Genealogy Chat

Can't find where this London street was - ancestors were there in 1841. I've tried googling and the MOTCO site plus various other maps sites I've come across but no luck yet. I assume it's got to be around St Peters! Anyone got any ideas?

I Know a St. Peter's Church Clerkenwell will show if you google it's an Italian Catholic Church. Carol

IN THE EARLY 19th century the Saffron Hill area of London was a poor neighbourhood of densely populated slum-ridden alleys. By 1850, nearly 2000 Italian immigrants had settled there, chiefly employed as itinerant workers - street musicians, organ-grinders, street vendors or as artisans producing plaster figures, picture-frames, looking-glasses, barometers and other scientific instruments. St Peter's Italian Church 136 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1R 5DL

Thanks Carol but there used to be St Peters Saffron Hill parish next to St Andrews Holborn - it's the street in the parish I'm after & I think Saffron Hill district went into Holborn/ Clerkenwell:) Found this but it's not very specific:) - St Peter, Saffron Hill The situation of St Peter was described as very unfavourable as it stood in a narrow lane surrounded by a close neighbourhood. Built between 1830-1832.

St Peter, Saffron Hill The situation of St Peter was described as very unfavourable as it stood in a narrow lane surrounded by a close neighbourhood. Built between 1830-1832.

Thanks Carol - we found that at the same time lol. Am just going out but will try again later with a fresh head - thanks for yr help

SAFFRON HILL. A squalid neighbourhood between HOLBORN and CLERKENWELL, densely inhabited by poor people and thieves. It was formerly a part of Ely-gardens, [see Ely House], and derives its name from the crops of saffron which it bore. It runs from Field-lane into Vine-street, so called from the Vineyard attached to old Ely House. The clergymen of St. Andrew's, Holborn, (the parish in which the purlieu lies), have been obliged, when visiting it, to he accompanied by policemen in plain clothes. Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill meet, there opens, upon the right hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and dismal alley leading to Saffron Hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of all sizes and patterns; for here reside the traders who purchase them from pickpockets. Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves, within, are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself: the emporium of petty larceny: visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back-parlours, and who go as strangely as they come. Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant, display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty thief; here, stores of old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen-stuff and linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars.

Hi David,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Know nothing of London areas but found.......................... Saffron Hill Holborn 1937 was renamed Great Saffron Hill ~~~~~~.................................................................... or found St Peters Street in Bethnal Green now E2......... Gwen

Saffron Hill is still there, you can see it on www.streetmap*co.uk. It was a very seedy area - Dickens has a vivid picture of it in Oliver Twist. My husband's gt X 2 grandparents lived in St Peter's Street in 1851 census and I've made a note that it was between was Saffron Hill and Turnmill Street. Again, Turnmill Street is on streetmap uk. nell

Hi Gwen I'm all right with Saffron Hill but thanks anyway:) My St Peters Street was definitely in Saffron Hill not Bethnal Green. Hi Nell Thanks for the pm - just come back online. I think the bit Carol's posted is the passage from Oliver Twist. I've walked up Saffron Hill as I have a lot of relations there in 1861 too. Think yr note is a great help! Should be able to locate it through that and another helpful pm I've had on one of the old maps. Thank you:) Have you found of yrs living there in parish records by any chance?

Got it:)) Nell - if you want the reference it's on here - http://users.bathspa.ac.uk/greenwood/map_c6u.html and runs from Great Saffron Hill to Turnmill Street (towards the corner with Cowcross Street) as yr notes

Oh 'eck- I have a rellie born in 1859 in St. John Street, Saffron Hill/Holborn. I read that there were 23 pubs on St. John Street and it's where they used to drive the animals down to Smithfield Market. I'd also read that it was a ''den of thieves and vagabonds''. Definately my lot then!

David, send me your email as I have a map of Georgian London and Peter Street runs between Saffron Hill and Turnmill Street. Hopefully I can scan the image and send it to you. Val

Thanks for the ref David. Doesn't the map make the area look prim and tidy! I was chuffed when I found an 1850s map of the area where my husband's gt grandmother was born, in a book called Criminal Islington. It described the area as a den of thieves, prostitutes etc and said that one pub was so rough that the drinkers threw the landlord on the fire when he argued with them. And my husband thought his family a cut above mine! Huh! Also found this lady's father doing time in Parkhurst. Respectable, my *rse!

Thanks Val:)) Cynthia & Nell - I love it when I find my ancestors living in these dramatic Victorian hovels but life must have been bloody hard for the poor devils mustn't it?

Just been mooching through the threads as I've been away for a bit, and this one caught my eye. My husband used to work in Saffron Hill, I assumed it was only recently dingy and grotty. I see it's been like that a long time, puts it all in perspective. Suex