LOCAL HISTORY - Great Dover Street  

In response to Robert Holden°s article on the 1747 Rocque plan of London, we received a minor correction:

I found the current [Spring] newsletter particularly enjoyable. Robert Holden's article on John Rocque's map, whilst interesting, is inaccurate, in so far as Kent Street was not rebuilt as Great Dover Street. Great Dover Street was a new project started in about 1809 to relieve traffic on Kent Street, which was then the only road out of London to Canterbury and Dover. At or around this time Kent Street was renamed Tabard Street.

Click on the map to go to a (very large) more detailed version

Tobias Smollett, the novelist, described Kent Street as ´a most disgraceful entrance to such an opulent city°, and a ´most beggarly and ruinous suburb°.

Harold P Clunn in his book The Face of London noted on Kent Street, ´very long and ill built, and gipsies, thieves, and doubtful characters were to be found in almost every house°.

Mark Worsley
 
The Survey of London (LCC, 1955) Volume XXV confirms this in its chapter on the Trinity House Estate:

TRINITY STREET (FORMERLY GREAT SUFFOLK STREET EAST)
In 1809 the Corporation [of Trinity House] unsuccessfully opposed a Bill before Parliament for the formation of Great Dover Street, thinking that it would be detrimental to a scheme they were discussing with the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, as Lords of the Manor of Walworth, for making a road from Blackman Street [Borough High Street], opposite Great Suffolk Street to Kent Street.1 In the event the schemes were linked, Great Dover Street being made first by the trustees appointed under the 1809 Act, and Great Suffolk Street East, later known as Trinity Street, being laid out by the Corporation to join it at an acute angle. Ground was bought from St. Thomas° Hospital to form the entrance to Blackman Street.2

1 Corporation of Trinity House, Committee Minutes.
2 St Thomas° Hospital, Grand Committee Minutes.