Southwark

• 1. Introduction

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  Southwark, pronounced SUDH-ək by Londoners, sits on the south bank of the Thames, directly south of London Bridge. Around 43 AD, Roman engineers found the geography of the southern bank suitable for a bridge. Most of that shore was a series of marshy tidal islands, cut through by branches of the River Neckinger, a tributary of the Thames. A narrow strip of higher ground ran across the area in a roughly north-south direction. That strip made a bridge possible, and the bridge made London.

  Two Roman roads, Stane Street and Watling Street, were routed to converge at what is now Borough High Street. For centuries, London Bridge was the only dry crossing in this stretch of the river. Without it, the nearest alternative would have been a ford near Vauxhall Bridge. There is little reason to think a settlement of any importance would have grown nearby.

  The district that grew up at the southern end of the bridge sat just outside the full legal authority of the City of London. For most of its history, Southwark was governed in pieces, by overlapping and often competing jurisdictions. Why did that fractured authority matter so much? And what did the people of Southwark do with the freedoms it created? Those questions run through everything that follows.

• 2. Naming the Southern Work

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  The oldest surviving written record of the name Southwark appears in a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon document known as the Burghal Hidage. There the area is called Suthriganaweorc, meaning "fort of the men of Surrey" or "the defensive work of the men of Surrey." Surrey itself, in Old English, means "southern district," so the name layered two references to location: the southern people's work, placed at the southern end of London Bridge.

  By 1086, when surveyors compiled the Domesday Book, the name had contracted to Sudweca. It derives from the Old English words suth, meaning south, and weorc, meaning work or fortification. The Domesday Book recorded Southwark within the hundred of Brixton, held by several Surrey manors. The district's total value to the King was listed at 16 pounds.

  The ancient borough of Southwark was formally incorporated by 1295, but Londoners have never settled on a single name for it. The area has been called Southwark, called the ward of Bridge Without when administered by the City, and most persistently, just Borough. That last word distinguished the district from the City to the north. Borough versus the City: two words carrying the weight of a long dispute about where one authority ended and another began.

  In February 2022, archaeologists from the Museum of London Archaeology announced the discovery of a Roman mosaic in Southwark. Believed to date from AD 175-225, it was found in what had originally been a dining room, a triclinium. The mosaic was patterned with knot designs known as Solomon's knot and with dark red and blue floral and geometric shapes called guilloche. Earlier work in 2004 at Tabard Street had produced a plaque carrying the earliest known reference to "Londoners" from the Roman period.

• 3. The Bridge's Battles

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  Around 886, King Alfred the Great created the burh of Southwark and reoccupied the old Roman city area. The timing was deliberate. Alfred was rebuilding London as a defended settlement. The burh at Southwark was probably fortified to protect the bridge and, through it, the reemerging city on the northern bank.

  That defensive role was tested sharply in the wars of 1014-1016. King Ethelred the Unready, allied with Olaf II Haraldsson, faced Sweyn Forkbeard and Sweyn's son Cnut. London submitted to Sweyn in 1014. But on Sweyn's death, Ethelred returned, and Olaf came with him. According to Snorri Sturluson's saga, Olaf and his men tied ropes to the supporting posts of London Bridge. They pulled the structure into the river, together with the Danish soldiers on it. The maneuver let Ethelred retake the city. This episode may be the origin of the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down."

  A church dedicated to St Olaf stood in Southwark before the Norman Conquest and survived until the 1920s. St Olaf House, part of London Bridge Hospital, stands on the spot today and takes its name from the church and its saint. Tooley Street is a corruption of St Olave's Street and carries the same name forward.

  Cnut returned in 1016 and found London Bridge too well defended to force. He dug a trench around Southwark so his fleet could be dragged or sailed around the obstacle. The goal was to cut London off from river supplies arriving from upstream. His campaign eventually succeeded, though not at Southwark. He defeated Ethelred at the Battle of Assandun in Essex and became King of England.

  In 1066, William the Conqueror failed to force London Bridge and devastated Southwark instead. In 1450, Jack Cade led a rebel army to the bridge; the battle that followed cost 200 lives. In 1471, during the Siege of London, the bridge was closed again. The closure foiled the attempt by the Bastard of Fauconberg to cross and capture the City.

• 4. The Clink and the Stage

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  The Liberty of the Clink took its name from a section of Southwark that sat under the nominal authority of the Bishopric of Winchester, never under direct City control. That absence of oversight turned the area into London's main entertainment district. Bull and bearbaiting rings, taverns, brothels, and eventually theaters all clustered here, drawing audiences from across the social scale.

