Distaff Lane Author Janelle Jenstad Author Melanie Chernyk Encoder Melanie Chernyk Copy Editor Joey Takeda Programmer Stewart Arneil Data Manager Tye Landels Junior Programmer Joey Takeda Programmer Martin Holmes Associate Project Director Kim McLean-Fiander Project Director Janelle Jenstad The Map of Early Modern Londonhttp://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/includes.xmlVictoria, BC, Canada
Department of English P.O.Box 3070 STNC CSC University of Victoria Victoria, BC Canada V8W 3W1
2016University of Victoria978-1-55058-519-3 Janelle Jenstad london@uvic.ca

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 Provider: University of Victoria Database: The Map of Early Modern London Content: text/plain; charset="utf-8" TY - ELEC A1 - Jenstad, Janelle A1 - Chernyk, Melanie ED - Jenstad, Janelle T1 - Distaff Lane T2 - The Map of Early Modern London ET - 7.0 PY - 2022 DA - 2022/05/05 CY - Victoria PB - University of Victoria LA - English UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/DIST1.htm UR - https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/xml/standalone/DIST1.xml ER - Jenstad, Janelle, and Melanie Chernyk. Distaff Lane. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 05 May 2022, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/DIST1.htm. Jenstad, Janelle, and Melanie Chernyk. Distaff Lane. The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed May 05, 2022. mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/DIST1.htm. Jenstad, J., & Chernyk, M. 2022. Distaff Lane. In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London (Edition 7.0). Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/editions/7.0/DIST1.htm. Born digital. Chalfant, Fran C. Ben Jonson’s London: A Jacobean Placename Dictionary. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1978. Print. Stow, John. A Survey of London. Reprinted from the Text of 1603. Ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1908. See also the digital transcription of this edition at British History Online. Bread Street Ward

Bread Street Ward is east of Castle Baynard Ward and Farringdon Within Ward. The ward takes its name from its main street, Bread Street, ſo called of bread in olde time there ſold (Stow 1603).

(BREA3.xml) Great Distaff Street

Great Distaff Street ran east-west from Friday Street to Old Change and was located in Bread Street Ward. The main structure of note along the street was Cordwainers’ Hall. It was also known as Mayden lane and is labelled Maidenhed lane on the Agas map (Stow 1633, sig. 2L6r). According to Stow, the name Distaff was a corruption of Distar Lane but Harben and others have found this to be an error as the earliest form was Distaue, not Distar (Stow 1633, sig. 2L6r; Harben). Great Distaff Street is not to be confused with Distaff Lane, the lane which ran south out of Great Distaff Street toward Knightrider Street.

(GREA10.xml) Knightrider Street

Knightrider Street ran east-west from Dowgate Street to Addle Hill, crossing College Hill, Garlick Hill, Trinity Lane, Huggin Lane, Bread Street, Old Fish Street Hill, Lambert or Lambeth Hill, St. Peter’s Hill, and Paul’s Chain. Significant landmarks included: the College of Physicians and Doctors’ Commons.

(KNIG1.xml) Old Fish Street Information is not yet available. (OLDF1.xml) Friday Street

Friday Street passed south through Bread Street Ward, beginning at the cross in Cheapside Street and ending at Old Fish Street. It was one of many streets that ran into Cheapside Street market whose name is believed to originate from the goods that were sold there.

(FRID1.xml) Old Change Information is not yet available. (OLDC1.xml) The Lamb

A brewhouse in Distaff Lane. Flourished in the reign of Henry VI.

(LAMB5.xml) Cordwainers’ Hall

Alternate names for this location include Cordwayners Hall and Shoomakers Hall.

(CORD2.xml) St. Nicholas Cole Abbey Information is not yet available. (STNI2.xml)

Distaff Lane was in Bread Street Ward. It is not to be confused with Great Distaff Street, the street which crossed the northernmost end of Distaff Lane. There is some discrepancy in the exact length of Distaff Lane between the Agas Map and the information in Survey of London. On the Agas Map, Distaff Lane (labelled Diſtaf la.) appears to run south off Great Distaff Street, labelled Maidenhed lane, terminating before it reaches Knightrider Street. Stow tells us, in his delineation of the bounds of Bread Street Ward, that Distaff Lane runneth downe to Knightriders street, or olde Fishstreete (Stow 1:345). Our map truncates Distaff Lane before Knightrider Street.

