St. Martin's Le Grand is a former liberty within the City of London, and is the name of a street north of Newgate Street and Cheapside and south of Aldersgate Street. It forms the southernmost section of the A1 road. [2] For many years St. Martin's Le Grand was "often used as a synonym for the chief postal authorities, as Scotland Yard is used to designate the police", [3] the headquarters of the General Post Office having been there from 1829-1984.
To the east of the road in medieval times stood a college of secular canons of ancient origin, with a collegiate church dedicated to St Martin of Tours. The institution was situated in the City of London parish of St Leonard, Foster Lane. [4]
According to a somewhat dubious tradition, the college and church dated to the 7th or 8th century and was founded by King Wihtred of Kent. [5] [6] It was, more certainly, rebuilt or founded about 1056 by two brothers, Ingelric and Girard, during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Its foundation was confirmed by a charter of William the Conqueror, dating to 1068. [7] [8]
The church was responsible for the sounding of the curfew bell in the evenings, which announced the closing of the city's gates. It also had certain rights of sanctuary; these persisted until 1697 and, as such, made the locality a notorious haven for malefactors. One who sought sanctuary here was Miles Forrest, one of the reputed murderers of the Princes in the Tower. [7]
The college was taken over by Westminster Abbey in 1503 as part of the endowment granted for the upkeep of the Henry VII Chapel. This was an arrangement allowing the abbey to appropriate the college's revenues, and did not make the latter a monastery. [9]
As the property of a monastery, the college was dissolved by King Henry VIII and demolished for redevelopment in 1548.
However, the link with Westminster Abbey meant that the precinct was subsequently regarded as part of the borough of Westminster, and as a liberty: a district outside the jurisdiction of the legal officers of the City of London. The inhabitants voted in the Westminster borough elections up to the Reform Act 1832, [10] and the liberty was regarded as an exclave of Middlesex. [11]
This was despite an Act of Parliament of 1815 annexing the liberty to the Aldersgate Ward of the City of London when the site was earmarked for a new General Post Office. [12]
The General Post Office (GPO) established its national headquarters on the site of the monastic precinct after the 1815 Act authorised the project. In 1825 construction began of the General Post Office building, a Neoclassical design by Robert Smirke, which opened in 1829. As well as accommodating the Postmaster General and other senior staff, the building functioned as London's main sorting office and public post office. In the early years, before they were superseded by the railway, mail coaches departed from here for destinations across the country. The coaches and horses were made ready at the Bull and Mouth Inn, which stood directly across the street from the Post Office. [13] Coaches bound for the north went up St Martin's Le Grand through Aldersgate; this became the first section of the Great North Road (now the A1 route) to York and Edinburgh), [2] replacing the road's previous starting point at Hicks Hall in Smithfield Market.
In the latter part of the 19th century the GPO erected further buildings on the west side of St. Martin's Le Grand, for telegraph workers (1874) and headquarters staff (1894). The old General Post Office building remained in use as a sorting office and a public post office until 1911, when it was demolished and replaced by new premises to the west (on the former site of Christ's Hospital school). [14] Post Office Headquarters remained on St. Martin's Le Grand until 1984. The BT Centre, built that same year on the site of the old GPO Telegraph building, was until 2021 the global headquarters of BT Group (which had originally been created out of the Post Office Telecommunications division in 1981).
Guglielmo Marconi and his assistant George Kemp successfully demonstrated the wireless telegraphy system between two Post Office buildings on 27 July 1896. A transmitter was placed on the roof of the Central Telegraph Office on St. Martin's Le Grand, and a receiver on the roof of the General Post Office South on Carter Lane. The distance between the two buildings was 300 metres (yards). Later that year the Post Office provided funding for Marconi to conduct further experiments on Salisbury Plain. [15] There is a plaque at the transmitter site (which later became the BT Centre), [16] but no such marker on the building at the receiver site in Carter Lane.
A French Protestant chapel stood on the west side on the corner with Bull and Mouth Street from 1842 until 1888, when it was demolished to make way for new and expanded post office buildings.
The nearest London Underground station is St Paul's (originally named Post Office), at the southern end of the street.
