Qualla: Clerkenwell https://qualla.com/clerkenwell en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clerkenwell-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Clerkenwell https://qualla.com/clerkenwell Clerkenwell: Introduction https://qualla.com/clerkenwell/ Photo credit Spudgun67, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lenin worked here. So did Garibaldi. So did Cromwell's spies, Charles Dickens's pickpockets, Pears soap salesmen, and several hundred years of London watchmakers, who polished tiny brass wheels by candlelight in workshops crammed into the streets behind Northampton Square. Clerkenwell sits just outside the medieval walls of the City of London, which is the explanation for almost everything strange about it. Being outside the wall meant being outside the jurisdiction of the puritanical City fathers, and so for centuries Clerkenwell collected the things the City did not want: brothels and breweries and clockmakers and radicals and refugees. The well it was named after was rediscovered in 1924 behind a building in Farringdon Lane, where parish clerks had once performed mystery plays for the people of medieval London. Most of those layers are still there if you know where to look.

Read more: Clerkenwell on Qualla

Image: Spudgun67 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clerkenwell-wp/gcpv-clerkenwell-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Clerkenwell: The Knights and the Nuns https://qualla.com/clerkenwell/ Photo credit Mike Newman, CC BY-SA 2.5. In the twelfth century the Knights Hospitaller of St John of Jerusalem - the order founded to provide medical care during the Crusades - established their English headquarters in Clerkenwell. St John's Gate, the priory's gatehouse, still stands in St John's Square, rebuilt by Sir...

Read more: Clerkenwell on Qualla

Image: Mike Newman | CC BY-SA 2.5

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clerkenwell-wp/gcpv-clerkenwell-the-knights-and-the-nuns.mp3 0:06 2 full Clerkenwell: The Bridewell and the Brothels https://qualla.com/clerkenwell/ Photo credit Daejn., CC BY-SA 3.0. From the Elizabethan period onwards Clerkenwell had a reputation. Turnmill Street, now a quiet thoroughfare near Farringdon station, was once known as Turnbull Street and described in Sugden's Topographical Dictionary of Shakespeare as the most disreputable street in London - a h...

Read more: Clerkenwell on Qualla

Image: Daejn. | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clerkenwell-wp/gcpv-clerkenwell-the-bridewell-and-the-brothels.mp3 0:06 3 full Clerkenwell: Watches and Ice Cream https://qualla.com/clerkenwell/ Photo credit Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Industrial Revolution turned Clerkenwell into a workshop. Breweries went up. The distillers came. The printers came. But the trade most associated with the neighbourhood was the making of clocks, marine chronometers, and watches, an industry that employed thousands of skilled...

Read more: Clerkenwell on Qualla

Image: Philafrenzy | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clerkenwell-wp/gcpv-clerkenwell-watches-and-ice-cream.mp3 0:06 4 full Clerkenwell: The Bookshop on the Green https://qualla.com/clerkenwell/ Photo credit Goodwillgames, CC BY-SA 3.0. Clerkenwell Green has not been green for at least three hundred years. It is a small irregular plaza in front of the old church, dominated by the imposing Middlesex Sessions House of 1782. It is also one of the founding sites of the British radical tradition - associated with Lol...

Read more: Clerkenwell on Qualla

Image: Goodwillgames | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clerkenwell-wp/gcpv-clerkenwell-the-bookshop-on-the-green.mp3 0:06 5 full Clerkenwell: Architects, Restaurants, and Streets that Remember https://qualla.com/clerkenwell/ Photo credit Normal4norfolk at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Most of the watchmakers are gone. The Italians are mostly gone. The printers are mostly gone. What replaced them, in the late twentieth century, was architecture and design - the small, design-led studios that find Clerkenwell's brick warehouses and intricate alleyways more conge...

Read more: Clerkenwell on Qualla

Image: Normal4norfolk at English Wikipedia | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/clerkenwell-wp/gcpv-clerkenwell-architects-restaurants-and-streets-that-remember.mp3 0:06 6 full