CHAPTER I - The Manor and Liberty of Norton Folgate
The western part of the area discussed in
this volume, north of Artillery Passage,
consisted until 1900 of two liberties, the
northern being Norton Folgate and the southern
the Old Artillery Ground. The latter had its
origin as part of the precinct of the Priory of St.
Mary Spital, but the former had a more obscure
history associated with a distinct Manor of Norton Folgate which may have antedated the priory.
Until its absorption into the Borough of Stepney in 1900 Norton Folgate, or part of it, was an
enclave outside the normal parochial administrative system. The history and origin of both the
manor and the liberty, whose boundaries were not
coterminous, are exceedingly obscure, but the
fragmentary evidence available suggests that from
the eleventh to the nineteenth century the manor
was connected with the canons or the Dean and
Chapter of St. Paul's, and that the liberty derived
from the privileged position of the Priory of St.
Mary Spital, whose main precinct buildings lay
within its boundaries. Only that part of the
Manor and Liberty of Norton Folgate east of
Bishopsgate Street fell within the Borough of
Stepney and comes within the scope of this
volume, but the early history of the entire area
is described here.
The first certain evidence of the existence of the
manor is contained in the court rolls for the years
1439 to 1519 in the Chapter Library of St. Paul's
Cathedral. (ref. 1) In these the name of the manor is
always given as Norton Folyot or Foly or a variant
of this. The courts held in the reigns of Henry
VI and Edward IV are usually described as those
of a canon residentiary of St. Paul's but sometimes
as those of the dean. The courts held in 1442,
1444 and 1445 are described as those of John
Bernyngham, canon residentiary, who at that
period was prebendary of Mapesbury. (ref. 2) Those
held from 1487 to 1494 are said to be of William
Worsley ’prebendary of the prebend of Nortonfoly and Dean of St. Paul's’. There appears to be
no other evidence of the existence of a prebend of
Norton Folgate. The only prebend that William
Worsley is known to have held together with the
deanery is that of Willesden. (ref. 2)
It has been suggested (ref. 3) that Norton Folgate can
be identified with the nine acres which the canons
of St. Paul's held at Bishopsgate (ad portam Episcopi) in the time of Domesday Survey and had held
similarly in the time of King Edward. (ref. 4) The nine
acres carried ten cottars and were worth 18s. 6d.
yearly to the canons. They were held as part of
the canons' Manor of Hockestone or Hoxton. (fn. a)
The area of the Liberty of Norton Folgate (ref. 6) at the
time of its abolition in 1900 was 8–37 acres. (fn. b)
Although there is no mention of Norton Folgate among the corporate possessions of the Dean
and Chapter down to at least 1320, (ref. 7) there are
indications that the Dean or Chapter may in fact
have had an interest in Norton Folgate before the
period of the surviving court rolls. Four references
to payments due to them from the Priory and
Convent of St. Mary Spital, whose precinct
probably occupied the whole of that part of the
Manor of Norton Folgate east of Bishopsgate
Street, may refer to Norton Folgate. In 1349
land in Hackney, Shoreditch and Stepney was
licensed to be surrendered to the priory, of whom
it was held: the priory held the land of a tenant-in-chief of the King, but it is mentioned that a yearly
rent of 6s. was owed out of the property to the
Dean of St. Paul's. (ref. 8) In 1393 the priory owed
£86 10s. 6d. to the Dean and Chapter on the
Feast of St. James (25 July). There is also a
receipt dated 30 September 1396, by the Dean
and Chapter for sixteen pounds of incense received
from the priory for censing the high altar of St.
Paul's. (ref. 9) An account dated 1422 of the rents
received by the Dean and Chapter makes no mention of Norton Folgate: there is, however, mention of 7s. 6d. received from the priory for land
listed under the ’Pitancia de Shordych’. (ref. 10) Part
of the manor was subsequently regarded as forming part of the parish of St. Leonard Shoreditch.
In the court rolls of 1439–1519 the prior of
St. Mary Spital was throughout listed among the
suitors of the leet and the prior and convent were
sometimes presented for offences. The precise
limits of the manor do not appear from the court
rolls but they extended west of Bishopsgate Street
and were not identical with the priory precinct
which was confined to the east side of the street.
