Great Sutton Street starts badly but becomes progressively more charming as you head away from Goswell Road.
Great Sutton Street and a grid of little streets as far north as Compton Street, were originally part of the Charterhouse estate. The Charterhouse was the Priory of the Order of St John of Jerusalem and its northern boundary wall ran along what is now the south side of Clerkenwell Road. Eventually, with the ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’ by Henry VIII, Charterhouse’s possessions were broken up and the Charterhouse itself and its surrounding lands were sold to Sir Thomas Sutton.
The Charterhouse Estate also owned lands beyond the wall and this comprised Great Sutton Street and the other streets as far as Compton Street. This land also passed to Sir Thomas Sutton – from whom the Great Sutton Street name came.
Unlike many other areas which began as residential areas with grand houses which gradually got divided up into smaller and smaller units, and then slums or workshops, this area was always industrial, and it remained that way until after the Second World War. It was one of the most rundown parts of Clerkenwell, full of shabby factories and warehouses. But, of course these are exactly the type of buildings which, once cleaned up, become quaint and desirable to the modern eye. But many other original buildings have been replaced with modern structures in the 20th century with no concern for aesthetic sensibilities.
One historic site of this part of Clerkenwell, which I must mention (although it was actually demolished by the 17th century) was Pardon Chapel. It was designed to hold masses to ask God to pardon the souls of those who died before they could be given the last rites of the church – a social security safety net Mediaeval-style.
The 17th century, the area of Great Sutton Street was a free for all. The governors of the Charterhouse were infuriated when enterprising chancers built an alehouse called the Swan right up against Charterhouse’s wall. When a writer called Samuel Parsons did a survey for the Charterhouse governors in 1635 he reported that the disreputable inhabitants of the shantytown on the other side of their wall took pleasure in throwing excrement and other rubbish into the Charterhouse’s garden. The alleys were so full of rubbish that the denizens of the area used rope walks or “twisting alleys” hung at first floor level to get around.
By 1687 new leaseholders of plots of land had started to clear the old structures and build new streets and houses. They laid out the modern grid of streets and they built terraced houses.
But however much the refined residents of the Charterhouse would have liked to keep the seething commercial world beyond the Charterhouse wall at bay, they were fighting a losing battle. In the early 18th century, people had illegally built on Pardon Chapel’s old churchyard and all remaining vacant ground right up to the Charterhouse wall again. To make matters worse for the Charterhouse, the proximity of Smithfield meant that the area particularly attracted butchers and associated trades, and so the area became filled with slaughterhouses and bacon smoking stoves. One resident who was struggling to run a respectable gardening business complained of the stifling smoke “from so many neighbouring Brewhouses, Distillers and Pipe makers lately set up” nearby.
In this war, the Charterhouse achieved a temporary victory in the 1760s when they obtained an Act of Parliament allowing it to grant long leases of the land, which meant that enterprising builders could make a profit from building new homes for the rich. Most of the offending buildings near Charterhouse’s wall were cleared and 300 new houses created. But none survived as family houses because of the constant pressure of businesses wanted to move into the area.
By the 1820s many of the houses had become factories, including for the regulars such as butchers and slaughterhouses, but also vinegar works, dyers, and a gasworks – the residents of the Charterhouse must have particularly enjoyed that one. One factory made vitriol. It’s sulphuric acid. I didn’t realise it was thing. The Charterhouse complained about “boiling of putrid meat, and blood running into their drains”. But it all continued.
In the 1850s the Charterhouse governors tried new remedies. The worst housing was pulled down. The governors tried raising rents to ten times the previous levels. But noxious industries continued to crowd in.
Everything was finally solved for Charterhouse when the government decided to construct a new arterial road from the West End to the East End, which involved linking Theobalds Road to Old Street. This required an entirely new road to be constructed – Clerkenwell Road. The new road was built in the 1870s and it entailed the clearance of slum areas on either side.
In the last two decades of the 19th century, there were various projects to create ‘model’ housing in the area, none of which have survived. Ultimately, it was the unending pressure for commercial and industrial buildings which dominated the area of Great Sutton Street in the late 19th century. New warehouses were put up – several of them built by Mark Bromet, described as a rag and general merchant. The new occupiers were not in the obnoxious trades previously described. Most of them were in the clothing business including leather manufacturers, glove makers, and furriers. There was also a substantial presence from the printing trade.
The destruction of many buildings by bombing in the war, led to several 1950s and early 1960s factories and warehouses filling gaps in the streets of the area.
In 1985, the Charterhouse sold its estate to BeeBee Developments Ltd. Their building activities and a general improvement in the property market led to this area becoming a well-known business quarter, particularly fashionable with creative and media companies, showrooms and galleries.
South side of Great Sutton Street
A lot that happened in Great Sutton Street was a by-product of what was happening on the more important frontage – Clerkenwell Road. Nos. 5–8 Great Sutton Street was built in 1962 as part of a development of Nos 12–16 Clerkenwell Road, which was completed three years earlier. These . The buildings were designed as workshops and warehousing with brick and glass facing.
