The Hop Exchange is a Grade II listed building at No. 24 Southwark Street.

Opened in 1867 and designed by R.H. Moore it served as the centre for hop trading for the brewing industry.

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Hops, introduced to England from the Netherlands, are still used in the brewing industry. They are harvested from farms (known as "hop gardens") in Kent, and in the 19th century they were brought by railway to London Bridge Station, or by boat up the River Thames. They were then stored in the many warehouses in the Borough area.

The purpose of the Hop Exchange was to provide a single market centre for dealers in hops. A glass roof allowed business on the trading floor of the Great Hall to be conducted under natural light. There were many similar outcry floor exchanges across London, such as the Coal, Metal and Stock exchanges, but wartime bombing, fires, redevelopment and modernisation have left the Hop Exchange the only one still standing. However, a fire in 1920 led to the top two storeys being removed, and the Hop Exchange was then converted into offices.

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In 2004 Southwark Council nominated the building for inclusion in the blue plaque scheme, but it was turned down.

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Coordinates: 51°30'17.78"N 0°05'28.44"W

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Image: By User:Mahlum - Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1741282

The St. Saviours Southwark War Memorial is a war memorial on Borough High Street, in the former parish of Southwark St. Saviour, to south of the River Thames in London. It became a Grade II listed building in 1998.

The memorial includes a bronze sculpture designed by Philip Lindsey Clark. He had enlisted as a private in the Artists' Rifles in 1914, and was commissioned in the 11th (Service) (1st South Down) Battalion of the Royal Sussex Regiment in 1916, ending the war as a captain with a DSO.

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The bronze for the memorial was cast by the Maneti foundry in London.

The statue stands on a high stone pedestal with rounded ends. On its long sides are bronze reliefs: one with biplanes to the east and another with battleships to the west. On one side below the biplanes plaque is the inscription "Give honour to the men of St. Saviours Southwark who gave their lives for the empire 1914–1918. Their names are inscribed within the parish church. May their memory live for ever in the minds of men. " and on the other side below the battleships plaque is the inscription "This memorial was erected by the parishioners of Saint Saviour's Southwark in the year 1922." A model of the main figure was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1923.

The ends of the pedestal are decorated with stone carvings of St George and the Dragon to the front (south), and a carving of a mourning woman with child and dove to the rear (north).

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The memorial was unveiled on 16 November 1922 by General Henry Horne, 1st Baron Horne, and dedicated on the same day by the Suffragan Bishop of Woolwich William Hough (or possibly by the Bishop of Southwark Cyril Garbett). A similar sculpture of an infantryman with rifle was used by Albert Toft for the Royal Fusiliers War Memorial in Holborn.

It was dismantled, restored and rebuilt in 2013, and rededicated in 2014 by the Dean of Southwark Andrew Nunn.

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Coordinates: 51°30'15.35"N 0°05'27.18"W

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Image: By Nigel Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14004227

On the outside of this pub hangs a special coat of arms. It is in the language of heraldry, which was common until the Victorians arrived.

This coat of arms was originally added to Stonegate, at the southern end of Old London Bridge in 1728. However, in 1760, due to road widening all the buildings on the bridge were demolished, and this included Stonegate.

The coat of arms was rescued and re-erected on this pub, of which the current building was erected in 1890.

The street that it is on was named King Street in 1774, possibly partly as a result of this coat of arms being here. In 1879 it was renamed Newcomen Street, after the charity which owned a lot of the area.

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Coordinates: 51°30'10.40"N 0°05'27.54"W

Borough Market is a wholesale and retail food market in Southwark. It is one of the largest and oldest food markets in London. In 2014, it celebrated its 1,000th birthday.

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The retail market operates on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 5pm, Fridays from 10am to 6pm, and Saturdays from 8 am to 5 pm. The wholesale market operates on all weekday mornings from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.

The present market, located on Southwark Street and Borough High Street just south of Southwark Cathedral on the southern end of London Bridge, is a successor to one that originally adjoined the end of London Bridge. It was first mentioned in 1276, although the market itself claims to have existed since 1014 "and probably much earlier" and was subsequently moved south of St Margaret's church on the High Street. The City of London received a royal charter from Edward VI in 1550 to control all markets in Southwark, which was confirmed by Charles II in 1671. However, the market caused such traffic congestion that, in 1754, it was abolished by an Act of Parliament.

The Act allowed for the local parishioners to set up another market on a new site, and in 1756, it began again on a 4.5-acre (18,000 m²) site in Rochester Yard. During the 19th century, it became one of London's most important food markets due to its strategic position near the riverside wharves of the Pool of London.

