This neighbourhood is an area just west of the Bank junction, and is bounded by Ironmonger Lane to the east, Cheapside to the west, Milk Street to the west and Gresham Street to the north. The area is home to several foreign banks, such as the State Bank of India and PT Bank Negara Indonesia. This area was the former market centre of medieval London, and the street names reflect that – Milk Street was where people got their dairy products, Poultry where they got their chickens, Honey Lane, etc. Curiously, Trump Street is also named after a trade, that being those of trumpet-makers, who lived around the area and made them for the nearby watchmen who guarded the City’s walls from intruders. Lawrence Lane, on the other hand, was not named after an occupation but rather from the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, and used to be called St. Lawrence Lane.

St. Olave Old Jewry, also known as Upwell Old Jewry, is dedicated to the patron saint of Norway, St. Olaf. It was in the area of medieval London which was populated by Jews up to their expulsion from England in 1290. The earliest reference of the church was written in 1130, though Saxon foundations have been discovered dating between the 9th and 11th centuries. It was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, then rebuilt in 1671, incorporating a lot of the medieval walls. It was completed 8 years later at a cost of £5,580, including £10 paid to the then still ruined St Paul’s Cathedral for rubble. However, the body of the church was demolished in 1887; the dead in the area were disinterred and remains moved to the City of London Cemetery in Manor Park, although at least one body was moved instead to Westminster Abbey.

St. Olave’s was the burial place of several people, including William Caxton. Born in 1422 in Kent, he went to London at the age of 16 to become an apprentice to a merchant, later moving to Bruges, which was the centre of the wool trade. In the early 1470s Caxton spent time in Cologne learning the art of printing. He returned to Bruges in 1472 where he and Colard Mansion, a Flemish calligrapher, set up a press. He brought his expertise back to the country, and was the first English printer and a translator and importer of books into England, opening in Westminster in 1476. He ended up printing more than 100 books in his lifetime.

Apart from the slight annoyance of giving directions to one’s address, the area is a few hundred metres from the Bank junction, which brings a tremendous amount of traffic to the area. On the flipside, however, the area is extremely well-connected, with the St. Paul’s, Bank (leading to several tube and DLR lines), Mansion House and main line London Cannon Street stations less than a 7-minute walk away.

The City of London Corporation has recently limited traffic in the Bank junction, starting from April 2017 and lasting up to 18 months, only buses and cyclists will be able to use the junction from 7am to 7pm, as an effort to make the junction safer for road users.

There is little in the way of planned future development on Cheapside, already being densely populated by luxury stores and offices. However work is completing on renovation work at Bank station. New step free access will be provided to the DLR as well as an expanded Northern Line platform, while passengers can gain access via a new entrance on Cannon Street which will take up the ground floor of a new office development.