Toponymy The name
Suthriganaweorc or
Suthringa geweorche is recorded for the area in the 10th-century
Anglo-Saxon document known as the
Burghal Hidage 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.
Rome that mentions 'Londoners' for the first time 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.
Natural setting 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. 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 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 to the west.
Archaeological finds In February 2022, archaeologists from the
Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) announced the discovery of a well-preserved massive Roman
mosaic which is believed to date from A.D. 175–225. The dining room (
triclinium) mosaic was patterned with knot patterns known as the
Solomon's knot and dark red and blue floral and geometric shapes known as
guilloche. Archaeological work at
Tabard Street in 2004 discovered a plaque with the earliest reference to 'Londoners' from the Roman period on it.
End of Roman Southwark 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.
Saxons and Vikings King Alfred the Great 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.
St Olaf 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.
King Canute 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 May, 1016, In 1173, a channel following a similar course was used to drain the Thames to allowing building work on London Bridge. , Southwark.
Olaf (or Olave) helped the English retake London Bridge, and with it London, from his fellow Norsemen.
Later medieval period 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 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. 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.
Post-medieval 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. 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 theatre,
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 Theatre, 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 favour, however their hopes were quashed when
Philip Skippon, in charge of the defence 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. 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. Another family of note was the Harvards.
John Harvard attended the local parish free school of St Saviour's and later the
University of Cambridge. He subsequently migrated to
Massachusetts Bay Colony, then one of the
Thirteen Colonies of British America, and left his library and a substantial donation in his will to new college in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, which was named
Harvard University in his honor. Harvard University alumni donated to the establishment of a memorial chapel in Southwark Cathedral, his family's parish church, in his honor, where UK-based Harvard alumni hold services. The childhood residence of John Harvard and that of his mother is located in
Stratford-upon-Avon.
Urbanisation 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. 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. Southwark, since 1999, is also now served by
Southwark,
Bermondsey and London Bridge stations on the
Jubilee line. ==Administrative history==