Fann Street is a street in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London fr ...

. It runs west–east, from its junction with

Aldersgate Street Aldersgate is a Ward of the City of London, named after one of the northern gates in the London Wall which once enclosed the City. The Ward of Aldersgate is traditionally divided into Aldersgate Within and Aldersgate Without, the suffix denot ...

and

Goswell Road Goswell Road, in Central London, is an end part of the A1. The southern part ends with one block, on the east side, in City of London; the rest is in the London Borough of Islington, the north end being Angel. It crosses Old Street/Clerkenwell ...

in the west, to the junction with

Golden Lane Golden Lane ( cs, Zlatá ulička) is a street situated in Prague Castle, Czech Republic. Originally built in the 16th century to house Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II's castle guards, it takes its name from the goldsmiths that lived there ...

in the east. In its original form of Fann's Alley the street was almost certainly named after a former owner or builder in the seventeenth century, and a likely candidate is Stephen Fann, carpenter, whose 1613 will states that he had property in the Precinct of 'Goswelstrete'. Despite the claim made by the plaque placed by the

Worshipful Company of Fan Makers The Worshipful Company of Fan Makers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The company was incorporated by a Royal Charter in 1709. As fan making is now done by machines rather than by craftsmen, the company is no longer a trade ...

on the Jewin Chapel in this street, the name has no connection with the making of fans. In 1802, Robert Thorne moved his

type foundry A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Mono ...

to a former brewery in Fann Street, and renamed it the

Fann Street Foundry The Fann Street Foundry was a type foundry (a company that designs or distributes typefaces) that was located on Fann Street, City of London. Establishment In 1794, Robert Thorne (typographer), Robert Thorne (1754-1820) acquired the type foundry ...

. On his death in 1820, the business was bought by

William Thorowgood William Thorowgood (died 1877) was a British typographer and type founder. On the death of its founder Robert Thorne in 1820, Thorowgood bought the Fann Street Foundry. He was active in the development of Sans Serif In typography and lette ...

. Thorowgood created the typeface

Grotesque Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus ...

. In 1838, the typographer

Robert Besley Robert Besley (1794–1876) was an English typographer, creator of Clarendon (typeface) in 1845 and the Lord Mayor of London in 1869. Career Besley was taken into partnership by William Thorowgood at the Fann Street Foundry in Fann Street, City ...

, the creator of Clarendon the first

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

ed typeface in 1845, joined the Fann Street Foundry. The former

YMCA YMCA, sometimes regionally called the Y, is a worldwide youth organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, with more than 64 million beneficiaries in 120 countries. It was founded on 6 June 1844 by George Williams in London, originally ...

Building at 2 Fann Street has been renamed Blake Tower and has been redeveloped to create 72 luxury apartments. A history of the street and its former inhabitants has been provided by

Anthony Camp Anthony John Camp (born November 1937) is a British genealogist and former director of the Society of Genealogists. Early life and education Camp was born at Walkern, near Stevenage, Hertfordshire. His father was an agricultural carpenter and b ...

in ''On the City's edge: a history of Fann Street, London'' (2016, ).

References

{{Coord, 51.522, -0.0969, display=title Streets in the City of London