Crosby Hall

Crosby Hall stood in a court on the east side of Bishopsgate Street at a small distance from the parish church of St Helen's. The hall that remained in the late eighteenth century was a part of a large mansion that had been built by Sir John Crosby, a grocer and woolman, in the reign of Edward IV on ground leased from, and adjoining, the nunnery of St Helen. Richard III, as Duke of Gloucester, made the mansion his London home for some time, and William Shakespeare mentions the Hall in Richard III.

After the Great Fire of London in 1666 much of the mansion was demolished, and Crosby Square erected on its site. Only the Great Hall and several adjoining chambers remained. Over the years Crosby Hall has been used as offices for the East India Company, as a commercial premises, as a meeting hall for Protestant dissenters, and even as a restaurant in the mid-nineteenth century. The Hall was considerably defaced during these various habitations, and it was eventually demolished in the very early twentieth century.