Paternoster Row

Largely destroyed during aerial bombing in World War II, the street's area is now the site of much of the post-war Paternoster Square development.

The street is supposed to have received its name from the fact that, when the monks and clergy of St Paul's Cathedral went in procession chanting the great litany, they would recite the Lord's Prayer (Pater Noster being its opening line in Latin) in the litany along this part of the route.

Occupied by sheet music publisher Fredrick Pitman, the first floor was found to be on fire by a police officer at 21:30.

[12] On 21 November 1894, police raided an alleged gambling club which was based on the first floor of 59 Paternoster Row.

The street was devastated by aerial bombardment during the Blitz of World War II, suffering particularly heavy damage in the night raid of 29–30 December 1940, later characterised as the Second Great Fire of London, during which an estimated 5 million books were lost in the fires caused by tens of thousands of incendiary bombs.

[15] After the raid a letter was written to The Times describing: '...a passage leading through "Simpkins" [which] has a mantle of stone which has survived the melancholy ruins around it.

On this stone is the Latin inscription that seems to embody all that we are fighting for :- VERBUM DOMINI MANET IN AETERNUM' [The word of God remains forever].

[16]Another correspondent with the newspaper, Ernest W. Larby, described his experience of 25 years working on Paternoster Row:[17] …had he [Lord Quickswood] worked for 25 years, as I did, in Paternoster Row, he would not have quite so much enthusiasm for those narrow ways into whose buildings the sun never penetrated… What these dirty, narrow ways of the greatest city in the world really stood for from the people's viewpoint are things we had better bury.The ruins of Paternoster Row were visited by Wendell Willkie in January 1941.