King William Street is a street in the City of London, the historic nucleus and modern financial centre of London. It is a two-way street linking Lombard Street, at its northern end, with London Bridge, which marks the start of the start of the A3 route to Portsmouth.
King William Street runs from its northern end at a junction with Lombard Street by the church of St Mary Woolnoth, southeast to Monument junction, where it meets Gracechurch Street and Cannon Street. King William Street then continues south into London Bridge. The nearest London Underground stations are Bank and Monument; [1] the former King William Street station was once sited on the road, at the corner of Monument Street.
The road was built between 1829 and 1835 and is named after the reigning monarch of the time, King William IV. [2] From 1844 to 1936 a Statue of William IV sat on a column in the street before being relocated to King William Walk in Greenwich. In 1902 King William Street was the scene of the fatal stabbing of Arthur Reginald Baker by his lover Kitty Byron, at an entrance to the Lombard Street post office which at that time was located on King William Street. Today, it houses a number of investment banks and City firms.
King William Street is mentioned in T. S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land . Lines 60–68 read:
Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
At the time he wrote this section, Eliot was working for a bank in the City.
Bank and Monument are two interlinked stations in the City of London that form a public transport complex served by five lines of the London Underground as well as the Docklands Light Railway (DLR).
Gracechurch Street is a main road in the City of London, the historic and financial centre of London, England, which is designated the A1213.
Eastcheap is a street in central London that is a western continuation of Great Tower Street towards Monument junction. Its name derives from cheap, the Old English word for market, with the prefix 'East' distinguishing it from Westcheap, another former market street that today is called Cheapside.
The A10 is a major road in England which runs between The City of London and King's Lynn in Norfolk.
St Mary Woolnoth is an Anglican church in the City of London, located on the corner of Lombard Street and King William Street near Bank junction. The present building is one of the Queen Anne Churches, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. The parish church continues to be actively used for services, with Holy Communion every Tuesday. St Mary Woolnoth lies in the ward of Langbourn.
St Edmund, King and Martyr, is an Anglican church in Lombard Street, in the City of London, dedicated to St Edmund the Martyr. From 2001 it housed the London Centre for Spirituality, renamed the London Centre for Spiritual Direction, but is still a consecrated church. Since 2019, Imprint Church organises regular worship inside of the building.
St Benet Gracechurch, so called because a haymarket existed nearby (Cobb), was a parish church in the City of London. First recorded in the 11th century, it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666 and rebuilt by the office of Sir Christopher Wren. The church was demolished in 1868.
The Worshipful Company of Parish Clerks is one of the Guilds of the City of London. It has no livery, because "in the 16th century, the Parish Clerks declined to take the Livery on the grounds that the surplice was older than the Livery and was the proper garb of members of the Company." It is not, therefore, technically a livery company although to all intents and purposes it acts as such. It is one of two such historic companies without livery, the other being the Company of Watermen and Lightermen.
St Nicholas Acons was a parish church in the City of London. In existence by the late 11th century, it was destroyed during the Great Fire of London of 1666 and not rebuilt.
Langbourn is one of the 25 ancient wards of the City of London. It reputedly is named after a buried stream in the vicinity.
Candlewick is a small ward, one of the 25 ancient wards in the City of London, England.
St Dionis Backchurch was a parish church in the Langbourn ward of the City of London. Of medieval origin, it was rebuilt after the Great Fire of London to the designs of Christopher Wren and demolished in 1878.
The Gresham Club was founded in 1843 and dissolved in 1991. It was named after Thomas Gresham. The Gresham Club's last site was located on Abchurch Lane off King William Street before it was sold to the London Capital Club, which in turn ceased operation in 2018. Following the closure of the London Capital Club, a number of the members relaunched The Gresham Club in 2018 and recreated the raison d'être of its original predecessor.
St Mary Woolchurch Haw was a parish church in the City of London, destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666 and not rebuilt. It came within the ward of Walbrook.
St. Leonard, Eastcheap, sometimes referred to as St Leonard Milkchurch, was a parish church in the City of London. Of medieval origin, it was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666 and not rebuilt. The site of the church was retained as a graveyard.
John Macvicar Anderson was a Scottish architect.
Lombard Street is a street notable for its connections with the City of London's merchant, banking and insurance industries, stretching back to medieval times.
Phoenix Assurance or Phoenix Fire Office was a fire insurance company founded in 1680 in England.
The equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington is an outdoor sculpture of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, a British soldier and statesman, located at the Royal Exchange in London. It overlooks Bank junction in the historic City of London. The sculptor was Francis Leggatt Chantrey. The statue commemorates Wellington's assistance to the City of London in ensuring that a bill was passed to allow the rebuilding of London Bridge.
51°30′34″N0°5′13″W / 51.50944°N 0.08694°W