History of Southwark
Contents
Toponymy
The name Suthriganaweorc or Suthringa geweorche is recorded for the area in the 10th-century Anglo-Saxon document known as the Burghal Hidage and means "fort of the men of Surrey" or "the defensive work of the men of Surrey". Southwark is recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book as Sudweca. The name means "southern defensive work" and is formed from the Old English sūþ (south) and weorc (work). The southern location is in reference to the City of London to the north, Southwark being at the southern end of London Bridge. In Old English, Surrey means "southern district (or the men of the southern district)", so the change from "southern district work" to the latter "southern work" may be an evolution based on the elision of the single syllable ge element, meaning district.
Pre-Roman Times
Recent excavation has revealed pre-Roman activity including evidence of early ploughing, burial mounds and ritual activity.The natural geography of Southwark (now much altered by human activity), was the principal determining factor for the location of London Bridge, and therefore London itself.
Until relatively recent times, the Thames in central London was much wider and shallower at high tide. The natural shoreline of the City Of London was a short distance further back than it is now, and the high tide shoreline on the Southwark side was much further back, except for the area around London Bridge.
A Southern Marsh
Southwark was mostly made up of a series of often marshy tidal islands in the Thames, with some of the waterways between these island formed by branches of the River Neckinger, a tributary of the Thames. A narrow strip of higher firmer ground ran on a N-S alignment and, even at high tide, provided a much narrower stretch of water, enabling the Romans to bridge the river.
As the lowest bridging point of the Thames in Roman Britain, it determined the position of Londinium; without London Bridge there is unlikely to have been a settlement of any importance in the area; previously the main crossing had been a ford near Vauxhall Bridge. Because of the bridge and the establishment of London, the Romans routed two Roman roads into Southwark: Stane Street and Watling Street which met in what in what is now Borough High Street.
For centuries London Bridge was the only Thames bridge in the area, until a bridge was built upstream more than 10 miles (16 km) to the west.
Southwark Village
Southwark village, in the borough’s northern section, has been important as a junction of roads and as a commanding point on the approach to London ever since 43 CE, when the Romans constructed a bridge there across the Thames. Old Southwark, known traditionally as The Borough, was a market town from early Saxon times. It became a haven for criminals and prostitutes in the Middle Ages. In the mid-16th century it became known as the Bridge Ward Without or the ward of Bridge-without.
Abandonment
Londinium was abandoned at the end of the Roman occupation in the early 5th century and both the city and its bridge collapsed in decay. The settlement at Southwark, like the main settlement of London to the north of the bridge, had been more or less abandoned, a little earlier, by the end of the fourth century.
Saxon Rebirth
Southwark appears to recover only during the time of King Alfred and his successors. Sometime about 886, the burh of Southwark was created and the Roman city area reoccupied. It was probably fortified to defend the bridge and hence the reemerging City of London to the north.
Saxons versus Vikings
This defensive role is highlighted by the role of the bridge in the 1014-1016 war between King Ethelred the Unready and his ally Olaf II Haraldsson (later King of Norway, and afterwards known as St Olaf, or St Olave) on one side, and Sweyn Forkbeard and his son Cnut (later King Cnut), on the other.
London submitted to Swein in 1014, but on Swein's death, Ethelred returned, with Olaf in support. Swein had fortified London and the bridge, but according to Snorri Sturleson's saga, Edgar and Olaf tied ropes from the bridge's supporting posts and pulled it into the river, together with the Danish army, allowing Ethelred to recapture London. This may be the origin of the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down".
There was a church, St Olave's Church, dedicated to St Olaf before the Norman Conquest and this survived until the 1920's. St Olaf House (part of London Bridge Hospital), named after the church and its saint, stands on the spot. Tooley Street, being a corruption of St Olave's Street, also takes its name from the former church.
Cnut returned in 1016, but capturing the city was a great challenge. To cut London off from upstream riverborne supplies, Cnut dug a trench around Southwark, so that he could sail or drag his ships around Southwark and get upstream in a way that allowed his boats to avoid the heavily defended London Bridge. In so doing he hoped to cut London off from river borne resupply from upstream. The Dane's efforts to recapture London were in vain, until he defeated Ethelred at the Battle of Assandun in Essex later that year, and became King of England. It is thought that the section of the Kent Road, at Lock Bridge, was Canute's Trench. In 1173, a channel following a similar course was used to drain the Thames to allowing building work on London Bridge.
The Norman Conquest
Southwark and in particular the Bridge, proved a formidable obstacle against William the Conqueror in 1066. He failed to force the bridge during the Norman conquest of England, but Southwark was devastated.
