Old
London Maps
Free access
to scores of rare and detailed maps, plans, articles, information and
views of medieval, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth century
London for the genealogist, family historian, student and the curious.
The
New Mint on Tower Hill
Designed
by Mr Smirke, jun., for the various purposes of coinage. The interior
was severely damaged by a fire in 1815. Formerly East Minster, or the
abbey of St Mary of the Graces, stood on this site. Edward III founded
East Minster in 1349 after a fright at sea. He intended the monastic
establishment to rival Westminster, but it never succeeded. East Minster
continued until the sixteenth-century dissolution of the monasteries.
During the eighteenth century the Victualling Office stood here; it
was demolished for the Mint which was accessed via a narrow opening
in Rosemary Lane.
The construction of the buildings of the New Mint in the early nineteenth
century necessitated the removal of all the old houses on the left hand
side of East Smithfield down to Norwich Court, turning Butcher Row (not
the same Butcher Row by Temple
Bar) into a "commodious and broad" street.
