Copyright held by
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Further details of licences are available from our
Licences page. For more
information, contact the project director,
Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
TY - ELEC
A1 - Jenstad, Janelle
ED - Jenstad, Janelle
T1 - Bow Lane
T2 - The Map of Early Modern London
ET - 6.6
PY - 2021
DA - 2021/06/30
CY - Victoria
PB - University of Victoria
LA - English
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/BOWL1.htm
UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/6.6/xml/standalone/BOWL1.xml
ER -
Cheapside Street, one of the most important streets in early modern London, ran east-west between the Great Conduit at the foot of Old Jewry to the Little Conduit by St. Paul’s churchyard. The terminus of all the northbound streets from the river, the broad expanse of Cheapside Street separated the northern wards from the southern wards. It was lined with buildings three, four, and even five stories tall, whose shopfronts were open to the light and set out with attractive displays of luxury commodities (Weinreb and Hibbert 148). Cheapside Street was the centre of London’s wealth, with many
Cordwainer Street Ward is east of Bread Street Ward. The ward takes its name from its main street, Cordwainer Street, so named of
Watling Street ran east-west between St. Sythes Lane in Cordwainer Street Ward and Old Change in Bread Street Ward. It is visible on the Agas map under the label Watlinge ſtreat
.
Noble Street
(Stow 1598, sig. O4v). This should not lead to confusion with Noble Street in Aldersgate Ward. There is an etymological explanation for this crossover of names. According to Ekwall, the name Watling
ultimately derives from an Old English word meaning king’s son
(Ekwall 81-82). Watling Street remains distinct from the Noble Street in Aldersgate Ward.
Garlick Hill ran north from the
Thames. Before it reached Cheapside Street,
it became Bow Lane. The name Garlick Hill
preserves a memory of
the steep incline (now partially flattened) leading away from the river.
Like Bread Street, Garlick Hill was built in the ninth
century; it provided access from the haven of Queenhithe (just to the west of
Garlick Hill) to Cheapside Street.
Queenhithe is one of the oldest
havens or harbours for ships along the Thames. landing place
. Queenhithe
was known in the ninth century as Aetheredes hyd or the landing place of
.
In the middle ages, Westcheap was the main market west of Walbrook, so called to distinguish it from Eastcheap, the market
in the east. By
Cheap Ward is west of Bassinghall Ward and Coleman Street Ward. Both the ward and its main street, Cheapside, are named after West Cheap (the market).
The city of London, not to be confused with the allegorical character (
Smithfield was an open, grassy area located outside the Wall. Because of its location close to the city centre, Smithfield was used as a site for markets, tournaments, and public executions. From
Birchin Lane was a short street running north-south between Cornhill Street and Lombard Street. The north end of Birchin Lane lay in Cornhill Ward, and the south end in Langbourne Ward.
Cornhill was a significant thoroughfare and was part of the cityʼs main major east-west thoroughfare that divided the northern half of London from the southern half. The part of this thoroughfare named Cornhill extended from St. Andrew Undershaft to the three-way intersection of Threadneedle, Poultry, and Cornhill where the Royal Exchange was built. The name Cornhill
preserves a memory both of the cornmarket that took place in this street, and of the topography of the site upon
which the Roman city of Londinium was built.
Note: Cornhill and Cornhill Ward are nearly synonymous in terms of location and nomenclature - thus, it can be a challenge to tell one from the other. Topographical decisions have been made to the best of our knowledge and ability.
Bow Lane ran north-south between Cheapside Street and Old Fish Street in the ward of Cordwainer Street. At Watling Street, it became Cordwainer Street, and at Old Fish Street it became Garlick Hill. Garlick Hill-Bow Lane was built in the 890s to provide access from the port of Queenhithe to the great market of Cheapside Street (Sheppard 70–71).
The Julian calendar, in use in the British Empire until September 1752. This calendar is used for dates where the date of the beginning of the year is ambigious.
The Julian calendar with the calendar year regularized to beginning on 1 January.
The Julian calendar with the calendar year beginning on 25 March. This was the calendar used in the British Empire until September 1752.
