Dolben Street

Dolben Street is a mixed commercial and residential street of late eighteenth-century terraced buildings in plum-coloured brick, located in The Borough neighbourhood of Southwark. Nos. 2 to 15 on the south side form a late 18th-century terrace of three storeys in plum-coloured brickwork, though they have undergone some alterations and rebuilding at later periods. The street’s most significant connection is literary: from 1787, Mary Wollstonecraft moved to 45 George Street, in Southwark, now called Dolben Street, when she decided to become a writer.

2016

The White Hart - Dolben Street

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

2024

Dolben Street cycle storage 2024-06-25

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

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Historical image not found

Today

Southwark College — near Dolben Street

Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

Yet the street itself is younger than the name suggests. George Street was formed circa 1776 and the houses on either side were completed and tenanted by 1780 when the street name first occurs in the sewer rate books. The transformation from George Street to Dolben came over a century later, a renaming that tells the story of Victorian commemorative zeal and ecclesiastical reverence.

The street was renamed Dolben Street in 1911 in honour of John Dolben (1625–86), Archbishop of York, who in 1671, when Bishop of Rochester, officiated at the consecration of Christ Church. The choice was not arbitrary: Christ Church—now Southwark Cathedral—stands just yards away, making Dolben’s presence at its consecration two and a half centuries earlier the ecclesiastical anchor for the street’s new identity. The renaming reflects the Victorian and Edwardian fashion of commemorating religious and public figures through street nomenclature, particularly those with specific local connections.

For over 130 years before the 1911 renaming, the street had been known by a far simpler name—George Street—following the generic custom of naming streets after reigning monarchs or popular given names. The shift to a historical figure’s surname elevated the street’s narrative from the mundane to the commemorative.

The street was built across the open fields shown as “tenter grounds” on Rocque’s maps, on part of what became known as Brown’s Estate. The formation of George Street was part of the rapid development of the area which followed the erection of Blackfriars Bridge. That bridge, completed in 1769, transformed Southwark’s southern reaches from pastoral fringe to urban expansion zone. Within seven years, the first houses rose; by 1780, the street was established enough to appear in official rate books.

From 1787 onwards, the street became indelibly linked with one of English literature’s most influential voices. Mary Wollstonecraft decided to become a writer and came to London, contacting her friend Joseph Johnson, a publisher and leading figure in the radical movements of the time. Johnson found her lodgings at 45 George Street, Southwark, now called Dolben Street. It was from here that she launched her career, firstly through publishing her novel, Mary: A Fiction, and her works on the education of children, but mostly through meeting radical thinkers at the dinners given by Joseph Johnson. Her time at Dolben Street, Southwark was the furnace of her intellectual development, and the site of her most intensely creative years.

The street’s character through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries settled into one of modest commerce and working-class habitation. The houses have been occupied by small tradesmen, chandlers, bakers, etc., and by artisans. This remained largely true until recent decades, when Southwark’s shift from industrial to cultural and residential regeneration began to reshape the wider Borough.

The physical heritage of Dolben Street lies in its surviving late eighteenth-century terraces. Several of the doorcases retain their simple architectural surrounds. No. 2 has a projecting shop front with splayed sides supported on two shaped brackets, and with an overhanging fascia, comprising a frieze and cornice with modillions on three simple console brackets. These details, subtle though they may seem, represent the craftsmanship of a period of rapid suburban expansion, when even modest commercial premises received considered decorative treatment.

The street’s cultural significance extends beyond its architecture. As documented by British History Online, Dolben Street preserves the location where Wollstonecraft wrote some of the foundational texts of feminism and hosted gatherings of radical intellectuals including Thomas Paine and William Godwin. This makes No. 45 (formerly 45 George Street) not merely a historical address but a site of intellectual ferment whose legacy shaped modern thought on women’s rights, education, and political liberty.

Dolben Street remains a working street of The Borough, a mixed-use thoroughfare where residential and commercial uses coexist without fanfare. The late eighteenth-century terrace continues to house residents and small businesses, its plum-coloured brickwork weathered but intact. The street lacks the spectacular regeneration of neighbouring areas, which arguably preserves its character—the street is still recognisably what it was two centuries ago, even as London transforms around it.

For those walking Dolben Street today, its significance lies not in visual spectacle but in historical resonance. No blue plaque marks No. 45, yet it remains the address where a woman escaping conventional constraints found space and community to think, write, and argue for the freedom of her sex. The street’s lack of overt commemoration may be its truest memorial: it continues to function as a lived space, as it has for nearly 250 years.