Milford Lane

Milford Lane is a narrow street in the City of Westminster that runs from Strand in the north to a brief walkway section leading to Temple Place in the south. It is joined by Little Essex Street and Essex Street on its eastern side. Maltravers Street once joined the lane to Arundel Street and will cease to exist once building work at 190 Strand is complete.

The lane possibly takes its name from the ford that crossed a stream that roughly followed the course of Essex Street.

It once marked the boundary between the London estates of Lord Essex, Essex House, and the Earl of Arundel, Arundel House.

Twezers or Tweezers Alley, which in 2016 is blocked due to building works, is the subject of one of the Quit Rents ceremonies of the City of London entered in the Great Roll of the Exchequer since 1235 by which the City must pay the Crown six horseshoes and 61 horseshoe nails for the site of its "Forge". When rendered to the Queen's Remembrancer the items are preserved in his office, and with the permission of the Crown they are loaned to the Corporation of London to be rendered again the following year.

The area was a hiding place for debtors in the 17th century.

The lane once contained a cook's shop owned by one Phipps, a black man, whose death in 1722 was sufficiently notable to be mentioned in a work on the parish dated 1876 along with the fact that his coffin had six black pall-bearers and 'sixty or seventy others of the same complexion, and about the same number of "English people" brought up the rear.'

By the 1870s, there were three printing works in the lane, possibly reflecting its proximity to Fleet Street. The Illustrated London News was published from 198 Strand on the corner with Milford Lane and as the paper expanded it acquired Milford House and other buildings in the lane. Greyhound Court was a western siding in the 1870s named after The Greyhound public house to the south opposite Little Essex Street. An infants school was two buildings south, replacing the house of the rector of St. Clement Danes, A second public house stood at the fork in the street where the lane turns east at Twezers Alley.

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Wikipedia