In 1598 Stow described ’Norton fall gate’ as
’a liberty so called, belonging to the Deane of
Powles’. (ref. 11)
A parliamentary survey of the property of the
Dean and Chapter in 1649 (ref. 12) included ’the
Manor of Norton Folgate alias Norton Follye of
St. Faiths under Paules London in the parish of
St. Leonard Shoreditch’, with its court leet and
court baron. The connexion with St. Faith's, a
peculiar of the Dean and Chapter whose parish
church of St. Faith the Virgin was demolished in
about 1256 and whose parishioners were subsequently
accommodated in the crypt of the
cathedral, (ref. 13) was mentioned by Newcourt in
1708 (ref. 14) when he included the ’Precinct of Norton
Folgate near Shoreditch (which the Inhabitants
say is in the Parish of St. Faith under St. Paul's)’
among the peculiars of the Dean and Chapter.
The same connexion with St. Faith's was made in
the New Remarks of London by the Company of
Parish Clerks in 1732. (ref. 15) The liberty was similarly
referred to as ’Norton Folgate and Faith
under St. Paul’ in private deeds of the first half of
the eighteenth century. (ref. 16)
In 1656 the inhabitants claimed to have belonged
to the late Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's,
thus becoming a distinct jurisdiction ’endowed
with ample privileges conferred before the Conquest’ (ref. 17)
A grant in 1666 of the office of bailiwick
of the liberties and franchises of the Dean
and Chapter included the Manor of Norton
Folgate alias Norton Folly. (ref. 18)
The manor is not mentioned in many of the
late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manorial
records of the Dean and Chapter, (fn. c) but for the
years 1720–63 the court rolls of the Dean and
Chapter for the Manor of Norton Folgate survive
in the Guildhall Library. (ref. 20) They contain little
beyond presentments for trivial offences. The last
court known to be held was in 1832, (ref. 21) but the
limits of the manor were still sufficiently known
to be detailed in the Middlesex ’Calculations for
County Rate’ of 1864. (ref. 22) A report by the Dean
and Chapter manorial steward to the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners in 1876 on the manors
formerly belonging to the Dean and Chapter does
not mention Norton Folgate. (ref. 23)
The Parochial Allegiance of the Manor and Liberty
The relationship of the manor and liberty to the
neighbouring parish of St. Botolph without
Bishopsgate is as obscure as the history of the
manor. The precinct of the Priory of St. Mary
Spital, lying within the manor, had formed part of
the parish of St. Botolph and in the early thirteenth
century was relieved of all dues owed to the parish
in return for a yearly payment of 10s. (see
page 21). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
the inhabitants of Norton Folgate were
included in the parochial registers of St. Botolph. (ref. 24)
After the Dissolution property within the former
precinct was often described as being within the
parish of St. Botolph; in Stephen Vaughan's will
of 1549 his possessions are so described. (ref. 25) In 1559
a messuage within the priory precinct is described
as being within the parish of St. Botolph. (ref. 26)
The Old Artillery Ground Liberty, immediately
south of Norton Folgate and also at one
time part of the priory precinct, was frequently
regarded as forming part of St. Botolph parish. In
1711 the suggestion of the rector and parishioners
of St. Botolph that both these liberties should be
regularly united to them was seriously considered.
They regarded Norton Folgate as having been
hitherto an extra-parochial place outside their
parish. (ref. 27) Since 1693 Norton Folgate had, together
with the Old Artillery Ground, been provided
with a place of Anglican worship by Sir
George Wheler's Chapel which stood just outside
the liberty, in the hamlet (later parish) of Spitalfields
(see page 100). The union with St. Botolph
did not take place and the liberty continued to be
served by the chapel. Nevertheless in the eighteenth
century the perambulation of the boundaries of
Norton Folgate was made by the parishioners of
both St. Botolph Bishopsgate and of St. Leonard
Shoreditch. In 1824 the Vestry Clerk of St.
Botolph Bishopsgate commented that although
Norton Folgate, like the Old Artillery Ground,
maintained its own poor and was ’not in any
degree subject to the jurisdiction of St. Botolph's',
it and the Old Artillery Ground ’are included in
the perambulation by the parishioners of Bishopsgate
but for what purpose I have in vain endeavoured
to obtain a satisfactory reason’. (ref. 28) It
may perhaps be surmised that this ambiguous
relationship with the parish of St. Botolph sprang
from the thirteenth-century composition between
the priory and the parish mentioned above.
