This is an alley near Bank in the City of London with two very different appearances because until recently, it was two separate alleys. The older looking half on the western side is in fact the younger half, but only by about a century or so. The eastern half, first appears in Tudor times as…

This is an alley in the heart of the City that likely has been around since the Great Fire of London, but seems to have left barely an echo in the historical records. The alley takes its name, unsurprisingly, from a long lost pub, The White Horse, which first appears in Tudor times near this alley.…

This covered passage near Aldgate leads to a courtyard that was once a garden for the neighbouring church, St Katherine Cree. What is now the Guild Church of St Katharine Cree was founded as a parish church in 1280 by the nearby Augustinian Holy Trinity Priory for reasons which might seem…

This is a Hampstead alley that gives away its history the moment you look at it, with a covered entrance proudly announcing a brewery was here. Although Hampstead was a growing town outside London, the mews was still on the far edge of town as it was when, in 1720, the Hampstead Brewery was founded…

This is an alley close to St Paul’s Cathedral that owes its origins to a long lost churchyard. The churchyard belonged to Saint Vedast-alias-Foster church, which was founded in 1308, rebuilt in 1662, and so badly damaged by the Great Fire of London just a few years later that it had to be entirely…

This short cobbled passage off Old Street is the surviving remnant of a once much longer alley. The alley first shows up in John Roque’s map from 1746 as Anchor (something), but the Horwood map of 1799 shows it as Horseshoe Alley. A century later, and it’s back on the maps as Anchor Yard as a long,…

This busy back alley winds through Hampstead with lots of steps and a distinctive chimney landmark to look out for. It’s also a remnant of the earliest days of Hampstead turning from a small village into a town, as about half the alley shows up in John Roque’s map of London from 1746. At the time,…

This is a very short alley just to the south of Mansion House tube station that was recently refurbished but also sealed off. Fortunately, it’s also so very short that you can see the whole length just by standing by the gate. The alley first appears as a defined space in the Ogilby and Morgan map…

This small covered entrance to a small Hampstead courtyard seems to have slipped through history, leaving barely a disturbance in its wake. It likely appeared as the area developed as a courtyard space behind the local shops, and you can see suggestive hints on some maps, although the earliest clear…

This is an exceptionally short stump of an alley on Old Street that resembles a post-war gap where a house wasn’t rebuilt until you spot the street name sign and realise it’s the remains of a once slightly longer passage. The alley first appeared in the 1680s as a gap between the houses facing Old…

The passage is also one of the oldest in the Earl’s Court part of London, appearing long before the rest of the area was developed. Earl’s Court was still largely rural in the 1800s, but the beginnings of development started appearing in the 1810s, with a small cluster of streets and houses around…

This is a narrow winding alley close to Liverpool Street station that’s been here in some shape or form since Tudor times. This part of London is just on the outskirts of the old Roman Wall around the City of London. The name of the road the alley leads off on the western side, Houndsditch, comes…

This is a pretty little winding passage, with, unsurprisingly, a lot of steps that run from the main Hampstead streets up the hill to Holly Mount and the locally famous Holly Bush pub. This part of Hampstead is littered with Holly Bush references, but that seems to be a later addition. George Potter…

This is a Clerkenwell alley that seems likely to owe its origins to the dissolution of the monasteries and the sell-off of their land. The Priory of St John of Jerusalem, aka the Knights Hospitallers, is the monastery in question and was the home of the Hospitallers’ Grand Prior in England and their…

This equestrian-named passage near Holborn isn’t named after jockeys, as we think of them today, riding horses in races, but it is related to horses as a mode of transport. The passage runs alongside the wall surrounding the Grays Inn legal enclave, which was still largely fields until the 18th…

This concealed alley and courtyard in Soho looks like a twee cottage courtyard that’s been around for decades but is actually a fairly recent conversion because until 2010 most of the cafes that now fill the space were garages for cars. It’s also a bit confusing namewise. Officially, Smith’s Court…

This is a dank dirty passage that slips in between the London Underground’s former head office and a posh hotel. With a name like St Ermin, you’re going to expect something religious going on, but, not unlike religions themselves, the origins of the name seem potentially more myth than fact. It’s…

This is a rather charming residential alleyway that can be found close to Kensington High Street and offers a mix of appearances as you walk along it. This part of Kensington was originally countryside with a modest manor house, Parsonage House that was bought/built in 1722 by John Jones. As he was…

This is a nice passageway in King’s Cross that leads from a covered entrance through to a cobbled (setts) alley, above a railway and ends in an ornately decorated building. St Chad’s Place first shows up as the area is being developed in the late 1700s as a part-built road called Field Street. R…

This is a cobbled passage in Bethnal Green that runs around the back of a Victorian block of flats and at first glance doesn’t seem that interesting, but read on. The area was still fields in 1800, but by the 1820s, the first hints of urbanisation had appeared, with a row of buildings fronting onto…

