Turn off bustling Fleet Street into the much narrower and quieter Bride Lane. Walk past the back of Wren’s 17th century St Bride’s Church…
… and you will find a historical hidden gem: the St Bride Foundation.
From the early 1700s up until the 1980s, Fleet Street was the centre of London’s thriving newspaper business. The association started in 1500 when Wynken de Worde became the first printer to set up his press nearby.
If we went back to 1891, Fleet Street and the surrounding web of alleyways and lanes would have been frenetic with activity and the distinctive noise and clatter of the printing houses.
It was in this year that the St Bride Foundation was established. I went on a tour!
The St Bride Foundation
So, what is the St Bride Foundation? It was set up as an institution to support the people and printers of Fleet Street, providing both education and recreation.
It had a school of printing to educate printers in the newest technologies and an extensive library, as well as more practical facilities such as a swimming pool (the first in the City of London), a gymnasium and washrooms for laundry.
This was all housed in a beautiful, now Grade II listed, red-brick building at the end of St Bride Lane. The site is a strange shape, tucked right in the corner, overlooked by the beautiful St Bride’s church.
A Flourishing Hub
In 1912 the school had 300 students and by 1920 this had grown to 1200.
At its peak the pool was used by about 40,000 a year and the washing baths by 18,000.
The Foundation had sports teams in swimming, cricket, gymnastics, rowing and table tennis and visitors to the gym, over the years, apparently included celebrities such as Eartha Kitt and Dave Prowse, a bodybuilder, weightlifter and the actor who played Darth Vader.
In 1922 it had simply outgrown the original building here and so moved to a larger premises in Stamford Street, South of the river, to become part of what is now the London College of Communication.
The Institute Today
The offering to the people of London at the Foundation has changed over the years.
Today it is a charity that is totally self-funded by putting on tours, talks, hiring out spaces and putting on shows in the theatre.
The swimming pool has been covered over and today is the Bridewell Theatre.
Under a hatch in the middle of the stage you can still see the tiled swimming pool beneath.
The laundry area is now the theatre bar and still contains some of the old equipment.
The Library
The Foundation’s library, originally created as a resource for the printers, today contains over 50,000 items, manuscripts and artefacts.
The library was initially formed from the collection of William Blades, acquired by the Foundation after his death in 1890 for £975 (£130k today).
Blades was an expert on the early printer William Caxton and in the collection they have a substantial fragment of one of his earliest printed works, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (1478): the oldest printed book in their collection.
They have some pretty amazing items in their collection. The oldest was a papyrus from 1400BC. It is only one of around 7 papyrus in the world with hieroglyphics on both sides.
They have a William Morris edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, bound in white pig skin, worth around £200,000. They also have various pamphlets and flyers, such as this account of a murder
One for the London Underground enthusiasts, they also have lots of the original moquettes for the London Underground roundel and font from the 1920s.
We were also shown the original models for road signage.
The Printing Workshop
On the tour you are taken to the printing workshop, housed in what was once the gymnasium. It is filled with old printing machines, materials and tools. They hold regular printing workshops in here.
The tour explains the development of different printing techniques. What was really impressed on me was the unbelievably extensive process needed to print a newspaper, right up until computerisation. Thousands of individual pieces of metal were cast everyday to create the daily newspaper.
The tour is lead by people who used to work in the printing trade and they really know their stuff.
They also kindly showed me the elegant old board room, which I believe can be hired out.
The St Bride’s Foundation, is not particularly well known. It is quirky and feels very authentic and slightly haphazard with its amalgamation of functions, housed in a maze-like Victorian building.
The team are all very enthusiastic about what they do and it is definitely worth booking a tour. Find out more about visiting/booking a tour here.
Thank you for reading, more hidden gems below!
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Fascinating post – thank you!
Fascinating. I stumbled upon you, having stumbled upon the victorian Turkish baths in Liverpool Street…
Having sought information, yours was the most comprehensive and interesting overview.
I will definitely visit this place. Wonderful.
Look forward to whatever you unearth.
Best wishes, Pete
Fascinating! As a lover of words and books, I’ve always been interested in early printing presses, I must visit here o my next trip to London.
But the thing that really stole the show for me was….”Wynken de Worde”. Wynken as in ‘winking’? Or is it a Germanic ‘w’ (so more ‘Vinken/Vorde’) ?? Either way I love it!
This brings memories of my parents buying my cousin, who was ten years older than me, a John Bull Printing Set which he was desperate for. I don’t think my aunt ever fully forgave my parents, as Joe got ink EVERYWHERE!
Really interesting thank you
Thank you for sharing these places with us.