Blossom Street
The southern end of Blossom Street is adumbrated on Ogilby and Morgan's map of 1677 and
appears in slightly more developed form on the
’New Church’ plans of 1711–12 where it is
called Sott's or Sote's Hole. The line of the street
is there proposed as an approach road to a burial
ground to be situated where Commercial Street
now crosses the railway line. On some of the
plans, not later than March 1712/13, the
southern end of the east side, including the site of
the present Nos. 1–6 (consec), is occupied by
stables with a stable-yard behind: on others perhaps of March 1716/17 it is occupied by a terrace
of six houses with a seventh at the back, presumably then newly built. The western side of
the street is not regularly built-up on these plans.
A wide passageway then approached the later line
of the street from Norton Folgate High Street, its
southern side corresponding to the nineteenth
century liberty boundary.
In April 1720 Isaac Tillard leased the site of
Nos. 7–9 (consec.) on the east side of the street
with a fifty-eight-foot frontage for sixty-one years
to Daniel Marlin, citizen and clothworker, (ref. 176)
who in 1731 was described as ’Daniel Malyn’,
bricklayer. (ref. 177) Marlin evidently assigned the
lease to Thomas Bunce who in 1732 assigned it,
together with houses built on the site, to a
butcher. (ref. 178)
In May 1724 Tillard granted Bunce a sixty
one-year lease of a site including Nos. 14–18
(even) Elder Street, the south side of Fleur-de-lis
Street, and a frontage of eighteen feet on the east
side of Blossom Street. On the same day he granted
Bunce a separate building lease of a part of the
site, including the Blossom Street frontage and a
frontage of 100 feet on Fleur-de-lis Street. (ref. 178) By
June 1726 four houses had been built by Bunce
on the latter site. (ref. 179)
In May 1731 William Tillard granted to
Bunce and Joseph Heath, citizen and glazier, a
lease apparently for thirty years, of the seven
houses shown on some of the ’New Church’
plans. In April 1732 Bunce assigned his moiety
to John Winn of Folgate Street. (ref. 177)
It is not known when the southern end of the
east side was rebuilt.
The west side of the street was apparently rebuilt for the first time later than the east side.
Two brick houses at the west end of the later
Blossom Place were built by John Sparklin of
Shoreditch, carpenter, under a lease from William
Tillard in January 1741/2. (ref. 180) But in July 1748
’four old messuages’ still stood on a frontage of
ninety-six feet at the southern end of the street, as
shown in the 1711–12 plans. The site was traversed by a cartway leading to a cooper's premises,
later forming Blossom Place. The site was in that
month leased by William Tillard to John Brown
of Norton Folgate, bricklayer, and perhaps then
rebuilt. (ref. 181)
In July 1769, however, James Tillard of St.
George's Bloomsbury, esquire, granted a sixty
one-year building lease to James Wood of Shore
ditch, carpenter, of six houses having a frontage of
ninety-five feet on Blossom Street in the Liberty
of Norton Folgate, with leave to pull them down
and rebuild them in alignment with other Tillard
houses in the street. The description of the property is self-contradictory but if it was on the west
side of the street it must have included all or part
of the site leased to John Brown in 1748, and if
on the east side all or part of the site leased to Bunce
and Heath in 1731. (ref. 182) Wood had previously
built houses in Norton Folgate High Street for
James Tillard.
Nos. 1–9 (consec.) Blossom Street
Owing to rebuilding the numbering is obscure
The only houses of any interest surviving in the
street are Nos. 7–9 (consec.) (Plate 73d). No. 7
apparently existed in something like its present
form in 1812 (ref. 28) and was probably built in the very
late eighteenth century. Nos. 8 and 9 were
probably built in 1883 by Kiddle and Son,
builders, of 24 Elder Street. (ref. 183)
Most of the surviving houses on the east side of
Blossom Street, between Folgate and Fleur-de-lis
Streets, date from the 1880's except the premises
over the entrance to the timber-yard, part of
No. 3, and the house No. 7. This last has a three
storeyed front, obviously altered, built of yellow
brick with red dressings to the windows, which
have stone sills, gauged flat arches, and plastered
reveals framing double-hung sashes with slender
glazing bars. The ground storey has one window
on the right of the arch-headed doorway, and
each upper storey has two, off-centre, with
evidence of a third on the first floor. The build
ings of c. 1880 are four-storeyed tenement houses,
perhaps for weavers. Nos. 1 and 4 appear as
double-fronted houses, with a front and a back
room on each side of the staircase; Nos. 8–9 are
similar but the entrance also serves Loom Court,
and No. 3 is single-fronted. The fronts are of
yellow brick, red brick being used for the sill
bands of each storey and the segmental arches of
the window openings. The double houses have
three windows in each upper storey, a sash of normal proportion in the centre, and wide three-light
sashes on each side. The fronts are finished with a
corbelled parapet.
Figure 25:
Backs of houses in Loom Court and Fleur-de-lis Street
Nothing of interest survives on the west side of
Blossom Street.