Westminster is the main settlement of the City of Westminster in London, England. It extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, and has many famous landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral, Trafalgar Square and much of the West End cultural centre including the entertainment precinct of West End Theatre.
Aldersgate is a Ward of the City of London, England, named after one of the northern gates in the London Wall which once enclosed the City.
The Queen Elizabeth II Centre is a conference facility located in the City of Westminster, London, close to the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Central Hall Westminster and Parliament Square.
The City and Liberty of Westminster was a unit of local government in the county of Middlesex, England. It was located immediately to the west of the City of London. Originally under the control of Westminster Abbey, the local authority for the area was the Westminster Court of Burgesses from 1585 to 1900. The area now forms the southern part of the City of Westminster in Greater London.
Victoria is an area of Central London in the City of Westminster. It is named after Victoria Station, which is a major transport hub. The station was named after the nearby Victoria Street.
Postman's Park is a public garden in central London, a short distance north of St Paul's Cathedral. Bordered by Little Britain, Aldersgate Street, St. Martin's Le Grand, King Edward Street, and the site of the former headquarters of the General Post Office (GPO), it is one of the largest open spaces in the City of London.
St Leonard, Foster Lane, was a Church of England church dedicated to Leonard of Noblac on the west side of Foster Lane in the Aldersgate ward of the City of London. It was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and not rebuilt.
St. Botolph without Aldersgate is a Church of England church in London dedicated to St. Botolph. It was built just outside Aldersgate, one of the gates on London's wall, in the City of London.
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The General Post Office is a heritage-listed landmark building located in Martin Place, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The original building was constructed in two stages beginning in 1866 and was designed under the guidance of Colonial Architect James Barnet. Composed primarily of local Sydney sandstone, mined in Pyrmont, the primary load-bearing northern façade has been described as "the finest example of the Victorian Italian Renaissance Style in NSW" and stretches 114 metres (374 ft) along Martin Place, making it one of the largest sandstone buildings in Sydney.
The Mount Pleasant Mail Centre is a mail centre operated by Royal Mail in London, England. The site has previously operated as one of the largest sorting offices in the world. It is located in the London Borough of Islington, on the boundary with the London Borough of Camden.
The BT Centre in London was until 2021 the global headquarters and registered office of BT Group. It occupied a 10-storey office building on Newgate Street in the City of London, opposite St Paul's tube station. It was opened in June, 1984.
The General Post Office (GPO) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in the 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific sender to a specific receiver ; it was overseen by a Government minister, the Postmaster General. Over time its remit was extended to Scotland and Ireland, and across parts of the British Empire.
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.
The General Post Office in St. Martin's Le Grand was the main post office for London between 1829 and 1910, the headquarters of the General Post Office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and England's first purpose-built post office.
General Post Office is a landmark building located on the corner of Elizabeth Street and Macquarie Street in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It stands next to the former Mercury Building and has served as the headquarters of the Tasmanian Postal system since its construction in 1905, though mail processing has now been moved to Glenorchy.
The Bull and Mouth Inn was a coaching inn in the City of London that dated from before the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was located between Bull and Mouth Street in the north and Angel Street in the south. It was once an important arrival and departure point for coaches from all over Britain, but particularly for the north of England and Scotland. It became the Queen's Hotel in 1830 but was demolished in 1887 or 1888 when new post office buildings were built in St Martin's Le Grand.
King Edward Street is a street in the City of London that runs from Newgate Street in the south to Little Britain in the north. It is joined by Greyfriars Passage in the west and Angel Street in the east. Postman's Park is on its east side where Bull and Mouth Street once lay and joined King Edward Street.
Angel Street, formerly known as Angel Alley, Angel Court, and Angell Street, is a street in the City of London that runs between King Edward Street in the west and St Martin's Le Grand in the east. Although dating back to at least 1542, no original buildings now remain due to the effects of the Great Fire of London, the London Blitz, and redevelopment.
King Edward Building in the City of London was London's main Post Office for most of the 20th century and also the main sorting office for the London EC postal area and for overseas mail. Designed by Sir Henry Tanner, it was opened in 1910 and closed in the 1990s.
