Tooley Street
The church takes its name from the Norwegian King Olaf who was an ally of Æthelred the Unready and attacked Cnut's forces occupying the London Bridge area in 1013.
The church was demolished in 1926 for the headquarters of the Hay's Wharf Company, "St Olaf House", an office block built 1929-31 by Harry Stuart Goodhart-Rendel (1887–1959) in Art Deco style.
It began on 22 June 1861 in a warehouse at Cotton's Wharf in Tooley Street and raged for two days, destroying many nearby buildings.
[3][1] Afterwards the insurance companies raised their premiums and threatened to disband the brigade until finally the government agreed to take it over.
For 300 years it grew, until Tooley Street and the surrounding industrial development was nicknamed "London's Larder".
Until 2013 the site of those medieval punishments was occupied, quite appropriately, by London Dungeon, a popular tourist attraction.
It opened in 1975 and is similar to the "Chamber of Horrors" in Madame Tussaud's Museum (it is owned by Merlin Entertainments) and relocated to County Hall in 2013.
Popular legend says that there was so much rubble that bodies were simply left behind, and re-buried in the masonry under London Bridge Station.
'The Scoop' is an amphitheatre or stepped area of More London upon which regular events (plays, music, open air movies) are held throughout the summertime.
From 2012 St George's subsidiary of Berkeley Homes erected a major high value residential development between Potters Fields and Tower Bridge Road, called One Tower Bridge; apart from flats there is mixed leisure and retail, public space, a museum - cultural attraction and a boutique hotel in the old St Olave's Grammar School building.
In 2009 Southwark Council opened its new civic centre in a modern office block at 160 Tooley Street, replacing some other facilities within the Borough.
The Bethell Estate that was built in the early 1930s between Tooley Street and the river was demolished in its entirety for redevelopment.
The Unicorn Theatre is in a custom-built building, part of the More London development, that stages shows for young people, whilst the Southwark Playhouse is in a railway arch behind "The Shipwright's Arms", which relocated to Newington Causeway in 2013 because of the mainline station redevelopment.
One is a bust of dockworkers' trade unionist, founder of the Transport & General Workers Union, Churchill's Minister of Labour during WWII and Attlee's Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin.
[8] This is somewhat overshadowed by the full size monument to local worthy Samuel Bourne Bevington, a member of a Bermondsey leather manufacturing dynasty and philanthropist.
[9] "The Three Tailors of Tooley Street" is a remark made in regard to any small group pretending to greater representative authority than they have in reality.
It is based on the tale that the eponymous characters wanted to have some exemption from a local rate and were informed they would have to petition the Privy Council; accordingly they drafted their appeal, which began with the phrase "We, The People of England ...".
It is notable that by far the largest trade occupation in the street on the Bridge House Rent Roll prepared for the Poll Tax of 1381 was that of the tailors.
Many other buildings have been renovated or had modern structures placed behind "retained facades" to maintain and enhance the visual amenity heritage of the area.
