St Peter Westcheap: A Tiny Pocket Park And A Famous Tree

Just behind Cheapside, one of London’s most historic streets, is a tiny little, overlooked pocket park. As is often the case with the City, even the smallest plots of ground have many stories to tell. 

It was once the site of a medieval church called St Peter, Westcheap and today contains a famous tree. 

Cheapside

Cheapside was the main market street through the heart of medieval London, the name coming from the old English word ‘chepe’ or ‘ceapan’, meaning ‘a market’ or ‘to buy’. It was not therefore an indication of price. It was once known as West Cheap/Westcheap, with Eastcheap, another street still in existence today, both laid out in the 9th century when King Alfred the Great refounded the city.  

Off Cheapside, still today, are other street names informing you what was once sold there, for example, Milk Street, Bread Street, Honey Lane and Wood Street.

Cheapside was also part of the processional route through the city from the Tower of London to St Paul’s Cathedral and onwards to the Palace of Westminster.

During Anne Boleyn’s coronation procession, for example, in 1533, the route was lined with scarlet, crimson and blue velvet and cloth. Anne met representatives from the city’s livery companies on Cheapside and was presented with 1000 marks. The conduits, usually providing water to the people of the city, flowed with white wine and claret. 

The Cheapside Cross

The church was sometimes known as ‘St Peter at the Cross at Cheap’. This was due to the fact that right at the end of Wood Street and therefore right outside the church was the Cheapside Cross.

This was an ‘Eleanor Cross’, built by King Edward I in memory of his wife Eleanor of Castile. The Queen died in 1290 in the East Midlands and Edward erected a monument, twelve in total, at each point that her body stopped on its way to Westminster for her burial. The Cheapside Cross, along with many of the others, was destroyed in 1643 by the Parliamentarians in the Civil War as a symbol of monarchy, royalty and idolatry. 

There was also a pillory located on Cheapside very close to the church. This was a place where petty criminals were humiliated and pelted by the mob with rotten fruit or other missiles. 

St Peter, Westcheap

The church is first recorded in 1196 as St Peter of Wood Street, but likely has earlier origins and would have fronted onto Cheapside itself. 

It was one of the 87 churches lost in the Great Fire of London of 1666 and not one of the 51 chosen to be rebuilt. After the fire, a row of shops were constructed on part of the site in 1687.

There is a surviving plaque on the backs of those buildings 124-126 Cheapside.

How much of the original fabric of those 17th century buildings survives is unclear. They are not, for example, listed by Historic England. They could well have been largely rebuilt after the Second World War. The Second Great Fire of London, devastated this pocket of the City on the night of the 29th/30th December 1940.  

The parish itself was combined with that of the nearby St Matthew Friday Street. When St Matthew’s was demolished in the Victorian period, the parish was combined with that of St Vedast alias Foster. 

The area behind the shops was used as a churchyard and there are still a couple of surviving gravestones there today.

The gates dates from 1712 and depict St Peter and the crossed keys to heaven. 

The Famous Plane Tree

In the corner of the garden, with its boughs outstretched over the shops, is a majestic London plane tree. 

It is one of the most well-known trees of London, certainly in the City, but its age remains a mystery. Many say it is the oldest tree in the City of London. 

The London Plane

The London tree was created in the 17th century in the botanical gardens of gardener and collector John Tradescant the Younger. An Oriental Plane just happened to cross pollinate with a nearby American Sycamore. It was then widely planted across London in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The bark of the London Plane breaks off in flakes, giving them an almost camouflage texture/look, meaning they shed off the soot and pollution of the city. They also do not particularly mind their roots being compacted under concrete and tarmac, making them an ideal urban tree. Their dense clusters of seeds do, however, give lots of people very bad hayfever over the spring and summer. 

A Literary Icon?

As mentioned above, the age is unclear, however there are a few scattered clues.

In the Reverie of Poor Susan, 1797, by William Wordsworth he mentions a thrush at the corner of Wood Street, but whether it is in our tree is not specified: 

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,

Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:

Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard

In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

Other References

It was so well known that businesses around the tree once used to use it in their addresses. Samuel Roe, who owned a cab firm, put an advertisement in the Illustrated London News in 1853 and gave his address simply as ‘Samuel Roe, under the tree, Cheapside’. 

In the early 20th century, the business occupying the corner shop, L and R Wooderson, Hosier, advertised their address as 123-124 Cheapside (under the tree).

This City of London planning document claims that the tree was planted in 1820 at a cost of sixpence. 

In the 1840s there were various local news reports that talked about rooks or crows nesting in the tree. Perhaps a slow news day…  

There is apparently a clause included in their leases of 124-126 Cheapside that they cannot be any higher than two storeys to ensure the tree is not impacted.

However old it is, I hope that this arboreal icon is long able to spread its branches over this historic corner of London. So, next time you are walking along Cheapside, perhaps pop into the garden and salute this venerable old tree.

Thank you for reading, more of London’s historic pocket parks and gardens below…