King Street
Route
King Street - Welsh Back - Queen Square - Prince Street - Narrow Quay
Distance
1.8 km
Map
In King Street, you get 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 and sick seamen. The property was enlarged in 1696, however, half the property was destroyed by bombing in 1940. There’s a poem on the wall in the centre of the building. On the side wall 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 to the Almshouses is the Old Library, constructed between 1738 and 1740. The library was founded in 1613 and was one of the first public libraries in England. Following on from Norwich in 1608 and Ipswich in 1612. The site was originally occupied by the King Street Lodge, home of Bristol merchant Robert Redwood, who donated to the city in 1624. The original, designed by James Paty, was replaced by the one you see today and was used by Robert Southey, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Humphry Davy. From 1779, one of the country’s first public displays of fossils was housed in this building …
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