Milk Street
(Student Project)
Milk Street, located in Cripplegate Ward, began on the north
side of Cheapside, and ran north to
a square formed at the intersection of Milk Street, Cat Street
(Lothbury), Lad Lane, and Aldermanbury.
Located in this square "was of old time a fayre Well with two Buckets, of
late yeares converted to a Pumpe" (Stow
1:292). Milk Street, "so
called as early as 1140, was the
section of Cheapside market where
milk was sold" (Bebbington 220).
Stow’s account of the name’s origin concurs (Stow 1:295).
Stow also notes that "there bee many fayre houses for wealthy Marchantes and
other" (Stow 1:295). Milk Street was the home of Sir Thomas Gresham, who was Royal Agent
to Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I, and
builder of the Royal Exchange. It
was also the birthplace of Utopia author
Sir Thomas More, who was born in
February 1478 (Weinreb and Hibbert 533).
St. Mary Magdalene’s church, dating from the twelfth century, was located in
Milk Street. It burned in the Great Fire of 1666 and was never rebuilt.
See also: Chalfant 128.
References
- Bebbington, Gillian. London Street Names. London: B.T. Batsford, 1972. Print.
- Chalfant, Fran C. Ben Jonson’s London: A Jacobean Placename Dictionary. Athens, GA: U of Georgia P, 1978. Print.
- Stow, John. A Survey of London. Reprinted from the Text of 1603. Ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1908. Print. [Also available as a reprint from Elibron Classics (2001). Articles written before 2011 cite from the print edition by volume and page number.]
- Weinreb, Ben, and Christopher Hibbert, eds. The London Encyclopaedia. New York: St. Martin’s, 1983. Print. [You may also wish to consult the 3rd edition of The London Encyclopedia (2008). Print.]
This project is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
