Old Fish Street

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The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from Wenceslaus Hollar’s maps:

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Fish Street (Old), Ward of Queenhithe, is described in 1708 as "a considerable and pleasant street between Bread Street east and Old 'Change west." The eastern portion of Old Fish Street was swept away in forming Queen Victoria Street, and the remainder absorbed in Knight-Rider Street. The Church of St. Mary Magdalen on the north, and that of St. Nicholas, Cole Abbey, on the south side of Knight-Rider Street, were both in Old Fish Street before the name was changed .

In this Old Fish Street is one row of small houses, placed along in the midst of Knightrider's Street, which row is also of Bread Street Ward. These houses, now possessed by fishmongers, were at the first but moveable boards or stalls, set out on market-days, to show their fish there to be sold; but procuring license to set up sheds, they grew to shops, and by little and little to tall houses of three or four stories in height, and now are called Fish Street.—Stow, p. 129.

Old Fish Street was very early one of the chief centres of the fish trade in London, Old Fish Street and Old Fish Street Hill, which runs from it to the Thames, with Queenhithe as their landing-quay, forming the western fish-market of London before Billingsgate supplanted Queenhithe and became the only fish-market. In the Statutes and Ordinance of the Fishmongers, 8 Edward I. (1280), it is provided that in respect of penalties for certain fraudulent proceedings, as the "dubbing" of baskets, etc., "this matter is to be cried at London Bridge, and in Eldefistrate [Old Fish Street], and elsewhere in the City where need shall be." There are to be two Hallmotes of fishmongers in the year for the recapitulating and amending the laws of the trade; the one against the Feast of St. Martin, and the other against Lent; "to which Hallmote shall come all the fishmongers who belong to the hallmote of the one fishmongery and the other.. . . . And one Hallmote shall be holden at the Bridge -and the other at Westfistrete, and all shall come to the one Hallmote and the other," and any making default "shall give 21 pence without release of aught or any pardon being granted." Old Fish Street was noted for its taverns. There is a tavern token of the King's Head in Old Fish Street with the head of Henry VII. upon it, and in the Beaufoy Collection, Guildhall, is a similar token of the Will Somers Tavern, in Old Fish Street, with the figure of Will Somers, Henry VIII.'s jester, upon it. Another tavern in this street had the head of Cardinal Wolsey for its sign.
---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.

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References

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1660

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1666

  • Aug