Clink Street

Narrow, dark and cobbled, Clink Street is best known as the historic location of the notorious Clink Prison, giving rise to the slang phrase ‘in the clink’, meaning ‘in prison’. The lane runs parallel to the Thames near Southwark Cathedral, its character defined by Victorian warehouse conversions and the surviving medieval stonework of Winchester Palace—the London residence of the Bishops of Winchester.

Today the Clink Prison Museum occupies part of the original site, attracting visitors curious about the centuries when this street was under the jurisdiction of the Church rather than the Crown. The street itself carries no official prison markers, yet its name echoes through English slang, linking every jail cell back to this specific place on Bankside. The name arrived long after the medieval estate had first taken shape, but it commemorated something far older.

Clink Street takes its name from the Liberty of the Clink, a medieval estate of the Bishops of Winchester. In 1104–09 Henry I granted this area to the Priory of Bermondsey, which sold it around 1149 to the Bishop of Winchester. By the start of the 17th century, the street name was already in use, derived from the Bishop’s domain, not the prison itself—though confusion between them was ancient even then.

The prison that became famous was established on the Bishop’s land sometime in the early 1500s to enforce the rules of the Liberty. The origins of the name “The Clink” are possibly onomatopoeic, deriving from the sound of striking metal as the prison doors were bolted, or the rattling of the chains the prisoners wore. Whether the name preceded the prison or vice versa remains uncertain, but by 1530 the prison came to be called the Clink, and by 1500 it had become a popular synonym for a prison. The prison was burnt down in the Gordon Riots of 1780 and was not rebuilt, yet the slang endured, making Clink Street’s name immortal in English speech.

The Clink Liberty was formed from the hide of Southwark, which the Bishop of Winchester had controlled since the mid-12th century. Unlike the City of London across the river, the area lay outside the jurisdiction of both the City of London, and Surrey County and thus allowed some activities forbidden there. Theatres and playhouses were allowed in the Clink; the most famous was the Globe Theatre where William Shakespeare performed his plays, and another was The Rose, where Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe both premiered plays. This freedom from regulation made Bankside a playground for entertainment and, inevitably, for vice.

The Clink was a prison in Southwark which operated from the 12th century until 1780, serving the Liberty of the Clink, a local manor area owned by the Bishop of Winchester. The prison served the Bishop’s ecclesiastical authority—for heresy, religious dissent, and violations of the Liberty’s rules. By the 18th century, it housed petty offenders, debtors, and those breaching local statutes. During the English Civil War, the Clink was used as a prison for Royalists; the Bishop’s properties were sold off and the Clink was then used to house debtors. The prison was burnt down in the Gordon Riots of 1780 and was not rebuilt. The site stood empty thereafter, and the street inherited the weight of centuries of imprisonment and slang.

Converted warehouses line the river side of Clink Street, but on one part of the southern side of the street, a remarkable survivor, the Great Hall of Winchester Palace can be seen; the Southwark residence of the Bishops of Winchester. The 13th century saw the surfaced road that would become Clink Street, with the name Clink Street being in use by the start of the 17th century. The palace’s Great Hall survives as a listed structure, its west wall a ghostly echo of bishop’s palaces that once dominated the riverfront.

The Clink Prison Museum now stands on the site where the prison once held its inmates. Though small and heavily interpretive, the museum keeps the street’s notorious history visible to visitors. The narrow lane itself—still dark and cobbled as the guides describe—carries the atmosphere of its past: a place where Church law held sway, where poverty met privilege, and where the names of cells echoed into modern English slang.

Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and younger brother of King Stephen, purchased the manor around 1149 for his London governmental duties. The bishops who followed him shaped the street’s character: by the 16th century the Clink had become largely a prison for actual or supposed heretics who held contrary views to the bishops, with the Marian martyrs John Bradford and John Hooper amongst the inmates. These individuals paid the price for religious dissent in the era when the Bishop held the power of ecclesiastical justice.

The rioters of June 1780 left no named record of individuals who stormed the Clink, though the Gordon Riots broke out on 2 June 1780 triggered by resistance to the Catholic Relief Act of 1778, with Lord George Gordon leading the Protestant Association, and following Parliament’s rejection of their petition, rioters attacked and burnt Catholic churches, businesses, and homes. The prison’s destruction was one act in a wider urban eruption, but it was the defining moment for Clink Street’s future.

In 1786 an Act was passed “for paving, cleansing, lighting, and watching the Streets, Lanes, and other publick Passages... within the Manor of Southwark, otherwise called The Clink,” and the appearance and method of paving of Clink Street, Horse Shoe Alley, Rose Alley and others in the neighbourhood have altered little since that period. In 1812 the Clink Paving Commissioners ordered cast-iron street posts, and many of the former, with the inscription "Clink 1812," still survive. These bollards, dotting the street today, mark the era when the Liberty finally came under formal municipal oversight.

Through the 19th century, Clink Street transitioned from a place of ecclesiastical rule to industrial warehouse use. The surrounding streets attracted warehousing, breweries, and light manufacturing. Today, the lane remains much as it was in the 1800s—narrow, still cobbled, still shadowed by the buildings that line it. The Clink Prison Museum opened to interpret the history, drawing heritage tourists and school groups to a street whose name has outlasted every wall and bars that once defined it.

Clink Street remains one of London’s most atmospheric backstreets, running between Southwark Cathedral and the western approach to London Bridge. The lane itself is narrow and dark, just as the guides describe, lined with converted warehouse blocks painted in warehouse tones of brick and painted wood. The cobbles remain uneven, worn smooth by centuries of footsteps and carts.

At the eastern end, a replica of Sir Francis Drake’s Golden Hinde is moored in a small dock—a playful counterpoint to the serious history that surrounds it. The street has featured in films and television dramas, most famously as the exterior of Daniel Cleaver’s flat in Bridget Jones’s Diary and as a location for Doctor Who. Modern diners and heritage venues have opened nearby, yet the street itself retains a private, almost cloister-like quality, cut off from the bustle of Bankside by its very narrowness and the medieval presences that still command it.