Mincing Lane
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Mincing Lane is a street in the City of London, stretching from Fenchurch Street south to Great Tower Street.
Its name is a corruption of Mynchen Lane - so-called from the tenements held there by the Benedictine 'mynchens' or nuns of St Helen's Bishopsgate (from Minicen, Anglo-Saxon for a nun; minchery, a nunnery).[1]
It was for some years the world's leading centre for tea and spice trading after the British East India Company successfully took over all trading ports from Dutch East India Company in 1799. It is mentioned in chapter 16 of Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, where it is briefly described:
- "[Bella] arrived in the drug-flavoured region of Mincing Lane, with the sensation of having just opened a drawer in a chemist's shop."
In 1834, when the East India Company ceased to be a commercial enterprise, and tea became a 'free trade' commodity, tea auctions were held in the London Commercial Salerooms on Mincing Lane. Tea merchants established offices in and around Mincing Lane, earning it the nickname Street of Tea.[2]
A notable building is the Clothworkers' Hall (the current building, opened in 1958, is the sixth to stand on the site; the fourth was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, while the fifth was destroyed during the London Blitz).[3] A modern landmark partly bounded by Mincing Lane is Plantation Place, while Minster Court houses the London Underwriting Centre.
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