Most of the buildings on this stretch of Great Sutton Street (from Goswell Road to Berry Street) started life as warehouses constructed in the 1950s to fill gaps in the street left from wartime bombing. Again, Clerkenwell Road set the pace because it was the entire block, not just the Great Sutton Street side which needed rebuilding. Much of this section formed part of the construction of Nos. 18–30 Clerkenwell Road.
No. 15 the corner building, and extends a long way down Berry Street, where it is called Berry House.
On the other side of Berry Street, No. 16, Sutton Arms survived the war. The present building was constructed in 1897, replacing an earlier Sutton Arms on the site. It has red-brick upper floors and stucco surrounds to the windows.
Nos. 17 – 18 Great Sutton Street is an attractive warehouse built in white gault bricks , with windows filling the space between the central pier and the outside walls. It was built as a stand-alone warehouse in 1898. No. 20 Great Sutton Street was being built at the same time, as part of the watchmakers Robert Pringle & Sons’ Wilderness Works at Nos 36–42 Clerkenwell Road. No. 19 Great Sutton Street was rebuilt as an extension to it in 1907–8. And then, during the First World War, Pringles expanded into Nos 17–18 Great Sutton Street. Nos. 19 – 20 Great Sutton Street is the more imposing of the buildings, with ground and four upper storeys and higher ceilings.
Nos 21–22 Great Sutton Street were built in 1953 to replace bomb damaged buildings. They have single wide sets of windows across the frontage in the upper floors. The building was designed to match the style of the pre-War buildings next to them – Nos. 23 – 29 Great Sutton Street.
Nos 23 – 29 Great Sutton Street were built to let in 1938, and were all designed by the same architect, Herbert Wright, although you can see slight design differences between the buildings, particularly in the layout and design of piers and windows. There are also differences in the bricks used.
There is an entrance to Sutton Lane beneath No. 27 Great Sutton Street. Sutton Lane is a courtyard development going right through to Clerkenwell Road. The sign above the entrance says that the courtyard was formerly 54a and 56a Clerkenwell Road.
No. 30A Great Sutton Street was built in 2007. The façade has distinctively dark grey brickwork with ceramic pink tiles around the ground floor piers. The windows are set back behind piers and have small balconies on the two upper floors.
The street numbering becomes quite strange from here to the end of the street. They are all sub-divisions of a No. 30. The numbers are: 30A, 30B, 30C, 30D, and 30E Great Sutton Street. There used to be a No. 29½ Great Sutton Street but that is now part of No. 30A Great Sutton Street.
No. 30B Great Sutton Street an interesting, narrow, building. It has a pitched roof and a brick façade with red-brick segmental lintels on upper floors and brown tiled piers at ground level. It was built as a dairy and above the door it still has original ceramic tiles showing a cow lying in a field and a cow being milked.
Nos. 30B, 30C, 30D, and 30E Great Sutton Street are together a terrace of houses, some with pitched roofs, some with attractive terracotta floral decoration below the windows or the roof lines. The building next to them which turns the corner into St John Street and is numbered No. 130 Clerkenwell Road.
North side of Great Sutton Street
We can’t escape the obsession with ‘No. 30’ even when we cross the street. On the north side, going back down the street in the Goswell Road direction, the set of buildings all the way to Northbugh Street is a long red-brick building numbered, Nos. 30 – 35 Great Sutton Street. This, along with No. 20 Northburgh Street, was a factory built in 1935. It hovers between having the look of old-style warehouse and being a modern building.
Nos 36–43 Great Sutton Street is a surprise when you first seen it. An immediate response may be: ‘How have the Russions managed to build a missile silo in central London without anyone noticing?’ However, the Survey of London describe it as, ‘among the more architecturally refined of post-war commercial buildings locally’.
Listen to this description – it sounds luscious. “The facing of grey-brown brick, uninterrupted by ornamentation or dressings, makes a seamless transition from areas of curtain-walling to the cladding of elements of the reinforced-concrete frame, which are thrown into prominence by the recessing of the windows. The top two floors are contained in a glazed mansard, the framework here of steel, clad in aluminium.”
“Ugly, brown, box” seems a more economical and accurate description to me.
The building was designed in 1973–4 by the architect Ronald Trebilcock as showrooms (for missiles obviously).
If you are in a hurry and cut off the corner from Northburgh Street you risk tripping over six mill-stones which the council have conveniently set in the pavement. They were discovered during excavation and belonged to mills which were operated here in about 1786 by a John Hurwood.
Nos 44 – 47 Great Sutton Street is a good-looking former warehouse, built in 1892, and faced in gault bricks.
No. 50 Great Sutton Street was originally Nos. 50 – 56 Great Sutton Street and it was built in 1962. It used to have a façade of green panels. It has recently been completely renovated and now has a metal grating finish. The building on the corner is Nos. 41 – 53 Goswell Road.
