Streets of London Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cable Street

Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists planned a march through parts of the East End of London which then had a sizeable Jewish population. Various local groups combined to oppose the march, and during the ensuing "Battle of Cable Street" the march was abandoned. More than a hundred persons, including marchers, demonstrators, policemen and bystanders, were injured. A large mural on the wall of the former St George's Town Hall commemorates the event.

The Public Order Act, passed by Parliament later in the year, regulated political demonstrations more rigorously. In particular, it outlawed the wearing of political uniforms.

Answer: Threadneedle Street

The street was originally called Three Needles Street, probably taking its name from a shop sign.

The Bank of England, at the western end of the street, is sometimes called "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street". This nickname comes from a political cartoon drawn in 1797 by James Gillray (one of the greatest British political satirists). The Bank Restriction Act of that year suspended the convertibility of Bank of England notes into gold: Gillray portrayed the Act as an attempted rape of the "Old Lady" by the Prime Minister William Pitt.

Answer: Grub Street

The association of Grub Street with literary hackwork dates from the early seventeenth century, and is recognized in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of 1755. The street was renamed Milton Street in the 1820s, not after the author of "Paradise Lost" but after a speculative builder. A part of the street survives on the northern edge of the Barbican development.

Answer: Fleet Street

Taking its name from the River Fleet, which ran past its eastern end into the Thames at Blackfriars, Fleet Street has been intimately associated with the printing trade since William Caxton's apprentice Wynkyn de Worde set up his press by St Bride's Church in the early 1490s.

It became the centre of the national newspaper industry in the nineteenth century and continued to be synonymous with "the British press until the 1980s, when the newspapers moved, one after another, to other parts of London.

Answer: Great Ormond Street

The "Hospital for Sick Children" was opened in Great Ormond Street in 1852 with ten beds. From the beginning it had powerful patrons, including Queen Victoria and Charles Dickens. J M Barrie famously bequeathed the copyright of his play "Peter Pan" to the hospital.

Answer: Downing Street

The street takes its name from Sir George Downing, who owned the land on which it was built in the 1680s. Robert Walpole (generally recognized as the country's first Prime Minister) acquired No 10 in 1732, and since then it has been the official residence of the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury of the UK.

Answer: Denmark Street

Named after Prince George of Denmark, the husband of Queen Anne, Denmark Street became a centre of the popular music industry in the UK in the twentieth century. Music publishers, instrument shops and recording studios set up their businesses in the street. There are still flourishing music businesses in Denmark Street, but its future is not entirely assured.

Answer: Harley Street

Just as Fleet Street was once synonymous with the British newspaper industry, so Harley Street has become synonymous with private medicine in the UK. Wikipedia reckons that there were about 20 doctors in the immediate area in 1860, and about 3,000 persons working in various practices in the vicinity today.

Answer: Bond Street

Thomas Bond developed the southern end of the street (now Old Bond Street) in the late seventeenth century: the longer northern stretch (New Bond Street) was built later. It soon became established as a fashionable shopping street and has kept its cachet ever since. Among the traders doing business there in the early 21st century are the auctioneers Sothebys and Bonhams, the jewellers Asprey, de Beers and Cartier, and the principal UK stores of Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Gucci and Prada.

Answer: Cato Street

Very few Londoners today, apart from neighbourhood residents and taxi drivers, could say where Cato Street is, but it gained notoriety in 1820 as the meeting place of a group of conspirators who planned to blow up the entire British cabinet at a dinner in Grosvenor Square (about a mile from Cato Street). Government agents had infiltrated the conspiracy and the plotters were arrested shortly before their planned coup.

Five men were subsequently executed, including the leader Arthur Thistlewood. They were the last persons to be publicly beheaded in the UK, although they had already been hanged and were dead by the time that their heads were removed.