Bull and Mouth Street

Postman's Park is a public garden in central London, a short distance north of St Paul's Cathedral. Bordered by Little Britain, Aldersgate Street, St. Martin's Le Grand, King Edward Street, and the site of the former headquarters of the General Post Office (GPO), it is one of the largest open spaces in the City of London.Postman's Park opened in 1880 on the site of the former churchyard and burial ground of St Botolph's Aldersgate church and expanded over the next 20 years to incorporate the adjacent burial grounds of Christ Church Greyfriars and St Leonard, Foster Lane, together with the site of housing demolished during the widening of Little Britain in 1880; the ownership of the last location became the subject of a lengthy dispute between the church authorities, the General Post Office, the Treasury, and the City Parochial Foundation. A shortage of space for burials in London meant that corpses were often laid on the ground and covered over with soil, thus elevating the park above the streets which surround it. In 1900, the park became the location for George Frederic Watts's Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, a memorial to ordinary people who died while saving the lives of others and who might otherwise be forgotten, in the form of a loggia and long wall housing ceramic memorial tablets. Only four of the planned 120 memorial tablets were in place at the time of its opening, with a further nine tablets added during Watts's lifetime. Watts's wife, Mary Watts, took over the management of the project after Watts's death in 1904 and oversaw the installation of a further 35 memorial tablets in the following four years along with a small monument to Watts. Later she became disillusioned with the new tile manufacturer and, with her time and money increasingly occupied by the running of the Watts Gallery, she lost interest in the project, and only five further tablets were added during her lifetime. In 1972, key elements of the park, including the Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, were Grade II listed to preserve their character, upgraded to Grade II* in 2018. Following the 2004 film Closer, based on the 1997 play Closer by Patrick Marber, Postman's Park experienced a resurgence of interest; key scenes of both were set in the park itself. In June 2009, a city worker, Jane Shaka (née Michele), via the Diocese of London added a new tablet to the Memorial, the first new addition for 78 years. In November 2013 a free mobile app, The Everyday Heroes of Postman’s Park, was launched which documents the lives and deaths of those commemorated on the memorial.

The Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice is a public monument in Postman's Park in the City of London, commemorating ordinary people who died saving the lives of others and who might otherwise have been forgotten. It was first proposed by painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts in 1887, to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria. The scheme was not accepted at that time, and in 1898 Watts was approached by Henry Gamble, vicar of St Botolph's Aldersgate church. Postman's Park was built on the church's former churchyard, and the church was at that time trying to raise funds to secure its future; Gamble felt that Watts's proposed memorial would raise the profile of the park. The memorial was unveiled in an unfinished state in 1900, consisting of a 50-foot (15 m) wooden loggia designed by Ernest George, sheltering a wall with space for 120 ceramic memorial tiles to be designed and made by William De Morgan. At the time of opening, only four of the memorial tiles were in place. Watts died in 1904, and his widow Mary Watts took over the running of the project.In 1906, after making 24 memorial tablets for the project, William De Morgan abandoned the ceramics business to become a novelist, and the only ceramics firm able to manufacture appropriate further tiles was Royal Doulton. Dissatisfied with Royal Doulton's designs, and preoccupied with the management of the Watts Gallery and Watts Mortuary Chapel in Compton, Surrey, Mary Watts lost interest in the project. Work to complete it was sporadic and ceased altogether in 1931 with only 53 of the planned 120 tiles in place. In 2009, the Diocese of London consented to further additions to the memorial, and the first new tablet in 78 years was added.The Everyday Heroes of Postman’s Park, a now discontinued mobile app, was published in 2013. It provided a detailed account of the fifty-four incidents commemorated on the Memorial when a visitor scanned its plaque with a handheld device.

The Bull and Mouth Inn was a coaching inn in the City of London that dated from before the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was located between Bull and Mouth Street (now Postman's Park) in the north and Angel Street in the south. It was once an important arrival and departure point for coaches from all over Britain, but particularly for the north of England and Scotland. It became the Queen's Hotel in 1830 but was demolished in 1887 or 1888 when new post office buildings were built in St Martin's Le Grand.

Little Britain is a street in the City of London running from St. Martin's Le Grand in the east to West Smithfield in the west. It is situated in the Aldersgate and Farringdon Within wards. Postman's Park is also bounded by Little Britain. Historically, Little Britain referred to a small district in the City just north of London Wall, including this street. Washington Irving described this district in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., published in 1820. The opening paragraph reads: IN the centre of the great City of London lies a small neighborhood, consisting of a cluster of narrow streets and courts, of very venerable and debilitated houses, which goes by the name of LITTLE BRITAIN. Christ Church School and St Bartholomew's Hospital bound it on the west; Smithfield and Long Lane on the north; Aldersgate Street, like an arm of the sea, divides it from the eastern part of the city; whilst the yawning gulf of Bull-and-Mouth Street separates it from Butcher Lane and the regions of Newgate. Over this little territory, thus bounded and designated, the great dome of St. Paul's, swelling above the intervening houses of Paternoster Row, Amen Corner, and Ave-Maria Lane, looks down with an air of motherly protection. Booksellers dominated the street from the mid-16th century, followed by goldsmiths and clothing trades from the mid-18th to the 20th centuries.

