canterbury, as imagined by the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, started their journey from the Tabard Inn in what is now Borough High Street. The inn became fixed in English literature—immortalised not only by Chaucer but later by Dickens, where Mr Pickwick met his future servant and companion, Sam Weller – in 'The Pickwick Papers', chapter 10, at the White Hart. During the reign of Henry VIII the George was called the St George and was probably known to, if not frequented by, William Shakespeare.

Wyngaerde's view of London, circa 1550, shows Suffolk Place on the west side of Borough High Street as "a large and most sumptuous building," surmounted by towers and cupolas. Its size and importance so much impressed the unknown draughtsman of the plan of Borough High Street of circa 1542, that he made it appear larger than St. Saviour's Church or any other building in the locality. The Mint had an evil reputation during the 18th century as a resort of coiners, thieves and the like. It was the haunt of the notorious Jack Sheppard and his companion Jonathan Wild.

Henry Bailley, M.P. for Southwark in 1376 and 1379, was host of the Tabard—"A semely man oure hooste was withalle For to han been a marschal in an halle"—immortalised in Chaucer's own verse. His role was not merely to serve ale, but to manage the complex logistics of the pilgrimage trade: directing travellers, arranging horses, moderating disputes among hundreds of guests each day. The hosts of these great inns were public figures in their own right, often appearing in civic records and literary works.

Nearby, the Queen's Head was owned by the family of John Harvard, the founder of Harvard University who is remembered in the Harvard Chapel in Southwark Cathedral. The connection illuminates a wider pattern: Borough High Street not only served London, but the entire network of English trade and migration, including those who would sail to the New World.

The nineteenth century was catastrophic for Borough High Street's inns. The George could accommodate 80 coaches a week, but was once much larger and two wings were pulled down in 1889 by the Great Northern Railway Company to make way for engine sheds at London Bridge Station. The railway finished off most coaching inns and severely truncated the George. The Tabard was demolished in the nineteenth century, and the White Hart was demolished in the nineteenth century. By 1900, not a single coaching inn remained intact except the George.

The street reinvented itself as the heart of Borough Market and the retail gateway to the south. In 1868 the Hop Exchange was built in Southwark, almost opposite the George Inn. The exchange still stands and is protected as a "listed building" by the government as a result of its historic importance. London Bridge Station became the terminus itself, and the street transformed from a place of rest to a place of haste—no longer where pilgrims gathered, but where millions passed through.

Borough High Street remains a working street, not a museum. Borough is a cosmopolitan area of London, with many restaurants, bars and Borough Market. The market itself is one of London's most popular food destinations, drawing tens of thousands of visitors weekly. Yet the inns still haunt the place. The George sits quietly in its yard, now serving wine and real ale to tourists and office workers where it once provisioned knights and merchants. Borough High Street had many large coaching inns with courtyards surrounded by multi-tier galleries. There were 23 coaching inns, including the Bear, the Queen's Head, the King's Head, the Catherine Wheel, the Tabard, the White Hart, and the George. These inns are now all gone, apart from the George.

The street's yards and alleys preserve the memory. Counter Court behind the Old Town Hall Chambers preserves in its name the memory of the old Borough prison. Talbot Yard marks where the Tabard stood. White Hart Yard, King's Head Yard, and Queen's Head Yard still bear the names of vanished inns, their long courtyards now cut up into small shops and bars. Walk these narrow passages and you walk the beds of history—medieval pilgrimage, Tudor grandeur, Georgian chaos, Victorian progress, and now the reinvention of an old street as food, culture, and commerce.