Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Southwark Cathedral
Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, Sat & Sun 8.30am-6pm • Free •
T
020 7367 6700,
W
cathedral.southwark.anglican.org •
!
London Bridge
Built in the thirteenth century as the Augustinian priory church of St Mary Overie, it's
a minor miracle that
Southwark Cathedral
survived the nineteenth century, which saw
the east-end chapel demolished to make way for London Bridge, railways built within a
few feet of the tower and some very heavy-handed Victorian restoration. As if in
compensation, the church was given cathedral status in 1905, and has since gone from
strength to strength; the cathedral refectory serves tasty food.
Of the original thirteenth-century
interior
, only the choir and retrochoir now remain,
separated by a beautiful, high, stone Tudor screen; they are probably the oldest Gothic
structures left in London and were used by the Bishop of Winchester as a court - those
sentenced ended up in the nearby Clink. The cathedral contains numerous intriguing
monuments
: from a thirteenth-century oak e
gy of a knight, to the brightly painted
tomb of poet John Gower, Chaucer's contemporary, in the north aisle, his head resting
on the three books he wrote - one in Latin, one in French and one in English. he
quack doctor Lionel Lockyer has a humorous epitaph in the north transept, and,
nearby, there's a chapel dedicated to John Harvard, who was baptized here in 1607 and
whose deathbed bequest helped found Harvard College. In the south aisle, an early
twentieth-century memorial to Shakespeare (he was a worshipper in the church and his
actor brother is buried here) depicts the Bard in green alabaster lounging under a stone
canopy. Above the memorial is a postwar stained-glass window featuring a whole cast
of characters from the plays.
16
Borough Market
8 Southwark St • Mon-Wed 10am-3pm, Thurs 11am-5pm, Fri noon-6pm, Sat 8am-5pm •
T
020 7407 1002,
W
boroughmarket
.org.uk •
!
London Bridge
Medieval Southwark, also known as
The Borough
, was London's first suburb, clustered
round the southern end of London Bridge, the only bridge over the tidal Thames until
1750, and thus the only route south. London Bridge was the most obvious place for
the Kent farmers to sell their goods to the City grocers, and there's been a thriving
market here since medieval times. The present
Borough Market
is squeezed beneath the
railway arches between the High Street and the cathedral. The early morning wholesale
fruit and vegetable market winds up around 8am and is one of the few still trading
under its original Victorian wrought-iron shed. But the market is best known nowadays
for its busy specialist food market (see p.433), with stalls selling top-quality produce
from around the world, with permanent outlets such as Neal's Yard Dairy and
Konditor & Cook in the shops close by.
Borough High Street
As the main road south out of the City,
Borough High Street
was for centuries famous
for its
coaching inns
. Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims set off from
he Tabard
(in Talbot
Yard), but by Dickens' time “these great rambling queer old places”, as he called them,
were closing down. The only extant coaching inn is the
George Inn
, situated in a
cobbled yard east off the High Street, dating from 1677 and now owned by the
National Trust. Unfortunately, the Great Northern Railway demolished two of the
three original galleried fronts, but the lone survivor is a remarkable sight nevertheless,
and is still run as a pub (see p.392).
Opposite Borough tube station, at the southernmost end of Borough High Street,
is
St George the Martyr
, built in the 1730s, with four clock faces: three white and
illuminated at night; one black and pointing towards Bermondsey, whose parishioners
refused to give money for the church. To the north of St George's, a wall survives from
the
Marshalsea
, the city's main debtors' prison, where Dickens' father (and family)
was incarcerated for six months in 1824.
