Barbican
Barbican.Named after a former fortress on London's city wall, and briefly the location of a theatre for apprentice actors in the late 17th century, this is now the site of the Barbican Centre, opened in 1982, the London home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Guildhall drama school, among much else. The area where this ambitious but little-loved development now stands was heavily damaged by bombing in the Second World War, although Shakespeare's sometime lodgings with the Mountjoy family in nearby Silver Street had vanished long before. Surviving within the Barbican complex is the church of St Giles Cripplegate, built c.1545–50, which holds monuments to John Speed and John Milton.
Simon Blatherwick
Bibliography
Pevsner, N., London, i: The Cities of London and Westminster, rev. B. Cherry (3rd edn. 1989)
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