[3][4] The south side of the medieval-founded St George the Martyr church, of high classical 1730s design, adjoins the street before its western ending.

Dickens in reality lodged one block southwest as a child in Lant Street when his father was in the Marshalsea debtors' prison during 1824.

A few metres north of the lane's "London" end (so along Great Dover Street) are steps to Borough tube station.

[5] It was created by the Priory/ Abbey to connect its Bermondsey landholding to that of the southern end of the High Street and to its manor on the western side of Southwark which later became known as St George's Fields sometime from 1104.

The land to the north of Long Lane was called Snow Fields in the eighteenth century and a street of that name runs through the same area.