Shops in Borough High Street
Shops in Borough High Street
Record No
115986
Title
Shops in Borough High Street
Description
View of 141-165 Borough High Street, Southwark. On the right, numbers 163-165 are four- and five-storey buildings combined as one, with a shop front on the ground floor advertising 'Langley London Limited, The Tile Centre'. Originally set up as “Merchant Shippers” in 1920 by Frederick Algernon Langley, the business later diversified into the importation of clay roof tiles, industrial paviours, ceramic wall and floor tiles. This part of the business was sold but it continues to trade as Business Brokers. Now number 165 is a cafe and number 163 an off-licence. Between the buildings is a passageway called Mermaid Court, previously Mermaid Alley, and was the entrance to the sixteenth-century Mermaid Inn by the side of the original Marshalsea Prison. The passageway is narrow and in 1733 a woman was pressed to death in the crowd in Mermaid Court during the time of a fair. The area was badly damaged by bombing during World War II. Number 161, a five-storey building with a balustraded balcony on the top floor, and a shop on the ground floor bears a sign for Hubert Wilson. A van is parked outside with its bonnet up. The original early-nineteenth century buildings at numbers 153-159 were demolished in the mid-twentieth century and replaced with two-storey buildings with shops on the ground floor. Across the first floor a sign for LANGLEY LONDON Ltd. The shops below: number 53 an Ophthalmic Optician, number 155 Manor Laundry and Dry Cleaning, numbers 157-159 The Time Recorder and Maintenance Company Ltd. These building have been demolished and the site is currently vacant. Number 151 Borough High Street is an early-nineteenth century four-storey building on the corner with Newcomen Street. On the ground floor is a hardware shop, P. P. Cash. In the early-twentieth century this building and those adjoining in Newcomen Street were the Turner Steam Bread Manufactory. The building is Grade II listed, number 1378364, and the shop is currently a barbers. Number 149 is a four-storey office building on the corner with Newcomen Street, originally Axe Yard. In 1879, the street was renamed in honour of a seventeenth-century resident, Mrs Elizabeth Newcomen. At her death in 1674, she owned property in Borough High Street, a house and tenement near Axe Yard and a lodging house called the 'Bottle'. She left her property in trust for ‘the clothing of poor boys and girls with a suit of linen and woollen once a year...and for teaching them to read and write and cast accounts’.
Date of execution
1974
Section
The London Archives
Collection
LCC Photograph Library
Medium
photograph
Catalogue No
SC_PHL_01_365_74_18341
London picture map location
Exact
Subjects
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