The Julian calendar, in use in the British Empire until September 1752. This calendar is used for dates where the date of the beginning of the year is ambigious.

The Julian calendar with the calendar year regularized to beginning on 1 January.

The Julian calendar with the calendar year beginning on 25 March. This was the calendar used in the British Empire until September 1752.

The Gregorian calendar, used in the British Empire from September 1752. Sometimes referred to as New Style (NS). Years run from January 1 through December 31.

The Anno Mundi (year of the world) calendar is based on the supposed date of the creation of the world, which is calculated from Biblical sources. At least two different creation dates are in common use. See Anno Mundi (Wikipedia).

Regnal dates are given as the number of years into the reign of a particular monarch. Our practice is to tag such dates with calendar=regnal, and provide an equivalent date using a more systematic calendar (usually Julian) in a custom dating attribute.

 Jamie Zabel Jamie Zabel JZ

Research Assistant, 2020-2021. Managing Encoder, 2020-2021. Jamie Zabel was an MA student at the University of Victoria in the Department of English. She completed her BA in English at the University of British Columbia in 2017. She published a paper in University College London’s graduate publication Moveable Type (2020) and presented at the University of Victoria’s 2021 Digital Humanities Summer Institute. During her time at MoEML, she made significant contributions to the 1598 and 1633 editions of Stow’s Survey as proofreader, editor, and encoder, coordinated the encoding of the 1633 edition, and researched and authored a number of encyclopedia articles and geo-coordinates to supplement both editions. She also played a key role in managing the correction process of MoEML’s Gazetteer.

 Lucas Simpson Lucas Simpson LS

Research Assistant, 2018-2021. Lucas Simpson was a student at the University of Victoria.

 Joey Takeda Joey Takeda JT

Programmer, 2018-present. Junior Programmer, 2015-2017. Research Assistant, 2014-2017. Joey Takeda was a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English (Science and Technology research stream). He completed his BA honours in English (with a minor in Women’s Studies) at the University of Victoria in 2016. His primary research interests included diasporic and indigenous Canadian and American literature, critical theory, cultural studies, and the digital humanities.

 Tye Landels-Gruenewald Tye Landels-Gruenewald TLG

Data Manager, 2015-2016. Research Assistant, 2013-2015. Tye completed his undergraduate honours degree in English at the University of Victoria in 2015.

 Melanie Chernyk Melanie Chernyk MJC

Research Assistant, 2004–2008. BA honours, 2006. MA English, University of Victoria, 2007. Melanie Chernyk went on to work at the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab at the University of Victoria and now manages Talisman Books and Gallery on Pender Island, BC. She also has her own editing business at http://26letters.ca.

 Kim McLean-Fiander Kim McLean-Fiander KMF

Director of Pedagogy and Outreach, 2015–2020. Associate Project Director, 2015. Assistant Project Director, 2013-2014. MoEML Research Fellow, 2013. Kim McLean-Fiander comes to The Map of Early Modern London from the Cultures of Knowledge digital humanities project at the University of Oxford, where she was the editor of Early Modern Letters Online, an open-access union catalogue and editorial interface for correspondence from the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. She is currently Co-Director of a sister project to EMLO called Women’s Early Modern Letters Online (WEMLO). In the past, she held an internship with the curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library, completed a doctorate at Oxford on paratext and early modern women writers, and worked a number of years for the Bodleian Libraries and as a freelance editor. She has a passion for rare books and manuscripts as social and material artifacts, and is interested in the development of digital resources that will improve access to these materials while ensuring their ongoing preservation and conservation. An avid traveler, Kim has always loved both London and maps, and so is particularly delighted to be able to bring her early modern scholarly expertise to bear on the MoEML project.

