The name of the Barbican comes from
the low Latin word ‘Barbecana’ which referred to a fortified
outpost or gateway, such as an outer defence of a city or
castle or any tower situated over a gate or bridge which was
used for defence purposes.
Today the City of London has its own replica of a fortified
gateway in Aldersgate Street.
The Barbican site is on the northern edge of what was once Roman
Londinium and there are surviving examples of the old London Wall
in the Barbican Estate making a fascinating link with the
past. The Wall as we see it today is, to a great extent,
composed of Tudor bricks as it was a common practice of the time to
use whatever foundations were available, rather than dig new ones
each time another building was erected. Thus the city wall was put
to good use long after its role in defending the City had
ended.
The area of the Roman town was
approximately 325 acres while in Saxon times the City
incorporated a girdle of land outside the Wall which brought
it up to 677 acres. This was the size of the City at the time
of the Norman Conquest and it is more or less the area
coved by the City of London today.
The “Barbecanna”, mentioned before originated from this this
period and was probably situated somewhere between the northern
side of the Church of St. Giles Cripplegate and the YMCA hostel on
Fann Street.
By the 1850s the City was composed of high, dark buildings and
narrow streets with inadequate bredth to accommodate the increased
volume of horse drawn traffic that endeavoured to pass along
them. Above all it was overcrowded; the population of the
City was 1,287,000 and the number of people living in the parish of
Cripplegate, the area now occupied by the Barbican, was 14,000. The
Cripplegate area was, to a large extent, occupied by the ‘rag
trade’ – which included anything from the buying and selling
of cloth to tailoring and dressmaking.