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,
Born digital.
Moorgate was one of the major gates in the Wall of London (Sugden). It was situated in the northern part of the Wall, flanked by Cripplegate and Bishopsgate. Clearly labelled as More Gate
on the Agas map, it stood near the intersection of London Wall street and Coleman Street (Sugden; Stow 1598, sig. C6v). It adjoined Bethlehem Hospital, and the road through it led into Finsbury Field (Rocque) and Mallow Field.
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.
Moorgate was one of the major gates in the Wall of London (Sugden). It was situated in the northern part of the Wall, flanked by Cripplegate and Bishopsgate. Clearly labelled as More Gate
on the Agas map, it stood near the intersection of London Wall street and Coleman Street (Sugden; Stow 1598, sig. C6v). It adjoined Bethlehem Hospital, and the road through it led into Finsbury Field (Rocque) and Mallow Field.
Moorgate also provided entrance into the Moorfields, a marshy area beyond the wall that hosted a variety of activities for citizens of London, all of which carried sociopolitical weight as London developed. Coleman Street Ward was situated on the city side of the wall, and surrounding areas were covered by Bassinghall Ward and Broad Street Ward. Nearby landmarks within the wall include Founders’ Hall, Masons’ Hall, Girdlers’ Hall, Weavers’ Hall, Armourers’ Hall, Bear Inn, and St. Stephen.
The gate has been variously spelled as Moore-gate
, Mooregate
, Moorgate
, More Gate
and Moregate
over the course of its history. The earliest spellings, as indicated by More Gate
and Moregate
; Moregate
. It later came to be known as Mooregate
, and is spelled this way in the
Moorgate, and a major street in modern London has taken this name in memory of the gate (Harben). Moorgate was named for the Moorfields it led into, because it was constructed specifically to provide access to them (Sugden).
Moorgate’s primary purpose was to admit citizens to the Moorfields, and as a result, much of its legacy is characterized by what went on there. Its proximity to Bethlehem Hospital meant that patients often took their air in the Moorfields, alongside the beggars who frequented the area (Schmidt). In the winter it was a popular destination for ice-skating, and the
As the connecting entity between the city and the Moorfields, Moorgate’s significance changed with the times. In the
Entering the
Taking these to be the two definable social landscapes overseen by Moorgate, it is easy to envision the gate as both a metaphysical concept and a physical structure, one reflective of the complex and ever-changing atmospheres of early modern London.
Moorgate was built in
So much that the Ditches and Bridges are couered, and if it bee made leuill with the Battlementes of the Citie wall: yet will it bee little the drier, such is the Moorish nature of the grounde.
In
In in noble style
(Sugden). This was the final alteration to the gate, and in