Norton Folgate was more commonly regarded
as having some connexion with the parish of St.
Leonard Shoreditch. There is a reference to Norton
Folgate as being in that parish among the
Middlesex Sessions Rolls of 1602. (ref. 29) As has been
seen, the parliamentary survey of 1649 included
the manor in Shoreditch parish. In 1656 the
inhabitants of the liberty claimed that Shoreditch
parish had lately encroached on their privileges by
quartering soldiers on them and taxing them for
scavengers' and highway rates. The Middlesex
magistrates decided that Norton Folgate had customarily
been assessed for highway rates with
Shoreditch. (ref. 17) Similarly, all the manor and liberty
was included with Shoreditch parish in the late
seventeenth-century hearth tax returns. (ref. 30) The
part of the manor lying west of Bishopsgate was in
particular regarded as forming part of Shoreditch
parish. In 1732 the Parish Clerks said that
although part of the liberty was extra-parochial
’yet the whole is not; for part of Long Alley, Hog
Lane [both west of Bishopsgate Street] and Blossom
Street [east of Bishopsgate Street], pay towards
the maintenance of the poor of St. Leonard
Shoreditch in which Parish they stand, but as to
watch and ward they pay to this Liberty’. (ref. 31) An
Act of 1759 (ref. 32) for the lighting and cleansing of
part of Norton Folgate mainly east of Bishopsgate
Street stated that this section of the liberty and
manor was extra-parochial and that the remainder
was part of Shoreditch parish. This distinction
was later regarded as a distinction between the
liberty, being the extra-parochial part mainly east
of Bishopsgate Street, and the manor which included
also the part in Shoreditch parish mainly
though not entirely west of Bishopsgate Street.
The Middlesex ’Calculations for County Rate’
of 1864 include under St. Leonard Shoreditch a
list of streets and places ’within the Manor but
not in the Liberty of Norton Folgate, consequently
such streets and places are in St. Leonard's Shoreditch’.
All are west of Bishopsgate Street except
the northern parts of Blossom Street and Elder
Street. The ’streets and places’ within the liberty
are listed separately and contain all the remainder
of the manor east of Bishopsgate Street and also an
area west of Bishopsgate and south of Worship
Street. (ref. 22) By 1896, at an inquiry into Shoreditch
charities it was stated that the portion of the manor
and liberty noted by the Parish Clerks in 1732 as
paying towards Shoreditch poor rate ’has now for
many years formed part of that parish for all purposes,
the remainder of the Liberty continuing to
be extra-parochial’. (ref. 33) In his map of 1799 Horwood
had included within the Norton Folgate
boundary only the part designated in 1732 as
wholly extra-parochial and in 1864 as part of the
liberty as well as manor.
The uncertainty about the parochial allegiance
of the manor, and in particular the distinction between
the part subject in some or all respects to
Shoreditch and the part in practice extra-parochial,
is probably the reason for the varying position of
the northern boundary of the liberty east of
Bishopsgate Street on maps of the area. This is
sometimes (fn. d) shown running a little south of the
line of the present Fleur-de-lis Street, and along
the former Cross Keys Court, before turning
north round the site of ’Porter's Close’, and in
later maps (fn. e) as running further south, on a line with
Hog Lane (later Worship Street, on the west side
of Bishopsgate Street); this is also the boundary of
the extra-parochial liberty as distinct from the
major indicated in the ’Calculations for County
Rate’ of 1864. (In 1900 the boundary of the new
Borough of Stepney was placed further north at
the west end of Fleur-de-lis Street.) The maps and
plans made in about 1711–12 for the Commissioners
for Building Fifty New Churches seem to
show the boundary in both positions. (ref. 34) In the
Parish Clerks' Remarks of 1732 the liberty is said
to reach as far north as Hog Lane on the west of
Bishopsgate Street and ’the Silk-Dyers inclusive’
on the east, but it is not known where this was
situated. (ref. 15)
An Act of 1778 for the paving of Norton Folgate (ref. 35)
indicates that the northern boundary of the
extra-parochial part of the liberty and manor was
then regarded as being in the more southerly of the
two positions, as six houses in Blossom Street and
Magpie Alley (on the line of the later west end of
Fleur-de-lis Street), included within the liberty by
the more northerly placing of the boundary, were
stated to be in the parish of Shoreditch but were
included with the extra-parochial area for the
purposes of that Act only.