This is a narrow passage in Marylebone that once led to horse stables for the rich folk who lived here and is now more of a back access for a replacement mansion block The mews first shows up as a plan only in a map from 1799 as the area was being developed by the Portman Estate from fields into…

This is a fairly new passageway that was created to give people an alternative to the busy Bermondsey Street or polluted Tower Bridge Road, and is named after a local hat maker that opened 250 years ago in 1773. The alleyway links two parks, the former churchyard of St Mary Magdalen church in the…

This is an annoying alley in Covent Garden that’s been here for centuries and left scarcely a mark in the history books. It’s generally said that Langley Court was named after Sir Roger Langley, who owned land here in the early 18th century. However, it may have originally been called Angell Court,…

This winding passage snakes around a cluster of alleys in the City and is probably more famous for the former coffee house that can be found here. The name though, doesn’t come from the coffee house, but from the church that sits on the northern corner of the alley, St Michael, Cornhill. This is one…

This is a fairly wide modern rebuild of an old alley near Holborn that came into existence around 300 years ago. Back in Tudor times, when there was more green and fewer buildings, this part of London was occupied by Holborn Manor. The later Agas Map of 1561 shows a large open farmland with a large…

This covered passage runs through a block of buildings on Strand, giving access to the grander buildings behind. It passes through the ground floor of Villiers House, an office block constructed in 1957-59 in a modernist style by Trehearne & Norman, Preston & Partners. The modern building replaced a…

This is a rough looking former stables mews that today is a mix of municipal yard and arts centre. The area though, originally developed from empty fields to the north of the Kings Way (now Theobalds Road) in the 1700s as part of the Doughty Estate, on lands owned by the Doughty and Tichborne…

This is a narrow slip of a passage that runs behind some of the posh shops on Mayfair’s South Molton Street. South Molton Street was initially called South Moulton Row and was laid out in the 1720s by the Grosvenor family — making it some 300 years old, but initially, only with buildings on the…

This is the remains of a once much longer path that later lost its southern half and would once have linked two main roads running through Mortlake in south London The outline of the path dates to at least the 1740s, as it shows up as a path through fields in John Rocque’s map of wider London from…

This is a steep alley between grand houses in Hampstead, and is notable for the medicinal well at the bottom of the slope. The medicinal well is called the Chalybeate Well. However, that’s a general term applied to all iron-rich mineral waters, as the word chalybeate is derived from the Latin word…

This is a short modern passage near St Paul’s Cathedral, obviously named after the English poet, John Milton, most famous for his 1667 epic, Paradise Lost. The name was chosen because John Milton was born on Bread Street and spent much of his youth living there. There have been passages leading off…

This is a very well hidden and pretty courtyard space that can be found off another alley just moments from Hampstead tube station. The name of the yard is said to come from the Goulding family, who were granted a large swathe of land in the area by Sir Robert Wroth sometime in the late 1500s. It’s…

This is an alley in Covent Garden I suspect many readers will know when they see it, even if they never noticed its name — as it runs alongside the London Transport Museum. The alley’s name and the local streets come from the land acquired by John Russell, an important government minister in the…

This is a busy alley off Camden’s main shops that has a long and at times confusing history. The alley runs east-west off Camden High Street and leads to Underhill Street behind. So you’d assume from the name, that the passage was built at the same time as the street, and it was — but it wasn’t…

This is a brand new alley in central London that sits on a former orchard and was much later the brutalist police headquarters of New Scotland Yard. The area was originally an orchard providing food for the monks in Westminster Abbey, which was also known as Cemetery Orchard because monks were…

This short passageway owes its origins to the Clerkenwell Priory that dominated the area and was home to the Monastic Order of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem (and try saying that in a hurry). Running between a couple of the monastery buildings was a covered passage known as the…

This is a slip of a passage near Holborn that provides little today other than back doors and rubbish bins, but once lead to a grand mansion house. The alley is named after a mansion house that stood on the site – Weld House, which was the mansion house and gardens owned by the lawyer and public…

This is a large yard hidden behind a covered walkway in posh St James that may have been named after an old coaching inn, but no one is entirely sure. It certainly appears on maps as the Rose and Crown Yard from the early 17th century, surrounded by buildings, one of which could have been an inn,…

This is a bit of a passage, and mostly a footbridge over several railways in West Hampstead that has a remarkable name that’s just too amazing to ignore. It can be found at the far end of West Hampstead tube station, offering a route across six railway tracks used by Chiltern Railways and London…

This is a modern alley that passes through a controversial building and is named after a family that owned land in the area some 900 years ago Bucklersbury Passage passes through the middle of No 1 Poultry, the postmodernist cluster of a building next to the Bank of England that replaced the much…