Borough in London, England
Southwark
Southwark gave London its oldest market, its Shakespeare theatre, a pilgrimage's starting point and a 310-metre shard of glass, all on the wrong side of the river.
Key information
- County
- Greater London
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 308,000 (2021 Census)
- Known for
- Borough Market, Shakespeare's Globe, Tate Modern, The Shard, Borough High Street
- What locals are called
- No single widely used name; people simply say they're from Southwark, Bermondsey, Peckham or Dulwich
- Famous people
- Charlie Chaplin (lived locally), Michael Caine, Geoffrey Chaucer (Tabard Inn), John Harvard
- Football clubs
- Millwall (Bermondsey), Dulwich Hamlet, Peckham Town
About Southwark
The side of the river where London went to misbehave
For centuries, the south bank of the Thames was where the City of London's rules stopped applying. Cross London Bridge and you were in Southwark, outside the City's jurisdiction, and a good deal more relaxed about what you got up to. Theatres, bear-baiting pits, taverns and brothels clustered along the riverside. The area known as the Liberty of the Clink was famous for its entertainments, and the old Clink prison gave every other jail a nickname: to be 'in the clink' is to be locked up in Southwark. The lively reputation was not accidental. It was a place built on being just beyond the reach of the authorities next door.
Where Shakespeare's company set up shop
The Globe Theatre opened on Bankside in 1599, built by Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, partly from timbers salvaged from an earlier playhouse in Shoreditch. It burned down in 1613 when a cannon fired during a performance of Henry VIII set the thatch alight. The modern Shakespeare's Globe, the dream of the American actor Sam Wanamaker, opened in 1997 a short walk from the original site. It is built with a thatched roof, the first permitted in London since the Great Fire of 1666, and standing tickets in the open yard keep the Elizabethan 'groundlings' tradition alive. Nearby, Southwark Cathedral holds a memorial window to Shakespeare, and his brother Edmund was buried in the church in 1607.
Chaucer's pilgrims start here
Geoffrey Chaucer opens The Canterbury Tales at the Tabard Inn on Southwark's High Street, where his band of storytellers gather before setting off for Canterbury. The inn is long gone, but Borough High Street was once lined with coaching inns, and a few narrow galleried yards survive, notably the George Inn, the last of its kind in London, now owned by the National Trust. Charles Dickens knew the area intimately. As a boy he worked at a blacking factory by the river, and his father was held in the Marshalsea debtors' prison on Borough High Street. That experience seeped into Little Dorrit, where Southwark's prison features heavily.
A market older than most countries' capitals
Borough Market has traded in some form for around a thousand years, with a market recorded on London Bridge's southern end long before it moved to its current spot. Today it's the city's best-known food market, famed for cheeses, game, fresh bread, oysters and street food packed under Victorian ironwork. Not far away, Bermondsey has its own food culture. The Maltby Street and Bermondsey Beer Mile scenes sprang up in railway arches, and the neighbourhood also gave London a long industrial past of tanneries, biscuit-making and warehouses. Peek Freans biscuits were made here, and Jacob's cream crackers were also a south London staple. Peckham adds another layer, from its famous Nigerian and Caribbean food shops to its rooftop bars above a multi-storey car park.
From power station to Shard
Southwark's skyline changed drastically in the last quarter-century. Tate Modern opened in 2000 inside the old Bankside Power Station, with its 99-metre chimney now a London signpost. The Millennium Bridge, linking it to St Paul's, wobbled so alarmingly on opening that it was nicknamed the 'Wobbly Bridge' and swiftly closed for repairs. Then came The Shard, designed by Renzo Piano and completed in 2012. At 310 metres, it is the tallest building in the UK, rising by London Bridge station. HMS Belfast, a Second World War cruiser, is moored nearby and open as a museum ship. The former City Hall, with its tilted glass shape, stands on the river's edge. London's current City Hall is in the Royal Docks, where the Greater London Authority relocated in 2022.
Lions, Hamlets and a famous green south
Millwall Football Club was founded as Millwall Rovers in 1885 by workers at J. T. Morton's food-preserving factory on the Isle of Dogs. It now plays at The Den in Bermondsey and has one of English football's most fiercely loyal followings. Their chant, 'No one likes us, we don't care', is known everywhere. Further south, Dulwich is a different world. Dulwich Picture Gallery, designed by Sir John Soane, opened in 1817 and is considered the world's first purpose-built public art gallery. Dulwich Hamlet FC, the amateur-spirited club with a cult following, play at Champion Hill. The borough also gave the world John Harvard, born in Southwark in 1607 and later benefactor of the American university that bears his name. He was baptised in what is now Southwark Cathedral, where a chapel is dedicated to him.