Newgate
Newgate Street in the City of London is one of the most historically charged thoroughfares in the entire British capital, carrying within its name and stones a weight of centuries of law, punishment, plague, and civic memory. The street and its immediate surroundings, centred around the postcode EC1A, mark the site of the ancient Newgate — originally one of the principal gates in the Roman and later medieval city wall — and more infamously the location of Newgate Prison, which for over seven hundred years served as London's primary place of incarceration and public execution. Though the prison itself was demolished in 1902 to make way for the Central Criminal Court, known worldwide as the Old Bailey, the area remains one of the most resonant corners of the City, drawing historians, legal professionals, writers, and curious visitors in equal measure.
The gate itself is believed to have Roman origins, first appearing as a passage in the western circuit of Londinium's defensive wall, though it was substantially rebuilt and expanded by the medieval English kings. By the twelfth century it had been converted into a prison, and over the following centuries Newgate Prison grew into a byword for misery, overcrowding, and brutality. Conditions inside were notoriously squalid, and the prison was a crucible of disease — gaol fever, a form of typhus, regularly swept through its population and on occasion infected those attending the courts nearby, killing judges and jurors alike in what became known as the Black Assizes. The prison was also the site of public hangings outside its walls, which drew enormous and often festive crowds until public executions were abolished in England in 1868. Among the many notable figures held at Newgate were the highwayman Jack Sheppard, the thief-taker general Jonathan Wild, and the writer Daniel Defoe, who was imprisoned there for seditious libel.
The prison was rebuilt several times, most notably by the architect George Dance the Younger following its near-total destruction in the Gordon Riots of 1780, when a mob stormed and burned it in one of the most dramatic episodes of civil unrest in London's history. Dance's rebuilding produced a forbidding neo-classical façade of rusticated stonework, described by contemporaries as a monument to civic severity, its blank and massive walls deliberately designed to project the authority of the state. That structure too was eventually cleared, though the spirit of Dance's architectural gravity lives on in the current Old Bailey building, which was constructed on the Newgate footprint and opened in 1907.
Today, the area around Newgate Street and the Old Bailey is a compact, busy district that blends the ancient and the modern in the manner so characteristic of the City of London. The street itself is lined with commercial and legal premises, and the dome of St Paul's Cathedral is visible just to the east, a constant reminder of the neighbourhood's position at the very heart of the old city. The Church of St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, which stands directly opposite the site of the former prison on Holborn Viaduct, is one of the largest parish churches in the City and has deep historical ties to the condemned of Newgate — its bells were rung on execution mornings, and a handbell kept within the church was historically rung outside the condemned cell the night before a hanging. The church is well worth stepping inside, and contains memorials to Captain John Smith of Virginia and the musician Henry Wood.
Physically, the area has the feel of a place that has absorbed enormous human drama and now wears it quietly. The streets are relatively narrow by modern standards, and on weekday mornings are thronged with barristers and solicitors in dark suits making their way to and from the Old Bailey and the Inns of Court nearby. The Old Bailey itself — properly the Central Criminal Court — is topped by its famous bronze figure of Justice, holding scales and sword but famously unblindfolded, a detail often misremembered. The building's main entrance on Old Bailey Street is guarded and not open for casual visits, but members of the public are welcome to observe trials from the public galleries on weekday mornings, which offers one of the most remarkable and unremarked civic experiences available in London.
The surrounding area is exceptionally rich in historical and cultural interest. To the immediate east lies St Paul's Cathedral and Paternoster Square. To the north, Smithfield Market — the ancient meat market that has operated for nearly a thousand years — is just a few minutes' walk, along with the remarkable St Bartholomew the Great, one of London's oldest surviving churches. The Museum of London, though it has now relocated to West Smithfield, was long based nearby and the area remains closely associated with London's institutional memory. The Inns of Court, including Gray's Inn and Lincoln's Inn, are also easily reached on foot, making this corner of London one of the densest concentrations of legal and civic history anywhere in the English-speaking world.
Visiting is straightforward — the area is best reached via the Central line to St Paul's station or the Thameslink and National Rail services to City Thameslink, both of which deposit visitors within a few minutes' walk. The area is walkable and compact, and the streets are most animated on weekdays when the courts and businesses are in full operation. Weekends are quieter and in some ways more reflective — the absence of the legal crowds allows a visitor to stand on Newgate Street and let the silence of centuries settle around them. There is no admission charge for walking the street or visiting St Sepulchre's church (though donations are welcomed), and the public galleries of the Old Bailey are free to attend on court sitting days, though photography and electronic devices are not permitted inside.
One of the lesser-known stories associated with Newgate concerns a small garden that was created on the site of the prison's burial ground, located in Amen Court just off the street, where the bodies of executed prisoners were buried in quicklime within the prison walls. The garden remains private, accessible only to the residents of the Canon's houses of St Paul's Cathedral that back onto it, but its legend persists — it is said to be haunted by the Black Dog of Newgate, a spectral creature whose origins are traced back to a medieval folk tale recorded in the seventeenth century, in which starving prisoners allegedly resorted to cannibalism and the ghost of a victim returned to terrorise them in animal form. The legend is dark and almost certainly apocryphal, but it has endured for four centuries and gives some sense of the extreme suffering that Newgate represented in the popular imagination of Londoners across the generations.