To sum up: both the manor and the liberty lay
astride Bishopsgate Street, but the liberty appears
to have been smaller than the manor and may have
been wholly contained within it. Only the liberty
was extra-parochial, and since the greater part of
it lay on the east side of Bishopsgate Street on the
site of the precinct of St. Mary Spital, its peculiar
administrative position may be inferred to have
derived from the privileges of the priory. (fn. f)
The Government of the Liberty
As in other liberties and immune places in London,
the inhabitants of Norton Folgate were not
always wholly law-abiding. A considerable
amount of disorderliness and numerous trivial
offences are recorded in the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
court rolls; indulgence in the
inflammatory game of ’closh’ (fn. g) appears to have
been one of the most popular pastimes, and the
presentment in 1519 of the owner of a ruined
building from which thieves could prey upon
travellers along Bishopsgate Street (ref. 1) suggests that
the advantages for criminals of a ’liberty’ may
have been appreciated. That this was so in 1604,
when much of the liberty was occupied by the
disused or adapted buildings of St. Mary Spital
Priory, is asserted by Middleton who calls ’Spital
and Shoreditch the only Cole-harbour and sanctuary
for wenches and soldiers’. (ref. 36) In 1661
Norton Folgate was thought to be the centre of a
plot of Fifth Monarchy men. (ref. 37) In 1676 the former
priory precinct was suspected of housing
another dissident wanted for treasonable practices,
’Macquaire alias Jackson,’, who ’tho' a minister
goes like a very à la mode Frenchman’. (ref. 38) In
part of the former precinct at least, however, many
of the inhabitants were persons of rank, though
sometimes non-conforming to the established
order in Church and State (see page 49).
The form of government of the liberty in the
early eighteenth century is not very clear. In
1732 the Parish Clerks said that ’All the Affairs
of the Liberty are managed by the Ancients, who
are in the Nature of a Vestry’. (ref. 15) The self-governing
institutions of the liberty were of earlier
date than this, however: a silver-headed staff of
the liberty dated 1672 survives in Stepney Central
Library and a dole-box or poor-box of
1600 survived in 1905. (ref. 6) A minute book of the
liberty commencing in 1729 records the meeting
of a committee held in February 1743/4 at the
workhouse of the liberty to order its better regulation. (ref. 39)
The government of the part of Norton Folgate
included in this volume was after 1759 chiefly in
the hands of trustees appointed under an Act of
that year for the better lighting, cleansing and
watching of the extra-parochial part of the manor
and liberty. (ref. 32) The trustees were empowered to
raise a rate and to contract for the installation of an
unspecified number of ’Glass Lamps’ to be lit for
at least nine months of the year. This Act was
repealed in 1810 by another (ref. 40) which required the
trustees to light the streets all the year round, and
also charged them with the supervision of the
workhouse (see page 92). In December 1812
the trustees under this Act decided to negotiate
with ’the Directors of the Gas Light and Coke
Company’ for the lighthing of the liberty with gas
and in May 1813 a contract was signed. (ref. 41) The
liberty was thus among the earliest parts of London
to have its streets lit by gas.