Angel Street, formerly known as Angel Alley, Angel Court, and Angell Street, is a street in the City of London that runs between King Edward Street in the west and St Martin's Le Grand in the east. Although dating back to at least 1542, no original buildings now remain due to the effects of the Great Fire of London, the London Blitz, and redevelopment. Buildings in the street were damaged in the Great Fire of 1666 when Poulterer's Hall was destroyed, and in the early nineteenth century many buildings were demolished for redevelopment and due to their "ruinous" state. The Angel Inn, which dated from the 17th century, survived on the north side until around 1840. In the late nineteenth century, the General Post Office (West), which included the Central Telegraph Office, was built on the south side of the street and a further post office building soon after replaced the whole of the north side of the street. In 1940, the telegraph office was seriously damaged during the London Blitz and subsequently demolished in 1967. The site is now occupied by the BT Centre (1984) so that today the street consists solely of two long office frontages.

St. Martin's Le Grand is a former liberty within the City of London, and is the name of a street north of Newgate Street and Cheapside and south of Aldersgate Street. It forms the southernmost section of the A1 road.

Aldersgate is a Ward of the City of London, named after one of the northern gates in the London Wall which once enclosed the City. The Ward of Aldersgate is traditionally divided into Aldersgate Within and Aldersgate Without, the suffix denoting whether the part was within the line of the wall or outside it. The ancient ward boundaries were redrawn in 2013; the names are preserved but their location only loosely approximates to their historic extent. The gate also gave its name to Aldersgate Street, which runs north from the former gate towards Clerkenwell. The street was wholly part of Aldersgate Without ward until a short section further north was renamed and so added to it.

King Edward Street is a street in the City of London that runs from Newgate Street in the south to Little Britain in the north. It is joined by Greyfriars Passage in the west and Angel Street in the east. Postman's Park is on its east side where Bull and Mouth Street once lay and joined King Edward Street.

The General Post Office in St. Martin's Le Grand (later known as GPO East) was the main post office for London between 1829 and 1910, the headquarters of the General Post Office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and England's first purpose-built post office. It was demolished in 1912.

King Edward Building in the City of London was London's main Post Office for most of the 20th century and also the main sorting office for the London EC postal area and for overseas mail. Designed by Sir Henry Tanner, it was opened in 1910 and closed in the 1990s. The complex had entrances on both King Edward Street and Newgate Street. The 'London Chief Office' on King Edward Street was the largest public post office in the UK.

Citizens Advice (previously Citizens Advice Bureau and also known as Cyngor ar Bopeth in Welsh) is an independent organisation specialising in confidential information and advice to assist people with legal, debt, consumer, housing and other problems in the United Kingdom.The twin aims of the Citizens Advice service are "to provide the advice people need for the problems they face" and secondly "to improve the policies and principles that affect people's lives". This research and campaigns agenda also known as "social policy" is more preventative in nature and designed to stop problems arising in the first place. Citizens Advice organisations emerged in the 1930s linked to the emergence of a fledgling social welfare service and the outbreak of World War II. Public funding for the organisation was cut following the war but restored during the 1960s and a government grant in 1973 allowed the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (NACAB) to expand the charity. Citizens Advice has grown to be the largest independent advice provider in the United Kingdom. There are also a number of Citizens Advice organisations that base themselves on the United Kingdom advice charity mainly in parts of the Commonwealth including Australia, New Zealand, and Gibraltar.In 2013 the Citizens Advice Adviceguide website was visited by one third of United Kingdom's online population and Citizens Advice's own research shows that four in ten of the British population contact Citizens Advice at some point during their lives. In 2014 Citizens Advice celebrated its 75th anniversary and in 2015 the charity was named Charity of the Year at the 2015 Charity Awards. During the ten year leadership of the former Chief Executive Gillian Guy Citizens Advice expanded its remit taking on the contract for the Witness Service and the face-to-face advice element of Pension Wise.

St Nicholas Shambles was a medieval church in the City of London, which stood on the corner of Butcher Hall Lane (now King Edward Street) and Newgate Street. It took its name from the Shambles, the butchers area in the west of Newgate Street. The church is first mentioned as St. Nicholas de Westrnacekaria. In 1253 Walter de Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester granted indulgences to its parishioners.In 1546, Henry VIII gave the church, along with that of St Ewin (also known as St Audoen) and the dissolved Christ Church priory to the City corporation. A new parish was created for Christ Church, out of those of St Nicholas and St Ewin, and part of that of St Sepulchre. St Nicholas' was demolished in 1547.The site was extensively excavated in 1975–79 in preparation for construction of the GPO headquarters, (now the BT Centre). The excavations identified several phases of building. The original nave and chancel probably dated from the 11th century. They were extended in the late 12th century. Chapels were added to the east end in the 14th century, a north aisle was added to the nave in the first half of the 15th century, and, finally, the east end was rebuilt and a sacristy added on the north. The excavations included the grave yard. Among the finds was a woman who died in the later stages of childbirth.Surviving parish records, now held among the archives of St Bartholomew's Hospital, include an exceptionally detailed inventory of church books, plate, vestments and other possessions of 1457, and a series of churchwardens' accounts running from 1452 to 1526.