Borough High Street
Borough High Street with Tower 42 in the background (2007)
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| Former name(s) | The Borough St. Margaret's Hill Blackman Street Longe Southwark Wellington Street |
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| Length | 0.8 mi (1.3 km) |
| northeast end |
London Bridge 51°30′29″N 0°05′15″W / 51.5081°N 0.0876°W |
| southwest end |
Newington Causeway 51°29′57″N 0°05′49″W / 51.4991°N 0.0970°W |
Borough High Street is a road in Southwark, London, running south-west from London Bridge, forming part of the A3 route which runs from London to Portsmouth, on the south coast of England.
Borough High Street continues southwest as Newington Causeway, here co-inciding with ancient Stane Street, the Roman road between London and Chichester. Another important connection is with the Dover Road (the modern A2 route) which diverges in a south-east direction from Borough High Street at a junction of five roads adjacent to Borough tube station as Great Dover Street. The Dover Road mostly follows the alignment of Roman Watling Street, though, here, the original Roman route was along Tabard Street closely parallel with Great Dover Street to the north.
The stretch of Borough High Street south of the junction with Long Lane, Marshalsea Road, and Tabard Street, where stands the ancient church of St. George the Martyr, was formerly called Blackman Street after a long resident family there.
Borough Market was once held on the street, but has been moved to the west with its main entrance on Southwark Street. Southwark Cathedral, prominent on the west side of the street near London Bridge, can be reached by a small pedestrian bridge and stairs, though its postal address is actually Montague Close.
The earliest recorded name for the street is simply 'The Borough' which was the part between the fork of the street and London Bridge. South of the fork it was called 'St. Margaret's Hill'. These names were subsumed in the Tudor period as 'Longe Southwark' (differentiated from 'Short Southwark' now Tooley Street) and by the late Georgian era as simply 'High Street' and the northern section from the junction with Duke Street Hill was renamed 'Wellington Street' to commemorate the Duke of Wellington. From the 1890s the London County Council started to rationalise all metropolitan street names and 'Borough High Street' became the name for the current route.
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