Cradle of English

Cradle of English tells the story of how one short but famous street in old London made such an outsized contribution to the development of a global language — many would say to the world’s pre-eminent language.

Our growing library of videos, podcasts, and immerzeos — immersive walks through the streets and alleys of the Fleet Street area — reflect a fascination with and love for the language that found its early vibrations in these courts and presses.

Long before it became a collective descriptor for the world of English journalism, Fleet Street was at the centre of the country’s publishing and printing industries. Within a space smaller than a square mile, strategically placed between the City and Westminster, presses, taverns, coffee houses, and courts formed a dense creative ecosystem.

Reaching back into the 15th century, printing presses turned out early versions of the English Bible and the first great dictionaries of the language and, in the courts of Chancery and the Temple, some of the foundations of English law were laid.

Famous not only for the foundry that it represented in the evolution of English literature, nor simply for the foundations it laid for today’s global worlds of law, medicine, science, and technology, Fleet Street has for centuries been a place where ideas were argued into being.

You too can walk the old alleys and byways of Fleet Street, and delight in the ancient atmosphere of its surviving taverns. Come sit in the places that Dr Johnson and Charles Dickens made their own.

And if you cannot journey to London itself, linger here and sample our multimedia mix of videos and podcasts. Explore history with an immerzeo — an augmented reality walk back in time.

Fleet Street is moving into the world of Virtual and Augmented Reality. It was part of the original vision that we should explore the world of “London Online”. Covid turned the world inside out, while also accelerating the appetite for remote and immersive cultural experience.

Give a welcome to the Cradle of English immerzeo — an augmented reality rendering of a brief walk up a short alley off Fleet Street. With information points, graphic overlays and 3D visuals, we can visit places that time has otherwise erased.

There is no limit to the number of immersive journeys to be crafted out of the rich history of central London. Cradle of English will work with leading companies, legal firms, and cultural partners to capture, show, and tell those stories — beginning with flagship 3D scans such as London’s Guildhall.