96 Mr. N. F. Robarts’s 
the country path—now Long Lane—from the junction of the 
Dover Road with the causeway. 
There would have been a few houses along the causeway, the 
forerunners of the famous inns of the Borough, and possibly a 
few fishermen’s huts along the river-bank; but the City of 
London, guarded by the Tower at its eastern boundary, ended 
almost opposite the Monastery, and stood on the high gravel cliff 
overlooking the marshy meadows on the south side of the river, 
protected by the South work, as the Roman embankment was 
called, now giving us the district known as Southwark. 
Four hundred and fifty years later the environment of the 
Monastery had altered very little—there were several large houses 
in Tooley Street near the bridge; St. Thomas’s Hospital and the 
large inns stood near or in the Borough High Street, and probably 
houses had begun to creep along the Dover Road and gather near 
the parish church of St. Mary Magdalen of Bermondsey, but the 
country aspect was still prevalent, and even at the beginning of 
the last century the fields were still open, as you can tell for 
yourselves if you now walk through the length and breadth of 
Bermondsey, for you will hardly find a house more than a 
hundred years old whilst the wilderness of bricks and mortar, 
most of it squalid, did not then exist. 
The site where the Monastery stood lies directly south of the 
present Tower Bridge. To the north-west stood the parish church 
of St. Mary Magdalen; Bermondsey Square, or what is left of it, 
marks the position of the main court of the Abbey; whilst Abbey 
Street, between Long Walk and the wall of the parish church- 
yard, occupies the place where stood the conventual church. 
The farm buildings are kept in memory by Grange Walk and 
Grange Road, and the site of part of the conventual burying- 
ground is occupied by the new dwellings belonging to the South 
Eastern Railway Company. Crucifix Lane—by some said to be 
a corruption of Christopher Lane, but which I prefer to think com- 
memorates a crucifix erected there—led to the Abbey; and Pickle 
Herring Wharf was doubtless connected by a road with the Abbey 
for it was the landing-place for the Abbey’s supply of sea fish. 
It is therefore comparatively easy to locate the position, although 
hardly a stone now remains to show the site of what was once one 
of the three most famous and powerful monasteries in England. 
The founder of the Monastery was one Alwin Child, a citizen 
of London, who in 1081 built a church in Bermondsey, which he 
dedicated to the Saviour. 
A few years later, in 1089, he annexed to it a Convent of 
Cluniac monks, four of whom were sent here in that year, at the 
instigation of Archbishop Lanfranc, from the Priory of La Charité 
sur la Loire, to which priory Bermondsey became subordinate as 
a cell. 
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