Tabard Estate ( Known today as Tabard Garden Estate )
The major part of this estate lies in Southwark with the Bermondsey part extending from Long Lane. It was redeveloped in 1934 by acquisition of factories and other premises in Long Lane to form the Tabard Garden Estate as we know it today, and it remains more or less the same as when the development took place some 75 years ago.
An area north of Weston Street to Sterry Street and from Long Lane to Tabard Street was affected by the development as we can see indside the RED area on the 1914 map.
Kent Street was renamed Tabard Street from 1877, and was, in its time, the only road south to Dover and it joined Kent Street Road (renamed Old Kent Road), at the Bricklayers Arms which was Coaching Inn in its time.
In earlier times it had been a hard road to travel. Chaucer and his Pilgrims travelled this road to Canterbury and recorded at the Thomas a Becket (another coaching inn) "bodies of hanged criminals being left to rot, remained hangingon gibbets".
Great Dover Street, known earlier as Church Street, to the west was much narrower than Kent Street (Tabard Street) and joined Kent Street at the Bricklayers Arms. But in 1814 traffic was diverted down Church Street (Great Dover Street) to solve congestion problems.
I will endeavour to put pictures of Tabard Estate and the surrounding area on the forum with pictures prior to the 1934 deveopment, but without the "Today" picture as many of the streets no longer exist.
We can fairly estimate when the properties were built from Harwoods map of the area, the 1799
edition which shows Wickham Place formerly named Wycomb Place, but Staple Street, Delph Street, Walker Street and Camelot Street, (formerly Castle Street) did not appear till around 1820. Minto Street appears still later, to the south, it was still very rural with market gardens and fields.
One can imagine the conditions on people's lives, without sanitation and the Cholera outbreaks that seemed never ending in this area from about 1820, caused by the open sewers running into the Thames, at the same location where the drinking water was extracted. This was a recipe for disaster, and it was only a matter of time before it would take place.
- Map of area 1799
- Map of area 1914
- Same area today