fleet street london ink street guide

Fleet Street: London’s historic Ink Street

Compiled with the help of artificial intelligence, based on Spanish-language information. Source below the article.

Between the heart of the City, with St Paul’s as its great landmark, and Trafalgar Square, Fleet Street stands as a major historic artery, a stately street that became one of the cultural and economic hubs of the Industrial Revolution. Locals know this spot as Ink Street. Sheltered by the great centres of imperial power (Westminster and Buckingham Palace are barely ten minutes away), the country’s first major newspapers set up shop here.

The journalists’ church

St Bride’s, on Fleet Street, is a beautiful late-17th-century Baroque building rebuilt shortly after the Great Fire of 1666, and it is known as the journalists’ church. Thanks to Second World War bombing, it also left an archaeological site from the 6th century exposed, taking visitors back to London’s Saxon past (the Fleet Street Museum).

Fleet Street is one of those lovely streets that beckon you onwards with the promise of places such as Trafalgar Square or the spectacular Charing Cross station, one of the many railway temples scattered across London’s geography.

Home of the press barons

We mentioned earlier that nickname, Ink Street. A few metres from St Bride’s you’ll find the original offices of two communications giants: Reuters (85 Fleet Street) and The Daily Telegraph (135 Fleet Street). Another Fleet landmark is the Old Bank of England (194 Fleet Street), an imposing late-19th-century Italianate building that now houses a pub and which, according to popular literary tradition, was one of the settings for the escapades of the bloodthirsty barber Sweeney Todd.

As we were saying, Fleet’s sheer spectacle stops you from venturing into the alleys branching off the street, because there is always something urging you onwards: marvellous little details such as Prince Henry’s Room (17 Fleet Street), one of the few medieval houses in London that did not succumb to the flames in 1666, or genuine jewels.

A Baroque gem by the Royal Courts of Justice

One example of what we mean is one of our favourite little treats in London. Whenever our feet wander through the City, we have to pass in front of St Clement Danes (Strand). This is the church that holds the patronage of the Royal Air Force. But the main reason for our weakness is its delightful 17th-century Baroque architecture and its surroundings (next to the lavish Royal Courts of Justice building).

Temple and the quest for the Holy Grail

But in Temple you have to wander the streets. To find out, for example, the reason behind the name. Talking about the Knights Templar means plunging headlong into a fascinating history that mixes myth and legend with reality in equal measure. Temple Church (Temple) stands in a beautiful little square surrounded by red-brick buildings. Fortunately, this was another survivor of the catastrophic fire of 1666 that devastated most of a predominantly medieval city of timber-framed houses and Romanesque and Gothic churches.

The Temple was the headquarters of the Templar order in the city and was built in the 12th century, right at the transition between Romanesque and Gothic. That, and other things, make it special. Such as its circular floor plan, modelled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (the rectangular area known as The Chancel is later). Standout features of this fantastic church include its funerary sculptures (depicting warrior monks of the order) and the characteristic esoteric Templar iconography.

The site has become a place of pilgrimage thanks to the novel The Da Vinci Code, which identified it as one of the key pieces in the search for the Holy Grail. The temple, in any case, is stunning, and for us it is one of the ten or twelve must-see places on any visit to London.

From Temple down to the Thames

From here you can head down to the River Thames through Middle Temple, a beautiful street full of brick buildings with passageways and colonnades opening onto quiet courtyards. Temple meets the Thames at Temple Gardens, a lively square with a couple of places of interest: Two Temple Place (2 Temple Place), a magnificent Victorian mansion converted into an art museum, and HMS Wellington (Temple Stairs), a ship that saw action in the Second World War.

North of Fleet Street: Gough Square and Hodge the Cat

There are also places of interest if you walk away from the Thames. Gough Square is another of those charming spots hidden by Fleet’s monumentality and barely trodden by tourists. This little red-brick square is concealed from view behind an arch. The first thing you’ll come across is the curious statue of Hodge the Cat. This cat was a much-loved pet of Samuel Johnson, one of the greatest scholars of the English language. In this square you’ll find the Samuel Johnson House Museum (17 Gough Square), in a beautiful 17th-century building that has been lovingly preserved to honour the memory of its illustrious owner.

St Dunstan-in-the-West and Virginia Woolf

Another worthwhile foray north of Fleet Street begins beside the pretty St Dunstan-in-the-West (186 Fleet Street). This 19th-century church is lovely to look at, even if it lacks the historic pedigree of other buildings in the area. That said, it has a detail that makes it unique. The small public clock you see on its façade dates from the 17th century (it was commissioned to celebrate the survival of the previous medieval church in the Great Fire) and was the first in all of England to have a minute hand. This clock appears in countless literary works and has been namechecked everywhere from Charles Dickens to the blood-soaked pamphlets of Sweeney Todd.

If you pass beneath the Clifford’s Inn gatehouse arch, you’ll enter a pretty passage leading to the former home of another of our literary icons: our beloved and adored Virginia Woolf (she lived with her husband in a building on Clifford’s Inn Lane, and you can see the blue plaque commemorating it).

Photos under CC Licence: Sheri; David; Martin Pettitt; Stefano Marras; Jocelyn Erskine-Kellie; Ray in Manila; Matt Brown

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