Martin Fone's Blog

Trump Street, EC2

You can learn a lot from history, if only you know where to look. If you stand on the northern side of Cheapside and walk up King Street, the first street on the left is Trump Street. With an almost imperceptible sense of inevitability, our street leads on to Russia Row. It has taken centuries for the denizens of London to realise the significance of this conjunction.

Cheapside, as we have seen before, was site of the principal market of the medieval City of London. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the adjacent streets bear testimony to the produce and goods that were available there. So we have Milk Street, Bread Street, Honey Lane and Poultry in the vicinity. Logic suggests, therefore, that Trump Street may have had some kind of association with a trade in the area or goods that were sold in the market. But what?

Today, apart from American Presidents, a trump is associated with a fart. Perhaps it was a street where people congregated to expel their flatulence after eating some of the fare sold at the market? Tempting though it may be to believe this flight of fancy, it is somewhat off the mark. The street first made an appearance in John Rocque’s Map of London, published in 1746. Given its location it is inconceivable that it didn’t owe its origin to the reconstruction of the area following the Great Fire in 1666. Nikolaus Pevsner’s City of London Architectural, produced in conjunction with Simon Bradley and published in 1997 gives a clue as to the possible origin of our street’s name. He noted that an inn by the name of the Trumpeter used to stand on Lawrence Lane – the modern version of the lane runs at right angles to the right hand side of Trump Street as you walk to Russia Row.

Pevsner goes on to state that the pub – alas, no longer in existence – “[was] thought to be commemorated in the post-fire Trump Street.” That we might be in pursuit of trumpeters is given more credence by a reference in Memorials of London and London Life in 13th, 14th and 15th Centuries, a series of extracts from the early archives of the City, arranged in chronological order, drawn from the Letter Books of the City and edited by H.T Riley. This document saw the light of day in 1868 and when talking about a trumpet maker called Mr William Trompeor, commented that “the persons who followed this trade mostly lived, in all probability, in Trump Street…near the Guildhall.”

Ridley’s in all probability does not make this assertion definitive but later historians are generally in agreement that Trump Street was the centre of London’s trumpet making industry. Of course, Trompeur may have given his name to the street – an eponym – unless his name just happened to have been what the grammarians call an aptonym, a name appropriate to the person’s occupation.

And why was there a demand for trumpets? Well, the City’s watchmen carried them in case they had to sound the alarm to warn the citizens that intruders were attempting to breach the walls.

As for Russia Row, the origins of its name are lost in the mists of time. There is no record of any particular association with Russia or trade of goods from Russia there or of it being home to an enclave of Russian emigres. Perhaps the authorities responsible for naming the street knew that there would eventually be an association with that street and Trump Street at some point in time.