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Coordinates: 51°30'21.87"N 0°05'27.10"W

Picture: By Jack Gavigan - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8850772

In the back streets of south London, a short walk from Shakespeare's Globe, Southwark Cathedral and The Shard, is the site of an old burial ground with an extraordinary history. For centuries it was the outcasts' graveyard for the area formerly known as The Mint, one of London's poorest and most violent slums. According to local lore, it was once the final resting place for the Winchester Geese, medieval sex workers licensed by the Bishop of Winchester to work in the brothels of The Liberty of the Clink, which lay outside the law of the City of London.

Red Cross Garden is an historic and award winning park which we renovated and restored to its original Victorian layout in 2005, and have manged ever since. It is kept in immaculate condition by many volunteers and staff and it has a significant history of bringing nature to an overcrowded city people.

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Octavia Hill, social reformer and one of the founders of The National Trust, built Red Cross Garden and the neighbouring cottages in 1886. It was her flagship project. Here she demonstrated the importance of improving housing for the poor, of contact with nature for residents, and the need for meaningful occupation for poor workers.  Her work here formed the roots of a century and a half of development in social housing, occupational therapy, the Sea cadets, community gardening, and access to nature.

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The historic layout of Red Cross Garden was lost under municipal grass and tarmac by the late 1940s and became much underused. BOST secured funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Southwark Council and restored many of its original features. The garden was officially opened by the Princess Royal on 1st June 2006. Since then we have built up a regular group of volunteers to help maintain the garden and develop tours of the key historic details of the scheme, along with regular after-school clubs, poetry readings, celebrations, and events.

The last galleried coaching inn in London. The George is now owned by the National Trust.

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The first map of Southwark (Duchy of Lancaster ca1543) clearly shows it marked as 'Gorge'. It was formerly known as the George and Dragon, named after the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. There were many such inns in this part of London. 

In 1677 the George was rebuilt after a serious fire that destroyed most of medieval Southwark. 

It is known that galleried inns were used for Elizabethan theatrical productions (Inn-yard theatre). It is thought that the Players were on a dais in the courtyard with the standing audience next to them and that those paying a premium would be in the galleries with a better view.

Later, the Great Northern Railway used the George as a depot and pulled down two of its fronts to build warehousing. Now just the south face remains.

The George was one of the many famous coaching inns in the days of Charles Dickens. Dickens in fact visited the George and referred to it in Little Dorrit.

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Coordinates: 51°30'15.37"N 0°05'24.65"W

Image: By Nickfraser at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0,

The Golden Hind was an English galleon best known for her circumnavigation of the globe between 1577 and 1580, captained by Sir Francis Drake. She was originally known as Pelican, but was renamed by Drake mid-voyage in 1578, in honour of his patron, Sir Christopher Hatton, whose crest was a golden 'hind' (a female deer). Hatton was one of the principal sponsors of Drake's world voyage.

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In 1577, Queen Elizabeth chose Sir Francis Drake as the leader of an expedition intended to pass around South America through the Strait of Magellan and to explore the coast that lay beyond. The queen's support was advantageous; Drake had official approval to benefit himself and the queen as well as to cause the maximum damage to the Spaniards. This would eventually culminate in the Anglo–Spanish War. Before setting sail, Drake met the queen face-to-face for the first time and she said to him, "We would gladly be revenged on the King of Spain for divers injuries that we have received." The explicit object was to "find out places meet to have traffic." Drake, however, acted as aprivateer, with unofficial support from Queen Elizabeth.

He set sail in December 1577 with five small ships, manned by 164 men, and reached the Brazilian coast in early 1578. Drake's flagship,Pelican, which he renamed Golden Hinde, displaced only about 100 tons.

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On 1 March 1579, now in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Ecuador, Golden Hindchallenged and captured the Spanish galleon Nuestra Señora de la Concepción. This galleon had the largest treasure captured to that date: over 360,000 pesos. The six tons of treasure took six days to transship.

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On 26 September 1580, Francis Drake sailed his ship into Plymouth Harbour with only 56 of the original crew of 80 left aboard. Despite his piratical conduct on his voyages, Queen Elizabeth I herself went aboard Golden Hind, which was lying at Deptford in the Thames Estuary, and personally bestowed a knighthood on him; her share of the treasure came to almost £160,000: "enough to pay off her entire foreign debt and still have £40,000 left over to invest in a new trading company for the Levant. Her return and that of other investors came to £47 for every £1 invested, or a total return of 4700%."

After Drake's circumnavigation, Golden Hind was maintained for public exhibition in Deptford. This is the earliest known example of a ship being maintained for public display because of her historic significance. Golden Hind remained there for nearly 100 years before she eventually rotted away and was finally broken up.

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Now sitting here in Bermondsey is a full-sized reconstruction.

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Coordinates: 51°30'24.78"N 0°05'25.17"W