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ianvisits_feed at 07:00am on 23/03/2026This is a remarkable survivor, an alley that has changed very little over the past 350 years and gives off loads of Olde England vibes that appeals so very much.
This is Carter Court, a small covered passage near St Paul’s Cathedral leading to an open – but now fenced off – courtyard.
However, had you stood here in Roman times, you’d have had very wet feet, as the alley is just outside the old Roman Wall, and you’d have been in the often-flooded defensive ditch that ran outside the wall. By the time of the Tudors, this was the dominion of the Dominicans, as it was home to Blackfriars monastery, and their church stood on the site. Carter Court would have been at the back of the church, where its main doors were thought to have been.
Carter Lane ran along the north side of the church, so although not named yet, the origins of the street layout are already evident.
It very nearly didn’t last, as of course, the Tudor King Henry VIII dissolved the monastery and sold off the land to developers. The church was partially demolished and fell into ruin, and in 1555, was being used partially for a tennis court.
The main rebuilding didn’t seem to take place until after the Great Fire of London, which saw the remains of the church demolished and the land built on, creating a cluster of narrow passages and alleys that prevails today.
What is today’s Carter Lane emerged properly now, although this part of it was called Shoomaker Row at the time, but you can see Carter Court leading off it in the J. Ogilby and W. Morgan map of 1677.
Also, John Rocque’s map shows that Carter Court was called Fleur-de-Lis Court. By the turn of the 20th century, the area appears on Goad’s insurance maps as dominated by the book trade.
Facing the alley’s entrance, on the right was a bookbinder’s and on the left side was a chop house. Further down was a small storehouse and some small homes.
Until recently, the chop house had been the Carter Lane Barbershop, a haircutting establishment with a reputation for eccentricity. Today, it’s a private doctor’s residence and surgery.
Do notice the wooden frame at the entrance to the alley, which has been propped up on bricks, likely when the feet of the original timbers rotted away.
This may be a recent change, as a photo from 1969 doesn’t seem to show the brick supports (although they could be hidden behind a frontage panel), whereas they are very obvious in a photo taken in 1979. It was also during this period that the alley received a street sign from the City of London.
Another change is that a rather shabby old door has been recently replaced with a green heritage door, which does look a bit too clean and polished for the alley, but it’s in keeping with the area, and should get dirty eventually.
If you want to see what it might have looked like, turn around.
Something else that’s changed is that there used to be a large window in the alley, but it was sympathetically boarded up sometime between 1975 and 2025.
However, whereas the alley had long been open all the way down to the yard at the rear, today that is gated and private. That’s the result of rebuilding in the late 1990s, with a modern office and residential block replacing the 19th-century buildings at 77 Carter Lane and 1 Carter Court.
That modern intrusion aside though, this is undeniably a very atmospheric alley.
