A salute to Mrs Moon's on Fleet St.

After a recent trip to England, these electronic clippings about the last days of Mrs Moon's pub on Fleet Street landed in my email inbox--sent by a friend. Click on them for a taste of nostalgia about the bad old days on the Street of Shame. When I was there the ghosts still seemed to be roaming.

~ Published in February 1984 ~





FLEET STREET TODAY



The Cheshire Cheese pub can be seen on the left in the picture above, which is a view of Fleet Street looking east toward St. Paul's Cathedral. The new building on the right is where Mrs Moon's pub once stood.



The Cheshire Cheese was rebuilt in 1667, the year after the great fire of London.



This lane runs between St. Bride's Church and Fleet Street. In the old days, when children were not allowed inside pubs, they could play outside in this lane or in the churchyard while their journalist parents were imbibing at The Bell.

St. Bride's was designed by Christopher Wren, the architect who designed St. Paul's Cathedral. It was built as a place of worship for the workers constructing St. Paul's.



This is a view of The Bell pub taken from the upper deck of a bus on Fleet Street.



There are no longer any news organizations on Fleet Street. When Reuters sold its 85 Fleet Street headquarters last year it became the last news organization to leave. The distinctive St. Bride's "wedding cake" spire can be seen above the building, which is shrouded in scaffolding.



The Reuters London and online bureaux are now in Kildare House on Dorset Rise. St. Bride's is behind the building on the left.



Reuters global headquarters is now at Canary Wharf. A display board shows some of the pictures and stories that are posted on the Websites in Toronto.