Loom Court, Blossom Street
Formerly Regent's Court
Nos. 8 and 9 Blossom Street contain the entrance to Loom Court (Plate 74c, fig. 25), a
squalid appendage to Blossom Street consisting of
five small two-storeyed cottages grouped round a
paved area, representative of early nineteenth
century housing at its worst. A passageway
existed here in the eighteenth century. In January
1785 the passageway and a plot of ground at its
eastern end were leased by William Tillard of
Bloomsbury for thirty-one years to John Fellows
of Blossom Street, bricklayer, together with the
house newly built and occupied by him. (ref. 184) This
is shown on Horwood's map of 1799. Early in
the nineteenth century the site of this house was
converted into the court surrounded by five small
houses with weavers' windows, and doubtless
occupied by weavers. In 1817 it was known as
Regent's Court, suggesting that it was not built
before 1811: it occurs unnamed in 1812 in the
earliest surviving rate book for the street.
Norton Folgate Girls' Charity School, Blossom Street
Demolished
The Norton Folgate Girls' Charity School at No. 14 Blossom Street was established in 1703 to
educate twenty-five girls and to provide them with
new clothes twice yearly. (ref. 185) When the school
was closed in 1893 it was believed to have always
occupied this house. (ref. 186) Ellis states that the lease
of the building was given to the school trustees in
1730 by William Tillard, who was then the
treasurer; (ref. 185) the building was later leased to them
by the Tillards at a nominal rent. (ref. 186) The school
was connected with Sir George Wheler's Chapel,
the girls attending service there on Sundays, and
an annual sermon being preached there on its
behalf. (ref. 185)
The school was closed in 1893, when the lease
of the building was terminated by the sale of part
of the Tillard estate. The pupils were transferred
to St. Mary Spital Square National School. (ref. 186)
Fleur-de-lis Street
This street was constructed by the Tillards as a
thirty-foot roadway running from Blossom Street
on the west to the liberty boundary on the east.
On Rocque's map of 1746 it is joined to Norton
Folgate High Street by a narrow alley called
Shoreditch Alley and to Wheler Street by
Flower-de-lis Alley.
The whole south side of the street between
Blossom and Elder Streets, described as waste
ground, was leased (not at a peppercorn rent) by
Sir Isaac Tillard to Thomas Bunce for sixty-one
years in May 1724. (ref. 187) The street was described
as ’a Thirty Foot intended way or Passage between the said ground and Sir Isaac Tillard's
Gardens’, which lay on the north side of the
street. (ref. 188) In deeds of the same date the street is
given its present name. By June 1726 four houses
had been built by Bunce on a site including a
frontage of 18 feet to Blossom Street and 100 feet
to Fleur-de-lis Street. (ref. 179)
The south side between Elder Street and the
liberty boundary was built under a sixty-one-year
lease of the site, described as waste ground, granted
in July 1725 by Sir Isaac Tillard to Bunce. (ref. 166) By
July 1731 three houses, including the present
Nos. 9 and 10 and the corner house, had been
built on the south side of the street. (ref. 189)
The northern side was doubtless built at the
same time as the southern side. In April 1730
Edward Grange, citizen and carpenter, who was
active as a builder in Fournier Street (see page 184),
assigned an unspecified lease from William Tillard
of a frontage of forty-one feet on the northern side
of the street immediately west of Elder Street, together with two houses built on it. These abutted
west on ground leased by Tillard at the same
time as the ground assigned by Grange. (ref. 190)
Nos. 9 and 10 Fleur-de-lis Street
Nos. 9 and 10, east of Elder Street, together
with a house now part of No. 1 Elder Street,
might well be the original buildings erected under
Sir Isaac Tillard's lease of 1725 to Thomas
Bunce, although their fronts have been entirely
faced with stucco, probably around 1850. They
are all three storeys high, but No. 9 has three
windows in each upper storey, whereas the others
have two, all being dressed with moulded architraves rising from sills supported by consoles.
Nos. 11–16 (consec.) Fleur-de-lis Street
The rebuilding of the south side of the street
between Blossom and Elder Streets in its present
form, with windows designed to light workrooms, probably took place about 1812 at
approximately the same time as the building of
Loom Court. (ref. 28)
Nos. 11 to 16 (consec.) (Plate 73c), together
with the return front of No. 14 Elder Street,
present a fairly uniform appearance, although
minor differences occur in the individual fronts.
All the houses are single-fronted, two rooms deep,
and have basements and three storeys, but Nos.
12–13 and 14–15 are paired with mirrored plans.
The three-storeyed fronts are built of yellow and
pink stocks, the windows having stone sills, seg
mental arches of red brick and plastered reveals.
At Nos. 11,12 and 13 each storey contains one
wide window with double-hung sashes, and a blind
window of normal proportion centred over the
arch-headed doorway. No. 14 has the wide
sashed windows but not the blind ones, while
Nos. 15 and 16 have two normal sashed windows
to each upper storey.