The Standard in Cornhill - Gracechurch Street, London, UK
N 51° 30.798 W 000° 05.056
30U E 702310 N 5710939
This blue plaque, to the Standard in Cornhill, is located on the west side of Gracechurch Street at the junction with Cornhill. The "cross roads" were/are formed by the meeting of Cornhill, Gracechurch Street, Leadenhall Street and Bishopsgate.
Waymark Code: WMMGT3
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 09/19/2014
Views: 4
The City of London plaque tells us:
The Corporation of
At the cross roads
The Standard
in Cornhill
formerly stood.
Removed 1674
the City of London
"The Standard" was a water pump and an extract from an article in Wikipedia tells us:
Cornhill is one of the traditional divisions of the City. The street contains two of the City churches designed by Sir Christopher Wren: St. Michael, Cornhill, on the site of the Roman forum of Londinium, and St Peter upon Cornhill, reputed to occupy the oldest Christianised site in London. At its other end it meets Threadneedle Street, Poultry, Lombard Street and others at Bank junction. Sir Thomas Gresham's original Royal Exchange fronted onto Cornhill, but its successor on the site, designed by William Tite, faces towards the Bank of England across the junction with Threadneedle Street.
The 'Standard' near the junction of Cornhill and Leadenhall Street was the first mechanically pumped public water supply in London, constructed in 1582 on the site of earlier hand-pumped wells and gravity-fed conduits. The mechanism, a force pump driven by a water wheel under the northernmost arch of London Bridge, transferred water from the Thames through lead pipes to four outlets. The service was discontinued in 1603. This became the mark from which many distances to and from London were measured and the name still appears on older mileposts (but see also the nearby London Stone and St. Mary-le-Bow church).
In 1652, Pasqua Rosée, possibly a native of Ragusa, Italy, opened London's first coffeehouse, in St. Michael's Alley off Cornhill.
The publishers Smith, Elder and Co, based at No. 65, published the popular literary journal Cornhill Magazine from 1860 to 1975, as well as the Dictionary of National Biography. The magazine was first edited by William Makepeace Thackeray.
In Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Bob Cratchit slides down Cornhill 20 times in honour of it being Christmas Eve.
The use of "The Standard" as the distances from which points were measured to London are mentioned in the Wordsmith Blog:
From the beginning of Dickens' Barnaby Rudge
"In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London—measuring from the Standard in Cornhill,’ or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore—a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew."
From the Internet:
"London has never had a Milliarium Aureum but the next best thing was probably an old water tank whose former position was the datum for many of the milestones on the turnpike roads.
The Standard in Cornhill, was a water cistern with four spouts, made by Peter Morris, a German, in 1582, and supplied by lead pipes with Thames water. It stood at the east end of Cornhill, at its junction with Gracechurch Street, Bishopsgate Street, and Leadenhall Street. The water ceased to run about 1600, but the Standard itself remained until 1674, the year before the publication of Ogilby's road maps were published with their mileages measured from the Standard."