King Street
Distance: 1.8 km.
In King Street, we catch a glimpse of the 17th and 18th centuries. The street was built outside the old walled city, in 1650, by merchants who wanted to develop the town marsh and create a new residential area for themselves. The north side was developed first followed by the south side in 1663 when the street was named after Charles II. The cobblestone street has been preserved and the whole area is awash with architectural treasures spanning the centuries.
Here, in 1554, the Society of Merchant Venturers founded the pink-washed residential Almshouses to accommodate sixteen old seamen. The property was enlarged in 1696, thanks to the generosity of Edward Colston. Read the poem on the wall in the centre of the building. On the sidewall of the house is the Coat of Arms of the Society of Merchant Venturers, with the date 1699. Associations have been drawn between one of these old sailors’ stories of hidden treasure and the Spanish Main and Edgar Allan Poe’s own story, ‘The Gold Bug’.
Next door is the Old Library, built-in 1740, now a popular eatery serving Asian cuisine. The site was originally occupied by a house donated to the city in 1624 by Robert Redwood. The original was replaced by the one you see today, designed by James Paty, and has been used by writers and poets such as Southey and Coleridge. This building was superseded by the then-new Municipal Central Library in Deanery Road, erected in 1906.