Until 1778 the paving of the streets of the
liberty was probably the responsibility of each individual
frontager. In 1773 it was said that ’we
still see in Norton Folgate [High Street], between
the improved streets of Bishopsgate and Shorditch,
a relic of the old inconvenient method of paving
the metropolis: which at least serves by contrast to
shew the superior elegance of the new plan’. The
survival of the personal obligation to pave was due
to the fact that the inhabitants of the liberty were
outside the City's jurisdiction and although they
had refused to be included in an Act of 1768 for
paving the parish of Shoreditch, they were never-
theless ’too poor as a body to pave their own
streets’ (ref. 42)
In 1775 it was reported to the trustees under
the Local Act of 1759 that the Committee of
Sewers for the City of London would allow the
sewers of the liberty to communicate with the new
sewer to be dug by the City in Bishopsgate Street
only when ’the High Street of this Liberty be
agreed to be paved in the modern way’. The
trustees under the Act of 1759 therefore resolved
to apply for an Act empowering them to make new
sewers and pave the liberty ’on the modern New
Way’, (ref. 43) and in 1778 another Local Act was
passed ’for paving and repairing the Streets …
within such part of the Liberty of Norton Folgate
as is extra-parochial; and certain parts of Magpiealley
[later Fleur-de-lis Street] and Blossom
Street in the parish of St. Leonard Shoreditch’. (ref. 35)
This Act nominated fifty Commissioners and
authorized them to pave the streets, which were
said to be very ill-paved and obstructed, and to
raise a rate not exceeding Is. 8d. in the pound;
provision was also made for the naming and
numbering of streets and houses. The Act does
not mention the Act of 1759 or the trustees
appointed by it, and each body kept separate
minute books. In practice, however, the separate
identity of the two bodies was probably more
apparent than real in so small an area as Norton
Folgate.
By June 1779 Norton Folgate High Street had
been paved and the Commissioners resolved that
the other parts of the liberty should be paved that
year. (ref. 44) In September proposals from workmen
were received. (fn. h) In 1781 the Commissioners resolved
that the ’footway pavement’ of Spital
Square should be paved with ’Yorkshire Elland
Ege’ and ’the Horseway’ with ’best Aberdeen
Grannett’. (ref. 46)
In the early eighteenth century the drainage
of the liberty was considered to be within the
jurisdiction of the Commissioners of Sewers for
the Tower Hamlets, whose minute book for
1712–19 contains orders given to the Norton
Folgate collectors. In 1717 a joint committee of
the Tower Hamlets and Holborn and Finsbury
Commissioners decided that the Tower Hamlets
Commission included Norton Folgate. (ref. 47) The
Tower Hamlets rate books do not, however, include
Norton Folgate, for which the first surviving
rate books, dating from 1779 or 1812,
were made, like those of Shoreditch, under the
jurisdiction of the Holborn and Finsbury Commissioners.
The imperfect drainage of the liberty in the
first half of the eighteenth century is indicated in a
pamphlet published in 1805 by Stevens Totton, a
mercer, who was born at No. 6 Spital Square in
about 1724 and later lived at No. 10. (ref. 48) Totton
could remember when ’every Person in Spital
Square’ was ’greatly inconvenienced by the Springs
in the Liberty, insomuch that in his late Father's
house there, the Water from these Springs used to
be three or four feet deep in the Cellars; and the
Servants used to be obliged to punt themselves
along in a washing-tub, from the Cellar stairs to
the Beer Barrels, to draw Beer daily for the Use
of the Family…. That was then the Method
which the Chief of the Inhabitants in the Liberty
also pursued, to get at any Thing in their Cellars;
at the same Time living in the Stench of Bilge
Water, which rendered their Situations not
only obnoxious, but very prejudicial to their
Healths.’ (ref. 49)
Totton claimed to have been approached in
1766 by inhabitants of St. Botolph Bishopsgate
and to have been responsible for the construction
of a ’bold deep sewer’ in Bishopsgate Street south of
Spital Square, shaped ’in an Arch reversed’ so that
it cleaned itself with the scour of its water. It
appears, however, that this was not constructed for
some years. In 1768 Totton published a paper
recommending to the inhabitants of Bishopsgate
parish and of the liberty the construction of a
sewer in Bishopsgate Street and also the paving of
Norton Folgate High Street. This recalled that
the parishioners had applied to the inhabitants of
the liberty to join with them in procuring an Act
of Parliament and that it was agreed that a sewer
should be dug eleven or twelve feet deep at its
northern end, where it joined Norton Folgate,
and twenty feet deep at its southern end, the extra
depth necessary to drain the liberty being paid by
its inhabitants. Totton estimated that the expense
to the parish would be less than £2,000, requiring
a rate of only 3d. in the pound but that the expense
to the liberty would be nearly £3,000, requiring a
rate of 1s. 4d. in the pound.
