Welcome to our Temple Bar history section. You can skip to subsequent pages using the links below or simply continue reading to start at the beginning.
Temple Bar, Holborn Bars, these and others were once literally bars (barriers). The Temple Bar marked the west boundary of the City of London on the road to Westminster and is situated where Fleet Street meets the Strand. London also had the western gates Ludgate (Lud Gate) and Newgate (New Gate).
When trade straggled out towards the village of Charing and the distant city of Westminster and it grew so prosperous that it was worth robbing. Barriers and gates were erected as a means of protection.
King Henry III decided that posts and chains should be put across the riverside road now known as Fleet Street. Posts and chains turn into a real bar of timber. Booths amid tents give place to shops and houses, and the old bar becomes a wooden gate.
That was probably in the first half of the fourteenth century; and the first gate may have been new when the Black Prince, on his black pony, led his captive, the King of France on a superb white horse, into the City of London.