Lad Lane
Names
- Lad Lane
- Ladelane
- Laddelane
- Ladellane
- Laddellane
- Lad Lane
- Ludlane
- Lade Lane
- Ladde Lane
- Ladle Lane
- Ladle Hall
Street/Area/District
- Lad Lane
Maps & Views
- 1553-9 London ("Agas Map" ca. 1633): Lad lane
- 1666 London after the fire (Bowen, 1772): Lad Lane
- 1720 London (Strype): Lad Lane
- 1736 London (Moll & Bowles): Lad Lane
- 1746 London, Westminster & Southwark (Rocque): Lad Lane
- 1761 London (Dodsley): Lad Lane
Descriptions
from A Dictionary of London, by Henry Harben (1918)
Lad Lane
West from Milk Street to Wood Street, in Cripplegate Ward Within, in continuation of Cateaton Street, now forms part of the present Gresham Street (q.v.).
Earliest mention: "Ladelane," 1301 (Cal. L. Bk. C. p. 238).
Other forms: "Laddelane," 14 Ed. II. 1320 (Cal. P.R. Ed. II. 1317–21, p. 589). "Ladellane," 1361 (Ct. H.W. II. 72). "Laddellane," 1419 (ib. 417). "Lad lane," 1445–6 (ib. 507). "Ludlane," 35 H. VIII. 1543 (L. and P. H. VIII. XVIII. Pt. 1, 554). "Lade Lane" otherwise "Ladde Lane," 1561–2 (Ct. H.W. II. 677).
Stow speaks of it as "Ladle lane," or "Ladle hall," corruptly called Lad lane (p. 298), and though the earliest form appears to be "Ladelane," this does not altogether disprove his statement, for the second "l" required to represent the pronunciation "Ladellane" might easily have been slurred over in ordinary speech and omitted by a scribe of the period, to whom the spelling of names often presented serious difficulties. On the other hand, Stow may himself have been in error in suggesting that the second "l" formed an integral part of the name. In either case it is not easy to discover a satisfactory derivation of the name.
Perhaps from A.S. "lad" = "a way, path."
The name Gresham Street superseded the old appellation in 1845.
from A New View of London, by Edward Hatton (1708)
Lad lane, betn Wood str. W. and Cateaton str. end, London, E. This (Stow says) is properly called Ladle lane, from Ladle hall, formerly there.
from Lockie's Topography of London, by John Lockie (1810)
Lad-Lane, Wood-Street, Cheapside,—at 19, the first on the R. from 122, Cheapside, it extends to 17, Milk-st.
from A Topographical Dictionary of London and Its Environs, by James Elmes (1831)
Lad-Lane, Cheapside, is the first turning on the right hand in Wood-street, going from Cheapside; it extends to Milk-street.
from London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham (1891)
Lad Lane, Cheapside.
Lad Lane or Ladle Lane, for so I find it of record in the Parish of St. Michael, Wood Street.—Stow, p. 111.
A record of A.D. 1301 mentions a house in "Ladelane formerly belonging to Coke Bateman the Jew," a mode of spelling which, as Mr. Riley observes, seems to contradict Stow's assertion that it was formerly called Ladle Lane; probably Stow in a hasty reference mistook the l in Lade Lane as a part of the name.'
The Swan with Two Necks, in Lad Lane, was for a century and more, and till railways ruined stage and mail-coach travelling, the booking-office and headquarter of coaches to the North.
I bade the huge metropolis farewell;
Its dust and dirt and din and smoke and smut.
* * * * * *
Escaping from all this, the very whirl
Of Mail-coach wheels, bound outwards from Lad Lane,
Was peace and quietness.—Southey, Epistle to Allan Cunningham.
Always threatening to break my neck; one would think we servants had a neck to spare like the Swan in Lad Lane.—Colman's Ways and Means, 1788.
Sir Pitt Crawley and Becky Sharp took their departure from here, when the Hackney coachman "flung down Miss Sharp's bandboxes in the gutter of the Necks, and swore he would take the law of his fare."—Thackeray's Vanity Fair, chap. vii.
Lad Lane, since 1845, has been swallowed up in what is now called Gresham Street.