At about this time Totton was, according to his
own account, ’appointed Secretary to the Gentlemen of the Liberty’ and was ’paid like a Porter’,
receiving £60 for his attention to the matter in the
years 1766–71.
In 1771 little progress had evidently been made,
and the parish and liberty were advised ’ not to stir,
pending the City's then Application to Parliament
for a general Act to enlarge their Prowers as to the
Sewers in the City and Suburbs’. (ref. 48)
In 1775 the trustees under the Act of 1759 (ref. 32)
for the lighting, cleansing and watching of Norton
Folgate declared their conviction ’of the Utility of
New Sewers throughout the said Liberty’, and
resolved to accept the offer of the Committee of
Sewers for the City of London ’who are willing to
Dig their New intended Sewer in Bishopsgate
Street, of such a Competent Depth so as the
Liberty may on any future application to them be
relieved thereby Upon paying for the Extra
Digging’. Mr. Tillard, the chief landowner in
the liberty, was asked if he would pay for the extra
digging ’as it would be of such great Benefit to his
Estates in General in this Liberty’, and agreed to
’pay the whole of the said Expenses’. The City
would allow the liberty to make a communication
with the new sewer only when Norton Folgate
High Street had been paved ’in the modern way’.
The City further proposed that it should pave,
Cleanse and light the High Street on payment of a
rate of 2s. in the pound by the inhabitants of the
street. The liberty trustees considered this ’in no
way reasonable’ and decided themselves to apply to
Parliament for power to pave, and make new
sewers in the liberty. (ref. 43) The resultant Act of
1778 (ref. 35) constituted Commissioners to pave, but
not to make sewers in, the liberty.
According to Totton sewage water ran on each
side of the surface of Norton Folgate High Street
until 1777, but the agreement with the City was
evidently put into effect and in that year a deep
sewer was dug in Bishopsgate Street. The expense of digging the extra depth was paif for by
the liberty, presumably in the person of Mr. Tillard. (ref. 48)
The courts of the manor from 1720 to 1743
were held at the watch-house situated in the
middle of Norton Folgate High Street: this was
probably also the meeting-place of the ’Ancients’
mentioned by the Parish Clerks in 1732. In 1743
the watch-house was pulled down and the courts
of the manor were henceforward held in a building
on the north side of White Lion Street (later
No. 1 Folgate Street) leased by the overseers and
inhabitants of ’the manor or liberty’ in 1744 (see
page 77). This building was also used for meetings of the trustees under the Act of 1810.
The large measure of identity between the
various bodies concerned in the self-government
of so small an area led to uncertainty about the
division of functions. On 20 January 1780 a
meeting of trustees under the Act of 1759 resolved
to wait upon the manorial steward ’to know if the
Trustees of the 3 Rates have a power by their act
(or the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's) to fine the
Constable for non-attendance upon his Duty’.
The Steward replied ’that the complaint must
come to him from the foreman of the Leet Jury ….
And that he wou'd then proceed with the Constable as the Act directs in such cases’. (ref. 50) On
20 January 1875 the overseers and trustees of the
liberty were asked by solicitors who were the
appropriate persons to receive and administer a
legacy left by Mr. William Cluff to ’the Rector
Churchwardens and Overseers of the Liberty of
Norton Folgate’. The clerk to the overseers and
trustees replied that there was no rector, or church-wardens, of the liberty, but ’there are annually
appointed two Overseers of the poor of the Liberty
of Norton Folgate who together with a number of
Trustees of the Liberty appointed under a local
Act have for very many years made the poor rates
and otherwise had the management of the Liberty
in parochial matters … and gifts to the poor have
from time to time been made to the Overseers of
the Liberty who now distribute these Charities
and I infer that they are the proper persons to have
charge of Mr. Cluff's gift either in conjunction
with the Trustees of the Liberty of whom they are
(ex officio) members or without’. (ref. 51)
In 1855 the liberty became part of the Whitechapel District Board of Works. In 1897 the
chapel District Board of Works. In 1897 the
trustees contemplated agitating, together with the
Old Artillery Ground Liberty, for inclusion in
the City, but did not do so. (ref. 52) In 1900 the liberty
became merged in the Borough of Stepney and the
last meeting of the trustees took place on 24 October of that year. (ref. 53)