Stamford Street

The name Stamford is derived from the Old English words stān (“stone”) and ford (“a river crossing”), together meaning a stony or paved ford—a point where a watercourse could be crossed by stepping on stones. The name is derived from the Old English words “stān” and “ford,” meaning “stone” and “ford” respectively, referring to a stony ford or a crossing point where a river can be traversed by stepping on stones.

The place-name element is ancient and widespread. The place-name Stamford is first attested in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it appears as Steanford in 922 and Stanford in 942, appearing as Stanford in the Domesday Book of 1086; the name means “stony ford.” It is the same root that gives Stamford in Lincolnshire its name, and was a common descriptor for early settlement sites near shallow, stone-bottomed river crossings. The street in Southwark takes its name from this established place-name tradition, applied when the road was first laid out c. 1790. Historically the area sat on low-lying, once-marshy ground: Stamford Street is built on part of the demesne land of the manor of Paris Garden, and at the eastern end it roughly follows the line of an earlier road, called Holland’s Leaguer, from the notorious house of that name. The precise occasion of the name’s application to this particular street is not documented in surviving records.

Before a single house rose on Stamford Street, the land had a long and turbulent prior life. In 1113 the manor of Paris Garden was given by Robert Marmion to Bermondsey Abbey, and it was not called Paris Garden until the 14th century. The whole area is below high-water level and was prone to flooding; consequently it was not built up until after 1809 when new sewers were constructed. The eastern stretch of Stamford Street was the first to be laid out, roughly following the route of a much older track. The eastern end from Blackfriars Bridge Road to No. 40 was built circa 1790; on the first edition of Horwood’s map (1794–99) the ground westward of Boddy’s Bridge is, except on the river frontage, shown as open gardens or fields. Upper Stamford Street, the continuation westward to Broad Wall, was added circa 1803. The extension to Waterloo Road was made in 1815.

The street’s original stock-brick terraces were the homes of engineers, artists and professional men. No. 18 (formerly 27) was the residence of John Rennie from 1794 until his death there in 1821; this period covered the most important part of his career, during which he was responsible for the design and construction of Waterloo Bridge and Southwark Bridge, the formation of London Docks and the East India Docks, and the design and erection of new machinery for the Royal Mint. By 1829 over ninety houses in what was then called Upper Stamford Street were occupied, and the street had become a respectable professional address south of the river. At this time the Bankside area was a centre for hat-making, and there were seven hat-makers in Stamford Street in 1882.

Most of the original houses of Stamford Street were demolished in the early 1900s and replaced with industrial buildings. The Galsworthy family—whose members would be prototypes for characters in John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga—owned several of the houses here in the 1840s, and the street housed printers, offices and commercial enterprises through the later Victorian period. During World War II the area suffered bomb damage, but Stamford Street was by-passed by post-war development of the South Bank. The result was a long period of dereliction and half-use that persisted into the 1970s.

Stamford Street has housed a remarkably diverse cast. At No. 35 (formerly 18) on the south side, lived Thomas Love Peacock and his mother in 1832–43; the house is now demolished. Peacock—a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and a celebrated satirical novelist—took a house at 17 (later 18) Stamford Street, Blackfriars, in June 1819 and remained in the street for some two decades, writing some of his most memorable works here. His novels, including Crotchet Castle (1831), were crafted in part at this address. The street also has a connection to the illustrator John Leech, born in 1817 in adjacent Bennett Street: the house in Bennett Street was the birthplace of John Leech, caricaturist, and the London County Council erected a tablet on the new building recording that John Rennie and John Leech formerly resided in houses on the site.

The building at 150 Stamford Street carries one of the street’s most extraordinary wartime stories. Built between 1912 and 1915 for Her Majesty’s Stationery Office and known as Cornwall House, with tunnels connecting it to nearby Waterloo Station, the building was requisitioned in 1915 for use as a military hospital before HMSO could move in, and the tunnels were used to transfer wounded soldiers arriving by train; from 1920 it was used as government offices. King’s College acquired the building in the late 1980s and after refurbishment it opened as an educational site in 1999. It is now the Franklin-Wilkins Building, one of the largest university buildings in London.

The street’s connection to Sainsbury’s supermarket stretches back more than a century. For more than a century—until 2001—the company had its headquarters in and around Stamford Street; one of the company’s many HQ buildings stood on the site now occupied by the One Blackfriars skyscraper. A sausage and pie factory just off Stamford Street, built in the 1930s, was demolished only in 2016.

