Much of the industry moved out in the 1980s after News International set up cheaper manufacturing premises in Wapping, but some former newspaper buildings are listed and have been preserved.

[4] The street runs east from Temple Bar, the boundary between the Cities of London and Westminster, as a continuation of the Strand from Trafalgar Square.

[6] Fleet Street was established as a thoroughfare in Roman London and there is evidence that a route led west from Ludgate by 200 AD.

[9] Many prelates lived around the street during the Middle Ages, including the Bishops of Salisbury and St Davids and the Abbots of Faversham, Tewkesbury, Winchcombe and Cirencester.

[3] Tanning of animal hides became established on Fleet Street owing to the nearby river, though this increased pollution leading to a ban on dumping rubbish by the mid-14th century.

[2][a] Records show that Geoffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for attacking a friar in Fleet Street,[8] though modern historians believe this is apocryphal.

[11] An important landmark in Fleet Street during the late Middle Ages was a conduit that was the main water supply for the area.

When Anne Boleyn was crowned queen following her marriage to Henry VIII in 1533, the conduit flowed wine instead of water.

[14][15] The eastern part of the street was destroyed by the Great Fire of London in 1666, despite attempts to use the River Fleet to preserve it.

[17] During the early 18th century, a notorious upper-class gang known as the Mohocks operated on the street causing regular violence and vandalism.

It had a display of macabre and black-humoured exhibits, including the execution of Charles I; a Roman lady, Hermonie, whose father survived a sentence of starvation by sucking her breast; and a woman who gave birth to 365 children simultaneously.

[19] The Apollo Society, a music club, was established in 1733 at the Devil Tavern on Fleet Street by composer Maurice Greene.

177–178 Fleet Street became popular and was the main committee room for the Society for Repealing the Paper Duty, starting in 1858.

67 housed 25 separate publications; by this time the majority of British households bought a daily paper produced from Fleet Street.

In 1986 News International owner Rupert Murdoch caused controversy when he moved publication of The Times and The Sun away from Fleet Street to new premises in Wapping, East London.

[35] Though many prominent national newspapers have moved away from Fleet Street, the name is still synonymous with the printing and publishing industry.

[38]The last two journalists to work for the Dundee-based Sunday Post, left in 2016, as the paper closed its London offices.

For example, The Inns of Court and barristers' chambers are down alleys and around courtyards off Fleet Street itself and many of the old newspaper offices have become the London headquarters for various companies.

[24] One example is Goldman Sachs, whose offices are in the old Daily Telegraph and Liverpool Echo buildings of Peterborough Court and Mersey House.

[49] To the west, at the junction with Strand are the Royal Courts of Justice[50] whilst at the eastern end of the street the Old Bailey is near Ludgate Circus.

Many notable persons of literary and political fame such as Samuel Johnson frequented these, and journalists would regularly meet in pubs to collect stories.

At the north-eastern corner is a bust of Edgar Wallace,[56] and a full-length representation of Mary, Queen of Scots in a first-floor niche at No.

[57] Above the entrance to the old school-house of St Dunstan's is a statue of Queen Elizabeth I provided for the then new Ludgate in 1586 by William Kerwin; it was moved to here following the gate's demolition in 1776.

[4] The lexicographer Samuel Johnson lived at Gough Square off Fleet Street between 1748 and 1759; the building has survived into the 21st century.

[46] The cartographer John Senex owned a map store, The Sign of the Globe, on Fleet Street between 1725 and his death in 1736.

[65] Wynkyn de Worde was buried in St. Bride's Church in 1535, as was poet Richard Lovelace in 1657,[66] while Samuel Pepys was baptised there in 1633.

[68] The barber Sweeney Todd is traditionally said to have lived and worked during the 18th century in Fleet Street, where he would murder customers and serve their remains as pie fillings.

[69] An urban myth example of a serial killer, the character appears in various English language works starting in the mid-19th century.

[73] The poet John Davidson wrote two works in the late 19th century titled the Fleet Street Eclogues.

[74] Arthur Ransome has a chapter in his Bohemia in London (1907) about earlier inhabitants of the street: Ben Jonson, the lexicographer Doctor Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Hazlitt and Lamb; and about Temple Bar and the Press Club.