Allow me to indulge myself with a little more Old English. Fleet derives from the River Fleet, one of London’s lost rivers. The word fleet derives from the Old English fleot, which has several meanings, one of which is stream.
The Fleet ran in the open from Hampstead down through London to join the Thames. Fleet Street was originally called Fleet Bridge Street, since the road was bisected by the Fleet. By the 1870s the whole course of the Fleet was covered over.
Fleet Street runs up Ludgate Hill past St. Paul’s Cathedral. There are many interesting stories about St. Paul’s, and its destruction in the Great Fire and subsequent rebuilding. Many people have read Samuel Pepys accounts of the fire, and very informative they are too. However if you’re interested you should also have a look at John Evelyn’s diary too. I like the story that Christopher Wren visited the burnt out shell of the old cathedral and found a broken stone with the word ‘resurgam’ which of course means I will rise again.
Fleet Street was also the home of the (probably) fictional Sweeney Todd, the barber who killed his customers and had them baked into pies. I say probably fictional. There have been some claims he was a real person, but there’s been nothing I’ve ever seen that would stand up in a court of law.
In the 19th and especially the 20th centuries Fleet Street became synonymous with the newspaper industry and was home to most of Britain’s national newspapers. They’ve all moved out to pastures new now. Although the newspapers have gone, some printers still remain, maintaining an association with Fleet Street that goes back to 1500, when Wynkyn de Worde, the apprentice of England’s first ever printer, William Caxton, first set up his press here.
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