At Domesday, the area's assets were: Bishop Odo of Bayeux held the monastery (the site of modern Southwark Cathedral) and the tideway, which still exists as St Mary Overie dock; the King owned the church (probably St Olave's) and its tidal stream (St Olave's Dock); the dues of the waterway or mooring place were shared between King William I and Earl Godwin; the King also had the toll of the strand; and "men of Southwark" had the right to "a haw and its toll". Southwark's value to the King was £16.[18] Much of Southwark was originally owned by the church – the greatest reminder of monastic London is Southwark Cathedral, originally the priory of St Mary Overie.
Medieval Southwark
During the early Middle Ages, Southwark developed and was one of the four Surrey towns which returned Members of Parliament for the first commons assembly in 1295. An important market occupied the High Street from some time in the 13th century, which was controlled by the city's officers—it was later removed in order to improve traffic to the Bridge, under a separate Trust by Act of Parliament of 1756 as the Borough Market on the present site. The area was renowned for its inns, especially The Tabard, from which Geoffrey Chaucer's pilgrims set off on their journey in The Canterbury Tales.
Just west of the Bridge was the Liberty of the Clink manor, which was never controlled by the city, but was held under the Bishopric of Winchester's nominal authority. This lack of oversight helped the area become the entertainment district for London, with a concentration of sometimes disreputable attractions such as bull and bear-baiting, taverns, theatre and brothels.
15th - 17th Centuries
The continuing defensive importance of London Bridge was demonstrated by its important role in thwarting Jack Cade's Rebellion in 1450; Cade's army tried to force its way across the bridge to enter the City, but was foiled in a battle which cost 200 lives. The bridge was also closed during the Siege of London in 1471, helping to foil attempts by the Bastard of Fauconberg to cross and capture the City.
In the 1580s, Reasonable Blackman worked as a silk weaver in Southwark, as one of the first people of African heritage to work as independent business owners in London in that era. In 1587, Southwark's first playhouse theater, The Rose, opened. The Rose was set up by Philip Henslowe, and soon became a popular place of entertainment for all classes of Londoners. Both Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, two of the finest writers of the Elizabethan age, worked at the Rose.
In 1599 the Globe Theater, in which Shakespeare was a shareholder, was erected on the Bankside in the Liberty of the Clink. It burned down in 1613, and was rebuilt in 1614, only to be closed by the Puritans in 1642 and subsequently pulled down not long thereafter. A modern replica, called Shakespeare's Globe, has been built near the original site. The impresario in the later Elizabethan period for these entertainments was Shakespeare's colleague Edward Alleyn, who left many local charitable endowments, most notably Dulwich College.
During the Second English Civil War, a force of Kentish Royalist Rebels approached London, hoping the lightly defended city might fall to them, or that the citizens would rise in their favor, however their hopes were quashed when Philip Skippon, in charge of the defense swiftly fortified the bridge making it all but impregnable to the modest Royalist force.
On 26 May 1676, ten years after the Great Fire of London, a great fire broke out, which continued for 17 hours before houses were blown up to create fire breaks. King Charles II and his brother, James, Duke of York, oversaw the effort.
XVIII Century
There was also a famous fair in Southwark which took place near the Church of St George the Martyr. William Hogarth depicted this fair in his engraving of Southwark Fair (1733).
Southwark was also the location of several prisons, including those of the Crown or Prerogative Courts, the Marshalsea and King's Bench prisons, those of the local manors' courts, e.g., Borough Compter, The Clink and the Surrey county gaol originally housed at the White Lion Inn (also informally called the Borough Gaol) and eventually at Horsemonger Lane Gaol.
One other local family is of note, the Harvards. John Harvard went to the local parish free school of St Saviour's and on to Cambridge University. He migrated to the Massachusetts Colony and left his library and the residue of his will to the new college there, named after him as its first benefactor. Harvard University maintains a link, having paid for a memorial chapel within Southwark Cathedral (his family's parish church), and where its UK-based alumni hold services. John Harvard's mother's house is in Stratford-upon-Avon.
Victorian Southwark
In 1836 the first railway in the London area was created, the London and Greenwich Railway, originally terminating at Spa Road and later extended west to London Bridge. Laytons Buildings, Southwark, 1904 by Philip Norman
In 1861, another great fire in Southwark destroyed a large number of buildings between Tooley Street and the Thames, including those around Hays Wharf (later replaced by Hays Galleria) and blocks to the west almost as far as St Olave's Church.
The first deep-level underground tube line in London was the City and South London Railway, now the Bank branch of the Northern line, opened in 1890, running from King William Street south through Borough to Stockwell.
