Bank End

Bank End is a short, quiet alley running between Clink Street and the Thames, distinguished by the massive brick arches that carry the Cannon Street Railway viaduct overhead. At street level, it is barely visible—a gap between warehouses and modern developments, easy to miss. Yet the name itself records one of London’s oldest surviving street terms. It marks the eastern boundary of Bankside, the historic riverside quarter that from the medieval period through the Elizabethan era was simultaneously London’s entertainment quarter and a place of ecclesiastical power.

2008

Bank End

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

2025

The Anchor Bank End Bankside Southwark London England

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

—

Historical image not found

Today

Mural by the tunnel entrance to Clink Street

Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

What is Bank End known for today is its complete transformation. Where once stood the Anchor Tavern and warehouses fronting the river, modern buildings have replaced the old industrial riverfront. Yet the street name endures—a linguistic fossil embedded in the modern city, telling the story of how the Thames was first tamed and defended along this stretch of shore.

Probable

Bank End derives from Bankside, the medieval riverside street that ran along the south bank of the Thames. The name has deep roots in the physical geography of the place. By the Tudor period, an earthen bank had been constructed to prevent the Thames encroaching inland during high tide, and a road was built along this defensive line. The word ‘bank’ comes from Old Danish via Middle English and originally meant a ridge or hillside—in this context, the man-made embankment itself.

Bankside (spelled ‘Banke syde’ and ‘Bank side’ in early modern documents) meant ‘street along the bank of the Thames.’ The End denoted the boundary—eastern versus western. Historical records from about 1600 refer to the ‘Bancke-ende’ (west) and the ‘hether end of the Bank’ (east), establishing that Bank End was in use as a place name identifying this specific alley beneath the railway bridge.

Bankside in the medieval period was a place of powerful ecclesiastics. The Bishop of Winchester maintained a substantial residence west of the bridge, with its own wharf and landing-place. Yet for centuries before that, the land was marsh and tidal mud. It was only when protective embankments were built—the work of farmers and property owners gradually reclaiming the floodplain—that a proper street could form along the riverbank. By the 13th century, that embankment had a name: the Bank.

What transformed Bank End in the Elizabethan era was the decision by theatrical entrepreneurs to build their playhouses outside the City of London, where Puritan magistrates had authority to close them down. Bankside, being in the Liberty of the Clink, was beyond their reach. From 1587 onwards, the Rose, the Swan, the Hope, and finally the Globe made Bankside notorious as a place of entertainment—both theatrical performance and the bawdy houses that accompanied it. The Anchor Tavern, which stood at Bank End, became an iconic hostelry associated with the riverside character of the district.

By the 17th century, Bankside had begun its shift from theatres to industry. Warehouses, breweries, wharves, and riverside craftsmen—dyers, glassmakers, founders—dominated the street. This character persisted until the late 20th century, when redevelopment replaced the warehouses with apartments, offices, and cultural institutions. The railway viaduct, built in the 1860s, remains the most visible historical marker of Bank End’s transformation.

Bank End and the wider Bankside epitomise the cultural character of Renaissance London—a place where power, poverty, performance, and pleasure collided. The Bishop’s manor brought ecclesiastical authority and substantial riverside properties; the theatres brought some of the greatest writers in English history; the bear gardens and stews brought the city’s poorest inhabitants. By the 17th century, this mix had given way to industrial use, as the riverside became the engine of London’s commerce in goods and trade. Museum of London Archaeology excavations near London Bridge have uncovered the material traces of this transformation—ceramics, timber structures, and domestic artefacts from the moated houses and gardens that once occupied this riverfront before being built over with small properties and alleys in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Bank End today is barely a street in the conventional sense. It runs as a narrow alley beneath the railway arches, barely visible to passersby on Clink Street or those walking along the modern Bankside. The warehouse buildings that once lined it have been replaced or converted; the Anchor Tavern is long gone. Yet the street name persists on a single plaque, and the physical character—the oppressive brick arches overhead, the narrowness of the passage, the proximity of the river just beyond—preserves a ghost of what Bankside was as an industrial and entertainment district.

The area immediately surrounding Bank End has undergone radical regeneration since the 1970s. The Tate Modern (the former Bankside Power Station) now dominates the riverside as an arts institution; pedestrian routes have been created along the Thames; modern apartments and restaurants have replaced industrial uses. Yet because Bank End is so short and tucked beneath the viaduct, it remains largely unnoticed by tourists and visitors. Those who do find it often do so by accident, emerging from beneath the arches onto Clink Street and realising they have just walked through one of London’s oldest surviving street names.