On previous trips to London, we had never spent much time on the other side of the Thames. We might have popped across London Bridge to visit the Globe Theatre; or walked across the Tower Bridge and back again; or zipped across Westminster Bridge to visit the Florence Nightingale Museum; or visit the Imperial War Museum at the former Bedlam Hospital. So, during the trip in 2002, we decided to spend an entire day in Southwark, which is the area across London Bridge to the South, where the theatres, bear-baiting pits, brothels and coaching inns existed in Shakespeare’s day and the debtor’s prisons and operating theatre of St Thomas Hospital in Dickens’ day.
We took the underground to Borough Station. Marshalsea Road (named after Marshalsea Prison) was right there. Dickens’ parents were sent to Marshalsea when he was a boy. It was a debtor’s prison. Dickens used Marshalsea as the basis for the debtor’s prison in Little Dorrit. The debtor’s prisons did let people out of the prison during the day in order to go to work to repay their debt. But they also charged them for their room and board in the prison. So it could take a very long time for a family to earn their way out.
While his parents were in Marshalsea, Dickens was employed in a boot-blacking factory where the Charing Cross Rail Station is today on the other side of the Thames. That would have been a long walk for a twelve-year-old boy to make. So he mainly lived at the factory and would visit his parents once a week. Nothing is left of the prison other than a stretch of the wall that used to surround it and a plaque stating that’s where it used to be.
Heading up the Borough High Street towards London Bridge, are the remnants of several coaching inns — mainly their names and former locations. The Tabard was the inn from which Chaucer’s characters in The Canterbury Tales departed. That inn existed from the 1300s to the 1600s. When it burnt down, it was replaced by the Talbot, which was torn down in the 1800s.
Next door to where those inns were located is The George Inn, the only surviving galleried coaching inn in London. The original inn, the George and Dragon, burned down in the same fire as the Tabard and was rebuilt in 1677. That is the inn that exists today. Dickens spent some time there (in the coffee room in the middle of the ground floor) and also referred to it in Little Dorrit. In Shakespeare’s day, his plays and those of Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe were sometimes staged in the courtyards of coaching inns as the galleries made for great spaces from which more moneyed members of the audience could view a play.
The day we were there was lovely, warm, and not raining, so we purchased our food inside (in the former coffee room) and sat outside to eat it. Except for some cars parked in the courtyard, when looking at the inn itself, it did seem that we were transported back in time. Inside, the ceilings were low and the floor sloping and uneven.
We continued up the Borough High Street to St Thomas Street. St Thomas Hospital was first mentioned in 1215 and was named after St Thomas Beckett, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred in 1173 during the time of King Henry II. Remember the story about Dick Whittington and his cat? He was a real person who, after he became Mayor of London, established a lying-in ward at St Thomas Hospital for unwed mothers in the 15th century. The hospital was also the site of the printing of the first English Bible in 1537.
The hospital was moved to its current location across the river from Parliament in 1862. But the name of the street remained and a small piece of the hospital was left behind as well. Up in the attic of a medieval church that had been rebuilt at the end of the 17th century, it was discovered in the 1950s that an old operating theatre from St Thomas Hospital still existed. It was created in 1822, before anesthetics or antiseptics existed and was used for operating on poor women, who would have had no other recourse to surgery other than as part of a teaching hospital.
The way into the place (which also includes an herb garret where dried opium was found among the herbs left behind when the operating theatre was rediscovered) is up some very steep, narrow turnpike stairs in a corner of the church. It is the oldest surviving operating theatre in the UK and includes a rather gruesome display of some of the surgical instruments that would have been used there.
From the Old Operating Theatre we went on to Southwark Cathedral. There are legends that the cathedral began as a nunnery in the 7th century and/or a monastery in the 9th century. But the first official reference to the property dates to the Doomesday Book in 1086. The oldest part of the existing building dates to 1106 with the main part of the church dating from 1220 to 1420.
William Shakespeare’s brother, Edmund, was buried in the church somewhere, but his grave is unmarked. There is a memorial to Shakespeare himself, showing him in a reclining position and holding a quill. Southwark was the parish church for Bankside and so would have been the main church for all of the actors and playwrights in the area. The church, originally named St Saviour and St Mary Overie (Overie meaning “over the river”),became a cathedral in 1905.
Not far from the cathedral, at St Mary Overie Dock on Cathedral Street, is a replica of Sir Francis Drake’s ship The Golden Hinde. This replica was built by traditional methods and sailed on a reenactment of Drake’s 1577 circumnavigation of the world. She has been used in a few films too. On this visit, there was a private children’s party onboard, so we didn’t get to go on it. Another time, perhaps.
A short walk from the ship is The Clink. This was a prison (actually two prisons — one for men and one for women) which was part of the Palace of the Bishop of Winchester from 1144 to 1780. The current museum is on the site of the original men’s prison and advertises itself as the prison after which all other prisons were named — as in the expression “thrown in the clink.” The Bishop could have a person locked up for pretty much any reason he wanted, and he did. When touring the place, I couldn’t help noticing that the majority of torture devices were designed specifically to torture women. The Bishop had a whole brothel business going on the side and sometimes used the women’s part of the prison to keep his women in line. Lovely guy.
Along Park Street, the locations of both The Rose Theatre and the original Globe Theatre can be found. The Rose has been largely excavated in the basement of a modern building. That’s because they discovered it when digging the foundations for the new building. The choice was made to preserve the theatre while still building the new structure above it. The Globe, on the other hand, is largely underneath a listed building (which means the building it is under is historic and cannot be altered). So there is a marking in the car park behind the building, showing the outline of one of the walls beneath. This is just steps from The Rose. It is also a fairly short distance from the reproduction of The Globe. So the replica is as close to the original in distance as it can be under the circumstances.
Before heading back to the hotel we stopped in at the Anchor Inn. It is right on the river and has a great terrace from which you can watch the river traffic while having a nice meal and/or a pint. People have been doing so from that location for over 800 years, although the present building has only been there since 1676 (replacing one destroyed by fire). With its proximity to the theatres, it would seem most likely that Shakespeare and his pals would have gone there for a drink and/or a meal after a long day of rehearsals or performing.
