Billingsgate, London : Historical writing

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to Billingsgate within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Daniel Defoe Letter 5 (London), Part 2: The City 2
William Camden Middlesex and London 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Tower of London 0 6
Bishopsgate 3 1
Aldgate 4 2
Borough 0 2
Moorfields 9 1
Horsleydown 0 2
St Katherine 0 2
Spitalfields 13 5
Cripplegate 3 0
Southwark 44 6
Bermondsey 1 2
Aldersgate 3 1
Newgate 2 0
Norton Folgate 0 2
Glasshouse Yard 0 2
Charter House 0 1
Smithfield 4 0
London Docks 0 1
Inner Temple 1 1
Finsbury 1 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for Billingsgate. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
BELINGS GATE William Camden Britain, or, a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: George Bishop and John Norton, 1610).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.