 Janelle Jenstad Janelle Jenstad JJ

Janelle Jenstad is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and PI of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. She has taught at Queen’s University, the Summer Academy at the Stratford Festival, the University of Windsor, and the University of Victoria. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media (Routledge). She has prepared a documentary edition of John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Renaissance and Reformation,Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Early Modern Literary Studies, Elizabethan Theatre, Shakespeare Bulletin: A Journal of Performance Criticism, and The Silver Society Journal. Her book chapters have appeared (or will appear) in Institutional Culture in Early Modern Society (Brill, 2004), Shakespeare, Language and the Stage, The Fifth Wall: Approaches to Shakespeare from Criticism, Performance and Theatre Studies (Arden/Thomson Learning, 2005), Approaches to Teaching Othello (Modern Language Association, 2005), Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate, 2007), New Directions in the Geohumanities: Art, Text, and History at the Edge of Place (Routledge, 2011), Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter, 2016), Teaching Early Modern English Literature from the Archives (MLA, 2015), Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana, 2016), Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota, 2017), and Rethinking Shakespeare’s Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge, 2018).

 Stewart Arneil Stewart Arneil

Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC) who maintained the Map of London project between 2006 and 2011. Stewart was a co-applicant on the SSHRC Insight Grant for 2012–16.

 Martin D. Holmes Martin D. Holmes MDH

Programmer at the University of Victoria Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC). Martin ported the MOL project from its original PHP incarnation to a pure eXist database implementation in the fall of 2011. Since then, he has been lead programmer on the project and has also been responsible for maintaining the project schemas. He was a co-applicant on MoEML’s 2012 SSHRC Insight Grant.

 Thomas Barnard Thomas Barnard

Clerk of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey.

BHO Henry VI Henry VI King of England

King of England 1422-1461 and 1470-1471.

ODNB Wikipedia John Nouncy John Nouncy

Benefactor of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey.

 Richard II Richard II King of England

King of England 1377-1399. Buried at Westminster Abbey.

EB ODNB Wikipedia John Sonderash John Sonderash

Clerk and benefactor of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey.

 John Stow John Stow

Historian and author of A Survey of London. Husband of Elizabeth Stow.

MoEML ODNB Wikipedia

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Distaff Lane Distaff Lane "geometry": {"type":"LineString","coordinates":[[-0.096536,51.512893],[-0.096717,51.512253]]}

Distaff Lane was in Bread Street Ward. It is not to be confused with Great Distaff Street, the street which crossed the northernmost end of Distaff Lane. There is some discrepancy in the exact length of Distaff Lane between the Agas Map and the information in Survey of London. On the Agas Map, Distaff Lane (labelled Diſtaf la.) appears to run south off Great Distaff Street, labelled Maidenhed lane, terminating before it reaches Knightrider Street. Stow tells us, in his delineation of the bounds of Bread Street Ward, that Distaff Lane runneth downe to Knightriders street, or olde Fishstreete (Stow 1:345). Our map truncates Distaff Lane before Knightrider Street.

Stow’s Survey also suggests some ambiguity about which street was properly known as Distaff Lane, using the same name for both Distaff Lane and Great Distaff Street, as can be seen here: In this Fryday streete on the west side thereof is a Lane, commonly called Mayden Lane, or Distaffe Lane, corruptly for Distar Lane, which runneth west into the old Exchange: and in this lane is also one other lane, on the south side thereof, likewise called Distar Lane (Stow 1:345). Slightly later in his description of Bread Street Ward, Stow reiterates and augments this information though, in this section, he is only referring to Great Distaff Street: On the west side of this Fryday Street, is Mayden lane, so named of such a signe, or Distaffe lane, for Distar lane, as I reade in record of a brewhouse, called the Lamb in Distar lane, the sixteenth of H. the sixt [1437 or 1438]. In this Distar lane, on the north side thereof, is the Cordwayners or Shoomakers hall (Stow 1.351). Kingsford’s note on this passage explains that Stow misread Distaflane as Distarlane. Kingsford also notes mentions of Distavlane in wills of 1260 and 1295. After 1301, the spelling was consistently Distaflane (Stow 2.356n.).

On the south side of Knightrider Street, opposite Distaff Lane, stood the church of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey. According to Stow, in 1396 or 1397 (20 Richard II), Thomas Barnard, Caſtle Clerke. Iohn Sonderaſh, Clerke, and Iohn Nouncy, gave to the Parſon and Church-wardens of the ſaid Church and their ſucceſſors, one Meſſuage and one Shop, with the appurtenances in Diſtaffe lane, and Old Fiſhſtreet, for the reparation of the body of the late Church, the Belfrey or Steeple, and Ornaments. (Stow 1633, sig. 2M1v).

See also: Chalfant 67.