The most celebrated resident of Stamford Street was the Scottish civil engineer John Rennie the Elder (1761–1821). John Rennie was a Scottish civil engineer who designed many bridges, canals, docks and warehouses, and a pioneer in the use of structural cast-iron. Rennie died, after a short illness, at his house in Stamford Street, London, on 4 October 1821, and was buried in the crypt at St Paul’s Cathedral. His son, Sir John Rennie the Younger, was born at 27 Stamford Street, Blackfriars Road, London, on 30 August 1794 and went on to complete his father’s design for the new London Bridge, for which he was knighted in 1831.

Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866), satirical novelist and poet, lived at successive addresses on the street from 1819 into the 1840s. Thomas Love Peacock was an English novelist, poet, and official of the East India Company; he was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and they influenced each other’s work; Peacock wrote satirical novels, each with the same basic setting: characters at a table discussing and criticising the philosophical opinions of the day. His mother continued to live with him in Stamford Street throughout much of this period. Adjacent to the street, the caricaturist John Leech—a British caricaturist and illustrator best known for his work for Punch, a humorous magazine for a broad middle-class audience, combining verbal and graphic political satire with light social comedy—was born in Bennett Street in 1817.

In the late 19th century, notable residents in the early years of the Peabody estate on Stamford Street included Mary Ann Nichols, who lived in Block D of Stamford Street with her husband William Nichols and their children; following the couple’s separation, Mary moved to the Whitechapel area where she struggled financially before being murdered in 1888. The Coin Street campaign of the 1970s and 1980s was championed by local resident Bernadette Spain, after whom Bernie Spain Gardens — carved directly from the former Eldorado Ice Cream factory site at Nos. 64–76 — are named.

The transformation of Stamford Street from a semi-derelict industrial corridor into today’s mixed neighbourhood is inseparable from the Coin Street story. In 1977 a developer announced plans to build offices and Europe’s tallest hotel on eight largely derelict sites around Coin Street; the Coin Street Action Group was set up to develop community-led alternative plans; the Greater London Council owned half of the land and blocked the development, selling the site to Coin Street Community Builders in 1984, with the aim of making the area a better place to live, work and visit by creating a mix of uses.

The result was a succession of community-led housing projects directly adjoining the street. Between 1984 and 1988 derelict buildings were demolished, housing co-operatives were built, and a new park was created between Stamford Street and the riverside. Bernie Spain Gardens were laid out on the South Bank riverside in 1988, in two parts: the south park between Stamford Street and Upper Ground, and the north park between Upper Ground and the riverside walkway. The gardens were named after Bernadette Spain, one of the original Coin Street Action Group campaigners, and were completed in 1988, occupying the site of the former Eldorado Ice Cream factory at 64–76 Stamford Street.

The eastern end of Stamford Street has seen the most dramatic physical change in recent years. One Blackfriars—a 52-storey residential tower designed by SimpsonHaugh and built during 2013–19—has a curved glass façade in graduated colours known as “The Vase”; the site includes a four-storey podium building at the corner of Stamford Street and Blackfriars Road, formerly the headquarters of Sainsbury’s supermarket, demolished in 2003. The street now spans centuries in a single glance: surviving Georgian terrace to the west, Edwardian campus buildings mid-street, and twenty-first century towers at either end.

Stamford Street is a street in Lambeth and Southwark, London, just south of the River Thames, running between Waterloo Road to the west and Blackfriars Road to the east, forming part of the A3200. There are two large Georgian terraces, a school and the entrance to a chapel from the 1820s; a Victorian bank and hotel; an Edwardian hospital now used for student accommodation; early 20th-century industrial buildings now forming the Waterloo campus of King’s College London; office buildings from the 1930s and 70s; housing co-operatives from the 1980s and 90s; and a 21st-century residential tower.

The Waterloo Campus of King’s College London is in Lambeth, across Waterloo Bridge from the Strand Campus; it has three main buildings: the James Clerk Maxwell Building, the Franklin–Wilkins Building (one of the largest university buildings in London) and the Stamford Street Apartments (student accommodation). At the western end, in the middle of a large roundabout, is the British Film Institute London IMAX Cinema. The street also retains a handful of Grade II listed buildings, including the former Victorian bank at No. 1, the early 19th-century townhouse at No. 91, and the handsome Regency terrace at Nos. 95–123.

Green space is immediately accessible from every point on the street. To the north, a short walk reaches the South Bank riverside walk and Bernie Spain Gardens, while Jubilee Gardens sits a ten-minute walk to the west near Waterloo Station.