View of Borough High Street, Southwark, looking north towards London Bridge. Borough High Street is one of the oldest streets in London being the main thoroughfare from London Bridge to Kent since antiquity. On the left is the Westminster Bank, a four-storey rectangular building with attics, and ornate decoration around the attic window. Built in 1862-63 by Frederic Chancellor for the London and County Bank in an Italian Palazzo style, it is Grade II listed, number 1378346 and the ground floor is now a restaurant. This was built on the site of an old prison (or compter) and court house that itself had been built on the site of the twelfth-century St Margaret's church. Next, a four-storey building with a shop on the ground floor that is now a restaurant. Between this building and the Midland Bank is a narrow passageway; Counter Court, originally Compter Court, recognising the former site of the prison and court house. On the corner of Southwark Street, the Midland Bank is a three-storey building with basement. It remains a bank, now HSBC. The railway viaduct crossing Borough High Street was constructed in 1864 and links London Bridge to Waterloo and to Cannon Steet. On the right a three-storey building, number 75, has a shop front and a sign for 'Little Dorrit Chop House', named after one of Charles Dicken's characters whose father was imprisoned in the nearby Marshalsea Debtors prison. This building has been demolished and is now modern offices. Numbers 69-73 form a three-storey bank building for Lloyds Bank built in 1928 . Outside, a policemen is indicating the way to a woman with two small children, one in a pushchair. The building remains a Lloyds Bank. Between the two buildings, a passageway with a public house sign for The George, Flowers (beer), the entrance to The George Inn Yard. The George is marked on a 1542 map, but it is likely it dates back to the medieval period. In 1849 the inn was sold to the Governors of nearby Guys Hospital and they incorporated the eastern side into hospital premises and sold the remainder to the North Western Railway Company, who demolished the buildings on the north side. Therefore only the south side of the seventeenth-century inn remains, however it is the only surviving galleried inn in London and is owned by the National Trust and Grade I listed, number 1378357. Number 67 is a three-storey building with a decorative weather vane on the roof built in the late-nineteenth century by William Henry and Herbert Le May. On the top floor is a large plaster frieze inscribed WH & H LeMay Hop Factors, decorated with two figures picking hops. Above the arched doorway is another frieze for WH & H LeMay Hop Factors. Hop factors represented growers, selling hops to dealers who would in turn sell them on to brewers. The building is Grade II listed, number 1378356. Number 65 a three-storey building, with a shop on the ground floor. The earliest known occupant of this building, John Slade (1773) was a grocer. Number 63 is a four-storey building; the ground floor Strakers, Stationers. Strakers were established in 1863 and was still family owned when it was sold in 2003 for £80million. These buildings remain but are altered. On the left of number 63 is an entrance to a passageway, White Hart Yard, formerly the site of the White Hart Inn. The White Hart was the badge of Richard II and the sign of this inn probably dated from his time. In 1450 the inn was the headquarters of Jack Cade, which is mentioned by Shakespeare in Henry VI, part II. The inn was owned by Humphrey Collet in 1555, and it was still in the possession of his family when it burnt down in 1676. In 1720, Strype described the new building as "one of the best Inns in Southwark." The White Hart was immortalised by Dickens in The Pickwick Papers as the place in which Sam Weller is first introduced to the reader. It was demolished in 1888. Numbers 61 to 25 are many narrow three and four-storey buildings with shops on the ground floor, and numerous pedestrians on the pavement. At the junction with St Thomas Street, is a Routemaster bus and a number of other vehicles.
