Austin Friars, Cromwell's house.
Now occupired by the Drapers' Hall - the building was bought from King Henry VIII in 1543 for the sum of 1,800 marks (approximately £1,200). This had been the house of Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex and Chief Minister to Henry, but had been forfeited to the King on Cromwell's execution in July 1540. Destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666, Drapers’ Hall was rebuilt between 1667 and 1671 to designs by Edward Jarman. In 1772, it was again rebuilt after a fire which did considerable damage and, in the 1860s, the frontage was changed and the interior altered by Herbert Williams. It was later altered once more in 1898-9 by Sir Thomas Graham Jackson.
Putney
Thomas Cromwell was born here, probably in 1485. A blacksmith's son, he grew up in the then-village before working at Lambeth Palace, where (in the books, at least) his uncle John was a cook:"Where he grew up, in the streets near the quays, Putney Heath was at his back, a place to go missing. He spent long days there, running with his brethren, boys as rough as himself: all of them in flight from their fathers, from their belts and fists, and from the education they were threatened with if they ever stood still. But London pulled him to her urban gut."Cromwell then travels to Europe to learn his trade, and spends most of his time trying to ignore Putney's influence. But he admits to himself in Wolf Hall: "It's worth anything, to be reacquainted with the Putney imagination".Mantel unveiled a blue plaque at 3 Brewhouse Lane last October to commemorate him as Putney's most historic export.
