Wormwood Street is a short 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 f ...

which runs between

London Wall The London Wall was a defensive wall first built by the Romans around the strategically important port town of Londinium in AD 200, and is now the name of a modern street in the City of London. It has origins as an initial mound wall and ...

at its western end and a junction with Bishopsgate and Camomile Street in the east. It is a dual carriageway which forms part of the A1211 route between Barbican and

Whitechapel Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, east of Charing Cross. Part of the historic county of Middlesex, the area formed ...

. The nearest

London Underground stations The London Underground is a metro system in the United Kingdom that serves Greater London and the home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire. Its first section opened in 1863, making it the oldest underground metro system in the ...

to Wormwood Street are Liverpool Street and

Moorgate Moorgate was one of the City of London's northern gates in its defensive wall, the last to be built. The gate took its name from the Moorfields, an area of marshy land that lay immediately north of the wall. The gate was demolished in 1762, bu ...

. It is within the London congestion charge zone. The postcode for the street is EC2.

Etymology

The name of the street refers to a plant called wormwood which used to grow on the

and in other areas of wasteland in the City. Wormwood Street's course follows the line of a sector of the original city wall, the wall forming the rear of the buildings on the north side of the street.

History

It escaped destruction in the

Great Fire of 1666 The Great Fire of London was a major conflagration that swept through central London from Sunday 2 September to Thursday 6 September 1666, gutting the medieval City of London inside the old Roman city wall, while also extending past the ...

but had to be extensively redeveloped after suffering severe damage in the

1993 Bishopsgate bombing The Bishopsgate bombing occurred on 24 April 1993, when the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a powerful car bomb, truck bomb on Bishopsgate, a major thoroughfare in London's financial district, the City of London. Telephone ...

. The bomb exploded on Bishopsgate near its junction with Wormwood Street. Archaeological investigations by the

Museum of London Archaeology Service MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) is an archaeology and built heritage practice and independent charitable company registered with the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists (CIfA), providing a wide range of professional archaeological servi ...

undertaken during the reconstruction after the bombing discovered a coin in the remains of London Wall that led to the date of construction to be reappraised to preceding the year 180.

References

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Etymology

History

See also

References