Bassinghall Ward

Introduction

Bassinghall Ward is west of Coleman Street Ward. The ward and its main street Basinghall Street are named after Basing Hall (Stow 1633, sig. 2C5r).
1720: Blome’s Map of Bassinghall Ward and Coleman Street Ward. Image courtesy of British Library Crace Collection. 
                        © British Library Board; Maps Crace Port. 8.16
1720: Blome’s Map of Bassinghall Ward and Coleman Street Ward. Image courtesy of British Library Crace Collection. © British Library Board; Maps Crace Port. 8.16

Links to Chapters in the Survey of London

1603 Description of Ward Boundaries

The following diplomatic transcription of the opening paragraph(s) of the 1603 chapter on this ward will eventually be subsumed into the MoEML edition of the 1603 Survey.1 Each ward chapter opens with a narrative circumnavigation of the ward—a verbal beating of the bounds that MoEML first transcribed in 2004 and later used to facilitate the drawing of approximate ward boundaries on our edition of the Agas map. Source: John Stow, A Survey of London (London, 1603; STC #23343).
THe next adioyning to Colemanſtreete ward on the weſt ſide thereof is Baſſings hall warde, a ſmall thing, and conſiſteth of one ſtreete called Baſſings hall ſtreete, of Baſſings hall, the moſt principall houſe, whereof the ward taketh name. It beginneth in the South by the late ſpoken Market houſe called the Bay hall, which is the laſt of Colemanſtreete warde. This ſtreete runneth from thence north downe to London wall, and ſome little diſtance both Eaſt and Weſt, againſt the ſaid hall, and this is the bounds of Baſſings hall warde.

Note on Ward boundaries on Agas Map

Ward boundaries drawn on the Agas map are approximate. The Agas map does not lend itself well to georeferencing or georectification, which means that we have not been able to import the raster-based or vector-based shapes that have been generously offered to us by other projects. We have therefore used our drawing tools to draw polygons on the map surface that follow the lines traced verbally in the opening paragraph(s) of each ward chapter in the Survey. Read more about the cartographic genres of the Agas map.

Notes

  1. The 1603 Survey is widely available in reprints of C.L. Kingsford’s two-volume 1908 edition (Kingsford) and also in the British History Online transcription of the Kingsford edition (BHO). MoEML is completing its editions of all four texts in the following order: 1598, 1633, 1618, and 1603. (JJ)

References