  In the 1580s, a man named Reasonable Blackman worked as a silk weaver in Southwark. He was among the first people of African heritage to operate as an independent business owner in London during that era. His presence in the district, named and recorded, shows how widely Southwark drew its population.

  In 1587, Philip Henslowe opened the first playhouse in Southwark, a venue called The Rose. Both Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare worked there. Twelve years later, in 1599, Shakespeare and his partners erected the Globe Theatre on the Bankside, within the Liberty of the Clink. Shakespeare held a shareholder's stake. The Globe burned down in 1613 and was rebuilt the following year. The Puritans closed it in 1642 and it was pulled down not long after. A modern replica, called Shakespeare's Globe, has been built near the original site.

  Edward Alleyn, a colleague of Shakespeare, was the leading impresario of entertainment in the later Elizabethan period. Alleyn left substantial charitable endowments in the district. The most lasting of these is Dulwich College.

  The Tabard Inn stood on the High Street and served as the departure point for Geoffrey Chaucer's pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales. Southwark's tradition of public gathering also included a famous annual fair held near the Church of St George the Martyr. William Hogarth depicted the fair in his 1733 engraving, Southwark Fair.

  On the 26th of May 1676, ten years after the Great Fire of London, a great fire broke out in Southwark and burned for 17 hours. Buildings were blown up to create firebreaks. King Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, personally oversaw the effort to contain it.

• 5. Outside the City's Reach

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  The Livery Companies of the City of London could not enforce their trade regulations in Southwark. The district served as a haven for criminals and free traders who sold goods beyond the reach of those bodies. The City had strong reasons to want control. Southwark generated revenue from inns, markets, river traffic, and the dues of the waterway. Getting that control took centuries.

  At the Domesday survey of 1086, the monastery that would become Southwark Cathedral was held by Bishop Odo of Bayeux. King William I and Earl Godwin shared the dues of the waterway between them. The "men of Southwark" held a right described as "a haw and its toll." These divided holdings established the pattern: different authorities owned different parts of the same district.

  In 1327, the City obtained from King Edward III control of the Guildable Manor, the area adjacent to the south side of London Bridge. In 1536, Henry VIII acquired the Bermondsey Priory properties, and in 1538 those of the Archbishop. By 1550, the City had purchased those holdings and formally incorporated Southwark under a charter of Edward VI. Even then the arrangement was unusual. The ward's alderman was appointed by the Court of Aldermen rather than elected by Southwark residents. No Common Councilmen were ever chosen for the ward. That anomaly lasted until 1978.

  From at least the 13th century, an important market had occupied the High Street and was controlled by the City's officers. In 1756, an Act of Parliament moved it to its present site as the Borough Market.

  The Marshalsea and King's Bench prisons served the Crown's prerogative courts within Southwark. The Borough Compter and The Clink each served the local manor courts. The White Lion Inn, also known as the Borough Gaol, eventually gave way to Horsemonger Lane Gaol as the county prison for Surrey.

  Southwark Cathedral, originally the priory of St Mary Overie, was made a full cathedral in 1905. The same year, a new Diocese of Southwark was established from parts of the Diocese of Rochester, extending its ecclesiastical reach across large parts of south London and Surrey.

• 6. Southwark's Long Reach

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  John Harvard attended the parish free school of St Saviour's in Southwark before proceeding to the University of Cambridge. He later emigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony, then one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America. When he died, he left his personal library and a substantial donation to a new college in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That college was named Harvard University in his honor. Harvard University alumni later funded the establishment of a memorial chapel in Southwark Cathedral, his family's parish church. UK-based Harvard alumni hold services there to this day.

  In 1836, the first railway in the London area opened. Called the London and Greenwich Railway, it initially terminated at Spa Road before its western end was extended to London Bridge. In 1861, a great fire destroyed a large number of buildings between Tooley Street and the Thames, including those around Hays Wharf. That wharf was later rebuilt and transformed into Hays Galleria.

  In 1890, the City and South London Railway began operating from King William Street south through Borough to Stockwell. It was the first deep-level underground tube line in London. The route is now the Bank branch of the Northern line. Since 1999, Southwark has also been served by Southwark, Bermondsey, and London Bridge stations on the Jubilee line.

  Sir Keir Starmer, born in Southwark in 1962, serves as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The singer Siouxsie Sioux, born Susan Janet Ballion in 1957, grew up in the district. Historian and television presenter Lucy Worsley was born there in 1973. The actor Michael Caine was born in Southwark in 1933. London's tallest skyscraper, the Shard, stands beside London Bridge Station.

  The ancient Courts Leet and View of Frankpledge, part of the manorial structure that shaped Southwark across the medieval centuries, still meet annually in November. Their presiding officer is the High Steward of Southwark, a role held today by the Recorder of London.