Norton Folgate
Norton Folgate, Tower Hamlets/City/Hackney
Now just a short section of the A10 linking Bishopsgate with Shoreditch High Street, Norton Folgate was formerly a well-known mercantile neighbourhood
Norton Folgate was once so familiar to most Londoners that Mr Burgess could say, in GB Shaw’s play Candida, “I never met a man as didn’t know Nortn Folgit before.”
Until its merger with the parish of Spitalfields in 1911, Norton Folgate was an extra-parochial liberty, which meant that it was outside the influence of the church.
The playwright Christopher Marlowe was living here in 1589. A century later Spital Square and its surrounding streets began to fill with fine homes for silk merchants and master weavers, while artisans and journeymen occupied the diverging alleys and courts.
The City of London theatre, which specialised in ‘domestic and temperance melodrama’, opened on Norton Folgate in 1837 and closed in 1868. Puma Court, east of Spitalfields market, has almshouses ‘for the poor inhabitants of the Liberty of Norton Folgate,’ built in 1860 to replace those of 1728.
Norton Folgate’s residential population declined during the course of the 19th century as premises were converted to warehouses and businesses.
When London’s administrative boundaries were redrawn in 1900 a small part of Norton Folgate was included in the Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch but the majority went to Stepney.
Most of Norton Folgate is now occupied by modern offices and more will appear in the near future as the City spreads northwards into Shoreditch. In particular, British Land will be redeveloping the quarter known as the Shoreditch estate following Boris Johnson’s favourable intervention when he was mayor of London. Johnson’s decision was upheld in the High Court in May 2016. Blossom Street, as that development is now called, involves the construction of several new buildings and the restoration of some existing ones, such as the group shown on the left in the CGI above, viewed from the corner of Norton Folgate and Worship Street. Work will get underway in the second quarter of 2019.
Dennis Severs’ house at 18 Folgate Street is an enchanting recreation of a Huguenot silk weaver’s family home. Its restricted public opening allows visitors to experience the sights, sounds and smells of domestic life in the 18th century (or thereabouts) in a way that no mass access museum can achieve.