Barbican Living
A new Athens
Two of the Barbican houses take their names from famous Elizabethan adventurers, who were involved in the race to discover the fabled Northwest Passage to Cathay. Sir Humphrey Gilbert (1539 - 1583) lived in Redcross Street. Martin Frobisher (1535 - 1594) did not live in the Barbican and qualified by burial in St Giles’ Churchyard – but his heart and intestines don’t even have that connection; they were buried in a church in Plymouth. Launcelot Andrewes was as the local vicar of St Giles Cripplegate, from 1588 to 1604, who went on to play an important part in the religious arguments of the Counter Reformation period. Thomas More (1478 - 1535), the author of Utopia, was not a Barbican figure. He was born in Cripplegate Within, in Milk Street near Cheapside.
In the early years of the 17th century, the Barbican attracted theatrical types. William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) lodged for several years with the Mountjoy family, who were Huguenot refugees, in Monkwell Street in the Barbican. Ben Jonson (1572 - 1637) had a house in the parish of St Giles. Jonson’s habit of killing people or beating them up in pub brawls wouldn’t make him a popular neighbour today. Jonson’s friend, Nicolas Breton (1553 - 1625) who was a well-regarded writer of his day, lived in Redcross Street. The City was strongly Puritan and the theatre was not welcome. When in 1600 Edward Alleyn wanted a new theatre, as a home for the Admiral’s men, and to compete with Shakespeare’s Globe, he built the Fortune Theatre in Golden Lane, just outside the City limits. John Trundle (1575 - 1629), a publisher of plays, including a pirated copy of Hamlet operated from the Barbican. John Speed (1552 - 1629), the renowned map maker and historian, qualified for a house name by being buried in St Giles’ Churchyard.
During Cromwellian times and later, the emphasis was on religious non-conformists. John Milton (1608 - 1674) was one person who seems to have been drawn to the area all his life. He was born nearby in Bread Street. He later bought his own house in Aldersgate Street, which he described as being “a pretty garden house”. After the Restoration of Charles II, he returned to live in Cripplegate, first in Jewin Street and finally in Artillery Row, and he is buried in St Giles’ church next to his father. John Bunyan (1628-1688) qualified by being buried at least within shouting distance. He was buried in Bunhill Fields (originally known as Tindall's), an area of semi-rural scrubland where City Road now stands. This became the Non-Conformists’ traditional burial ground. Daniel Defoe was buried there, as were Isaac Watts and William Blake. The Barbican Estate’s house namers really scraped the bottom of the barrel to name a tower after Oliver Cromwell. As far as we know, he spent just an afternoon in the Barbican in his life – when he got married at St Giles’ church in 1620.
