Bankside

Walk Bankside today and you stand in the shadow of the Globe Theatre—or rather, its replica, rebuilt in 1997 yards from where Shakespeare’s own version burned in 1613. The riverside is now a cultural powerhouse: Tate Modern occupies the brick skeleton of a 20th-century power station, Shakespeare’s Globe hosts thousands annually, and the South Bank Centre sprawls beneath the Millennium Bridge. Yet the street’s reputation for spectacle is centuries old.

2013

Bankside Pier from Southwark Bridge

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

2022

Southwark , Bankside lettering

Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0

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Historical image not found

Today

View Towards St.Paul's Cathedral — near Bankside

Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

Before it was a shrine to art and theatre, Bankside was disreputable—a place of licensed brothels, bear-baiting rings, and plays. It thrived in the legal shadows, outside City jurisdiction. The very name came from the man who owned it all: the Bishop of Winchester, who reclaimed this muddy bank and watched his land become London’s most famous stage.

The ‘banke’ was reclaimed by the Bishop of Winchester who owned the manor of the Clink. There is a map plan in the Duchy of Lancaster archive showing ‘the way to the banke’. The name is recorded in 1554 as the Banke syde and means ‘street along the bank of the Thames’. The term “bank” derives from Old Norse “bakki,” referring to a ridge or slope, particularly of a river. What began as ecclesiastical property and riverside mudflat became, by the Elizabethan age, the epicentre of England’s theatrical revolution.

Bankside was notorious before the Reformation as the place where the licensed brothels or “stews” of London were kept. An unsuccessful attempt was made to abolish the stews in 1506 and they were finally put down in 1546 when Bankside was “proclaymed by sounde of Trumpet, no more to be priuiledged, and vsed as a common Bordell.” Yet suppression of the stews coincided with the birth of something arguably more transgressive: public theatre. In the period up to the early 18th century, Southwark’s character was totally at variance with suburban respectability—it was an unplanned, weakly-administered and mixed community of artisans, inn keepers, immigrants, criminals, entertainers and prostitutes.

Philip Henslowe, who owned a Bankside brothel named Little Rose, also owned the Rose Theatre, built in 1587. The Globe Playhouse was the third and most famous of the four Bankside playhouses. Many of Shakespeare’s plays, including the four great tragedies, were written for and first publicly performed upon its stage. The Swan Theatre, near the Globe, was standing previous to 1598. These four playhouses—Rose, Swan, Globe, and Hope—made Bankside the cultural capital of Elizabethan London. Bankside was long known as an entertainment area up to the 17th century. Evidence was found for the Hope, a dual purpose building hosting animal baiting as well as play performances. The next phase in Bankside’s history was industrial and its glass and pottery products of the 17th and 18th centuries were much sought after.

Beyond theatre, Tate Modern is based at Bankside. The gallery’s Turbine Hall and exhibition spaces occupy what was once an industrial heartland. This transformation—from playhouse to power station to art museum—embodies Bankside’s constant reinvention. The street now hosts riverside restaurants, galleries, and cultural institutions that rival any European riverside precinct.

Ben Jonson lived on Bankside whilst writing for the theatres. The playwright was but one of England’s greatest writers who made the street their working home. Shakespeare was not a resident, but the Globe was the primary home of Shakespeare’s acting company, and where many of his plays premiered. The street became synonymous with the birth of English drama itself—a place where actors, writers, and entrepreneurs gathered to create art outside the City’s jurisdictional reach.

The Clink, a Bankside prison built on to the western side of the palace of the Bishop of Winchester in the twelfth century, was known to have lax security. The prison’s notoriety was such that “the Clink” became slang for any jail—a linguistic legacy that outlived the building itself by centuries.

The 1990s marked Bankside’s transformation from industrial obscurity to cultural destination. Tate Modern opened in 2000 in the shell of the Bankside Power Station, a brick fortress that had dominated the riverscape since the 1960s. The shift was dramatic: overnight, the street gained international prestige. The 1997 reconstruction of the Globe Theatre reinforced Bankside’s identity as a heritage site, attracting scholars and tourists in equal measure.

Southwark Street was created in 1860 to connect the Blackfriars and London bridge crossings here. In the modern era, the Millennium Bridge (opened 2000) reinforced Bankside’s connections northward, creating a pedestrian superhighway between the galleries and theatres of the South Bank and St Paul’s Cathedral. The street has become a major destination in London’s cultural geography, though questions persist about affordable housing and access.

Bankside today is a place of paradox: intimately tied to Shakespeare’s legacy, yet fundamentally reshaped by 21st-century cultural institutions and commercial gentrification. The street itself remains close to the water, its cobbles worn by millions of feet heading to and from the Globe and Tate Modern. Historic pubs stand alongside glass galleries. Buskers and street performers echo the players of the Elizabethan stage.

Walking the street, you move through layers: medieval echoes (Winchester Palace’s surviving arch), Elizabethan spectres (the Globe site), industrial relics (Tate Modern’s turbine), and contemporary energy (crowded summer afternoons). Bankside is located on the southern bank of the River Thames, 1.5 miles east of Charing Cross, running from a little west of Blackfriars Bridge to just a short distance before London Bridge at St Mary Overie Dock. It remains what it has always been: London’s riverside stage.