Fleet Street

views updated May 21 2018

Fleet Street (London) was for centuries the home of the newspaper industry and the name is still used to describe the national press. It ran from the Fleet river, a noisome ditch, to the Strand—strategically between the city and the court. From Tudor times it was the haunt of booksellers, writers, and printers. The first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, was established there in 1702, and The Times, in Printing House Square to the east, followed in 1785, under the name Daily Universal Register. In the 1980s there was a wholesale exodus of newspapers to less-congested sites elsewhere.

J. A. Cannon