The Gregorian calendar, used in the British Empire from September 1752. Sometimes
referred to as
The Anno Mundi (year of the world
) calendar is based on the supposed date of the
creation of the world, which is calculated from Biblical sources. At least two different
creation dates are in common use. See Anno Mundi (Wikipedia).
Regnal dates are given as the number of years into the reign of a particular monarch.
Our practice is to tag such dates with
Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.
Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.
Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–present. Associate Project Director, 2015–present. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to
Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC) who maintained the
Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.
Historian and author of
Most MoEML documents, or significant fragments with mol:
prefix and accessed through the web application
with their id + .xml
.
The molagas prefix points to the shape representation of a location on MoEML’s OpenLayers3-based rendering of the Agas Map.
Links to page-images in the Chadwyck-Healey
Links to page-images in the
The mdt (MoEML Document Type) prefix used on
The mdtlist (MoEML Document Type listing) prefix used in linking attributes points to a listings page constructed from a category in the central MDT taxonomy in the includes file. There are two variants, one with the plain _subcategories
, meaning all subcategories of the category.
The molgls (MoEML gloss) prefix used on
This molvariant prefix is used on
This molajax prefix is used on
The molstow prefix is used on
Our editorial and encoding practices are documented in detail in the Praxis section of our website.
Bow Lane ran north-south between Cheapside Street and Old Fish Street in the ward of Cordwainer Street. At Watling Street, it became Cordwainer Street, and at
Old Fish Street it became Garlick Hill. Garlick Hill-Bow
Lane was built in the 890s to provide access from the port of Queenhithe to
Cheapside Market (Sheppard 70–71). The name Bow Lane
was given to the street some time after
the church of St. Mary-le-Bow was
built on the south-west corner of Bow
Lane and Cheapside Street; the crypt
of this church was built ca.
Bow Lane was the dividing line
between Cordwainer Street Ward and
Cheap Ward.
[T]his street beginneth by West Cheape, and Saint Marie Bow church is the head thereof on the west side, and it runneth downe south through that part which of later time was called Hosier Lane, now Bow Lane, and then by the west end of Aldmary Chruch, to the new builded houses, in place of Ormond house, and so to Garlicke hill, or hith, to Saint Iames Church. The vpper part of this street towards Cheape was called Hosiar lane of hosiars dwelling there in place of Shoomakers: but now those hosiers being worne out by men of other trades (as the Hosiars had worne out the Shoomakers) the same is called Bow lane of [i.e. after] Bow Church.Stow 1:250–251
Stow himself alternates between Bow
Lane (Stow 1:118, 1:259, 1:268) and
Hosier Lane (Stow 1:253, 1:255) when talking of this street, although
he seems to consider Cordwainer Lane to be the corruptly called
Bow lane
(Stow 1:268).
The London habit of naming streets after the craftsmen and retailers who
lived on them often produced ambiguities in street names if the group after
whom a street was named moved to a new location. The nature of trade
necessitated such moves from time to time: Men of trades and sellers of
wares in the City haue often times since chaunged their places, as they haue
found to their best aduantage
(Stow
1:81).
[T]he Hosiers of olde time in Hosier Lane, neare vnto Smithfield, are since remooued into Cordwayner streete, the vpper part thereof by Bow Church, and last of all into Birchouerislane [Birchin Lane] by Cornehil.Stow 1:81
This passage tells us that the first Hosier Lane was in Smithfield, outside the city wall on the north-west side of the city. The move to Cordwainer Street took the hosiers into the heart of the city, whence they moved a few blocks east to Cornhill.
A hosier is [o]ne who makes or deals in hose (stockings and socks) and
frame-knitted or woven underclothing generally
(
The names Hosier Lane and Cordwainer Street eventually fell out of use. In modern London, this street, still known as Bow Lane, is lined with shops from the Mansion House underground station to Cheapside Street. It is a popular lunching and shopping street.
Note that Bow Lane should not be
confused with Bow Street, built near Covent Garden in the seventeenth
century and later famous for the Bow Street Runners
who ran errands for
the courts of justice located there.
Variant names include: Pasternosterlane, Paternostercherchelane, Eldebowelane, Church lane, Bowlane, and le Bowe (Carlin and Belcher 67)