Ray Street, Clerkenwell

This is Ray Street

As you can see on this Horwoods Map - made at the end of the 18th century - it used to run tight across into Clerkenwell Green.

Now only the bit to the west of the railway line survives. The railway runs where the open space appears in the picture(below).

It is a short walking distance from Farringdon Station

There is a house in the street which would have been contemporary with the period that the second Christian Haarnack (son of Christian and brother to old Henry) lived there.

Christian was a harp maker at the beginning like his brother and father but, for some reason, he left the business to become a shop keeper. He may have severed contacts with other family members.

He subsequently moved to premises in Goswell Road and then to Plumstead.

He remarried there in 1875 and died 20 years later

Christian's coffee shop - if the numbering is the same - was the house next door but two on the left - just below the "Y" of Ray Street on the map.

The boundary notice (pictured below)is on the wall is dated 1808.

The street joining Ray Street with the picturesque name of Saffron Hill behind used to have a workhouse in it.

If you are not pressed for time when in this part of London - visiting the FRC and LMA- its worth going over there to look at the Clerkes Well after which the district took its name.