Cripplegate is one of the 25 ancient
wards of the City of London, each electing an
alderman to the
Court of Aldermen and commoners (the City equivalent of a
councillor) to the
Court of Common Council of the
City of London Corporation. Only electors who are
Freemen of the City are eligible to stand. In the early 12th century, the area was originally referred to as
Alwoldii which was probably the name of the current alderman. The early records are unreliable as regards who the Aldermen were, but from 1286 there is a more reliable list of Aldermen available.
History of the ward The wards of London appear to have taken shape in the 11th century, before the
Norman Conquest. Their administrative, judicial and military purpose made them equivalent to
Hundreds in the countryside. The primary purpose of wards like Cripplegate, which included a gate, appears to have been the defence of the gate, as gates were the weakest points in any fortification.
Cripplegate Without was, in the 11th, 12th and possibly later centuries, part of an area outside the northern wall called the
Soke of Cripplegate, held by the church of
St. Martin's Le Grand. In 1068, a burial site, where
Jewin Street now stands, was the only place in England where Jews were permitted to be buried. Those living elsewhere in the country were forced, at great expense and inconvenience, to bring their dead there. The philosopher
Thomas More, writer of
Utopia, was born on
Milk Street in 1478. In 1555,
John Gresham endowed the new
Gresham's School in Norfolk with three tenements in the parish of St. Giles Without Cripplegate, including 'The White Hind' and 'The Peacock'. During the Second World War, the Cripplegate area, a centre of the rag trade, was virtually destroyed and by 1951 the resident population of the City stood at only 5,324, of whom 48 lived in Cripplegate. Discussions began in 1952 about the future of the area, and the decision to build new residential properties was taken by the
Court of Common Council on 19 September 1957. The area was reopened as the
Barbican Estate in 1969.
Tranter's Hotel was located at 6–9
Bridgewater Square, in a Georgian building with 60 rooms available, not far from today's
Beech Street, before being destroyed by the
World War II bombs. It was advertised in a number of
periodicals and magazines between 1887 and 1919 as a very centrally located, family and commercial,
temperance-friendly hotel, convenient for
St Paul's Cathedral and
Aldersgate station, for business and pleasure.
Politics Current elected representatives in Cripplegate are
David Graves (Alderman), Mark Bostock, David Bradshaw, Mary Durcan,
Vivienne Littlechild, Susan Pearson,
William Pimlott,
Stephen Quilter and John Tomlinson. In the 2017 City-wide Common Council elections, the
Labour Party won two seats in Cripplegate ward with local residents Mary Durcan and William Pimlott making Labour gains. The Labour Party won a record total of five seats on the Common Council in March 2017 winning two seats in
Portsoken, two seats in Cripplegate ward and one seat in
Aldersgate ward. Following a boundary change in 1994, the
Golden Lane Estate was transferred from
Islington to the City, and so Cripplegate is today the most populous of the four residential wards of the City, with a population of 2,782 (2011). ==Other uses==