Bowling Green Place

Bowling Green Place is a narrow residential street in The Borough, just steps from London Bridge station. Today it is lined with modest buildings and serves the dense urban fabric of Southwark’s inner core. But its name anchors it to an earlier, quieter era when this corner of The Borough was not packed with commerce alone.

2010

Entrance to the Bowling green, Dulwich Park

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

2024

Bowling Green, Southwark Park

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

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Historical image not found

Today

View of the New Hunt's House Library from the King's College Guy's Campus — near Bowling Green Place

Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

The street takes its character and its name from an unexpected source for such a crowded city district: an open recreation ground where men once played bowls.

Bowling Green Place takes its name from an 18th-century bowling green located here. A bowling green was a specially maintained stretch of finely cropped turf used for lawn bowling, a sport that flourished among the English leisured classes. The game was popular across England from the medieval period onwards, and by the 18th century, bowling greens were common features in towns and cities, often found near inns or as public recreational spaces. That Southwark, a densely settled commercial district south of the Thames, maintained such a green speaks to the demand for recreation even in London’s busy quarters.

When the area was developed for housing and commercial use, the green itself disappeared, but the street that now occupies the site carried forward its memory. The name became a permanent record of leisure lost to urban expansion.

The Southwark area has been densely populated and commercially active since at least the 12th century. Medieval pilgrims heading to Canterbury passed through the borough, merchants traded along the riverfront, and by the 17th century the district was home to theatres, taverns, and workshops. Yet pockets of open ground persisted even in the thickest urban fabric, and bowling greens were among them.

The site itself reflected the social and economic forces of Southwark at different periods. In the 17th and 18th centuries, as London expanded and the commercial classes grew, leisure facilities like bowling greens were prized both for recreation and for the social gathering they enabled. Bowling was played at all social levels, from apprentices to merchants. But as the 19th century brought industrialization and population pressure, open ground became too valuable to leave to sport. The green was absorbed into the growing street pattern, and by the time the street was formally named, the green had already passed into memory.

Today, Bowling Green Place stands in sharp contrast to what the name evokes. The street itself is purely urban, narrow and lined with buildings. Yet the name persists as a marker of recreational history in a part of London where such spaces have become rare. It is a reminder that cities have always needed places to play, even when those places eventually give way to other demands.

Street names across Southwark often commemorate lost landmarks and functions—inns, churches, ancient divisions of land. Bowling Green Place fits this pattern. It preserves not a building or a person, but an activity and a type of social life that the area once supported. That preservation in a street name is all that remains of the green.

Bowling Green Place lies a short walk south of London Bridge station, within the immediate orbit of The Borough market and the tightly knit neighbourhood around it. The street is compact, serving primarily as a residential address with mixed-use buildings typical of inner Southwark.

The area is densely populated and highly connected, with numerous bus routes and the high footfall of The Borough and its market. What little open space exists is precious, and most is reserved for shopping, dining, and circulation rather than recreation. That makes the street’s name an even more pointed echo of what once stood there.