Blackfriars Road

Blackfriars Road was built in the 1760s as the south approach to Blackfriars Bridge and was laid out by the bridge surveyor, Robert Mylne. Walking the street today, you see what the 18th century intended—a grand, straight avenue leading northward to the river. The line was established early and never wavered. What changed was everything around it: the Georgian townhouses that lined it fell, the Victorians replaced them with shops and theatres, the 20th century added railways and depots, and the 21st has erased those again, raising 45-storey towers of glass and steel.

The road forms part of the A201, a major through-route. Southwark Underground station sits on the corner with The Cut, opposite Palestra, a sprawling office block. But the street’s character was decided long before the modern buildings arrived. It was named after the bridge it served—and that name came from a monastery that was already 500 years old when the road was built.

Black refers to the black cappa worn by Dominican Friars. The name Blackfriars doesn’t belong to this street—not originally. Originally known as Surrey Street, the road was built in the 1760s by the bridge surveyor. It kept that name for nearly 70 years. The road was known as Great Surrey Street until 1829 when its name was changed to Blackfriars Road. British History Online records that a further Act was obtained in 1768 to make a new road from the southern end of Blackfriars Bridge to the turnpike road in Saint George’s Fields. The change of name in 1829 was deliberate—to link the approach road with the bridge it served, and through the bridge, with the medieval monastery that had given the area its character.

Dominican friars moved their priory to a site between the tidal Thames and the west of Ludgate Hill in about 1276. That monastery stood for 260 years before dissolution, but its name lingered on in the landscape. When the bridge took the Friars’ name in 1769, the street followed a half-century later. The old Surrey name vanished completely.

The story of Blackfriars Road is the story of roads following bridges. The first pile of Blackfriars Bridge was driven in 1760; it was made passable as a bridle way in 1768 and was opened to traffic in 1769. As surveyor, Robert Mylne was also responsible for laying out the approach roads; Bridge Street from the north, and Surrey Street from the south. The path had to be straight, eighty feet wide, and connect the bridge to the main road network heading south. Most of the original houses in Great Surrey Street were built between 1765 and 1790, turning what had been the Liberty of Paris Garden, one of the ancient places of amusement of the metropolis, much frequented on Sundays for bear-baiting in the time of Queen Elizabeth, into a street of merchant houses and professional men’s residences.

The street became known for industry and entertainment. The house at the corner of Blackfriars Road and Union Street had a brass Dog and Pot sign used as a trade mark on coal plates, which Charles Dickens remembered from his boyhood. Actors of the theatre district lived here; St. George’s Circus, at the south end of Blackfriars Road, was so thickly peopled by second-rate actors from the Surrey and Coburg theatres that it was called the Theatrical Barracks. The Albion Mills, designed by Samuel Wyatt and John Rennie for grinding flour by steam engine, was completed in 1786 and attracted many visitors, but the millers disliked the machinery and the mill burned in 1791, probably caused by incendiaries. In 1863 the London, Chatham and Dover Railway Company acquired land between the river and Southwark Street for a goods and passenger station, transforming the area once again.

Blackfriars Road became the entertainment quarter of Southwark. The SE1 Direct archives note that the Surrey Theatre operated here, and in 1829 it was distinguished by the first production of Douglas Jerrold’s 'Black-Eyed Susan,' for the sake of which 'all London went over the water'. The Rotunda, a circular building with a domed ceiling, housed the Leverian Museum before becoming the Surrey Institution and then a radical meeting place. The Rotunda radicals, known as Rotundists or Rotundanists, were a diverse group of social, political and religious radical reformers who gathered there between 1830 and 1832, during Richard Carlile’s tenure, at meetings which were often rowdy.

The street was home to skilled industries. Hat-making was a major trade; until the 1940s the area was known for its hatters, and Dickens said he associated the smell of hat-making with Blackfriars. Printing flourished here too. Augustus Applegarth, living at Nelson Square, established a printing business in Duke Street, Stamford Street, which was subsequently taken over by William Clowes—one of London’s great printing houses.

Robert Mylne was a Scottish architect and civil engineer born in Edinburgh, who travelled to Europe as a young man, studying architecture in Rome under Piranesi, and in 1758 became the first Briton to win the triennial architecture competition at the Accademia di San Luca. His name is inseparable from Blackfriars. On 22 February 1760, Mylne was declared the winner of the competition and appointed surveyor to the new Blackfriars Bridge, with overall responsibility for design, construction and maintenance. He did more than design the bridge—he shaped the landscape on both banks, including Blackfriars Road.

Surrey Chapel was built in 1782 by the Rev. Rowland Hill and Sir Richard Hill, bart., his brother, on the north-east corner of Blackfriars Road and Union Street. Hill became a beloved figure. Though born into the gentry, he was admitted to deacon’s orders in the Church of England but never entirely severed his connection with the Church, and though he was the pastor of Surrey Chapel it was not licensed in his name. He drew great congregations to the chapel, died in 1833 at his house on Charlotte Street, and was buried in a vault under the pulpit of the chapel.

For most of the 20th century, Blackfriars Road was a tired stretch of Victorian and Edwardian buildings, warehouses, and railway infrastructure. The Albion Mills were long gone, replaced by goods depots. The theatres had lost their lustre. The street decayed in the slow way of industrial London. But from 2010 onwards, everything changed. Major development schemes transformed the road. Old office buildings that had housed the London Development Agency gave way to residential towers and hotels. New glass facades reflected the river and sky.

The street gained a new identity as a transport hub and residential destination. Southwark Underground station underwent expansion. Palestra, the imposing office block housing TfL’s Surface Transport division, became a symbol of the street’s modern purpose. And in 2024, a rainbow plaque was proposed to commemorate James Pratt and John Smith, who in 1835 were arrested nearby and became the last men executed for sodomy in England, recognising the street’s role in queer history.

Blackfriars Road is a street of contrasts. You walk under modern towers—One Blackfriars rises 166 metres, a gleaming marker visible across south London—yet below street level, the layout remains Mylne’s: straight, purposeful, leading north to the bridge and south to St George’s Circus. The obelisk Mylne designed in 1771 still stands. Some Georgian townhouses survive, Grade II listed, tucked between new developments.

The street pulses with transit. Southwark station disgorges thousands daily. Buses queue on The Cut. Cyclists use the superhighway. But it is also a place of commerce and culture. Small galleries, cafés, and independent shops occupy the ground floors. The street’s theatrical past has faded, but the memory lingers—in the name of Union Street (formerly Charlotte Street), in the corner where Dickens saw the dog with a pot (now marked by a replica), in the outline of the chapels that once anchored this corner of Southwark. The modern street is a palimpsest, layer upon layer.