Kent Street

Map

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

Open location in Google Maps: 51.500328, -0.091399

Summary

This was a road leading south from London towards Greenwich, Canterbury and Dover, and is now called Tabard Street, meeting Borough High Street at St George’s church. It can be seen on this 18th century map and read more about it at British History Online.

4 Annotations

First Reading

Terry Foreman  •  Link

TABARD STREET AND THE OLD KENT ROAD, FORMERLY KENT STREET

The evidence suggests that Kent Street, the old road to Greenwich, Canterbury and Dover, was, like Borough High Street which it joined near St. George's Church, roughly on the alignment of a Roman road. The mediaeval road ran through open country, with no buildings except for an inn or two, and the Lock or Leper Hospital (see p. 124), which stood on the west side near the first milestone from London Bridge, at the point where the Lock stream, which formed part of Duffield's Sluice, crossed Kent Street. Only a small plot of ground was annexed to the hospital, but although leprosy was practically extinct in England by the beginning of the 17th century the memory of the lepers who used to wander in the neighbouring fields was preserved in their name of Lock (Locks) Fields until they were built over in the 19th century.

St. Thomas á Waterings, where a second stream, Earl's Sluice, crossed the road and where Chaucer's pilgrims halted to decide who should tell the first of the Canterbury Tales, was near the boundary between Southwark and Camberwell, approximately on the site of Shorncliffe Road. It was for several centuries a place of public execution. (fn. a)

In 1565 an Act of Parliament (ref. 329) directed that Kent Street should be paved with hard stone as far as the Lock Hospital, and during the following century this part of the street was built up on both sides. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/…

Second Reading

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1665