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Not your typical tour

George Yard

George Yard is a small courtyard off Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street in the historic core of the City of London. Once the yard of a Tudor coaching inn, it later became a narrow service alley threaded between merchants’ houses, warehouses and taverns.

In the 20th century most of the older buildings were replaced by larger office blocks, and the space was opened out into a more generous paved and cobbled yard. Today it is framed by modern offices yet still feels tucked away, a pocket of semi‑hidden space amid the City’s main streets. Seating, planting and contemporary ventilation structures give it a slightly sculptural, urban‑courtyard character. It serves mainly as a cut‑through and service space, but also as a brief pause point in the dense financial district.

Address: 1 George Yard, City of London, London EC3V 9DH, United Kingdom
How to Find:

Just around the corner from St Edmund and Martyr Church

Interesting Facts:
  • Yard of a Tudor coaching inn
    George Yard takes its name from the George Inn, a large Tudor coaching inn that once occupied this site and served travellers arriving and departing along the main routes into the City. After the Great Fire the inn’s site was rebuilt as a yard lined with “very good houses and warehouses”, already known as George Yard by the early 18th century.
  • Historic link between key City streets
    In the 18th and 19th centuries, George Yard provided a narrow but important pedestrian link from Lombard Street through to St Michael’s Alley and Cornhill, threading behind shopfronts and banking houses in a maze of courts and alleys. Contemporary directories list numerous merchants and trades here, reflecting how intensely the area was built up and used.
  • Surviving alley cluster around a Wren church
    George Yard sits in the middle of a small surviving cluster of historic alleys around the Wren church of St Edmund, King and Martyr, including passages such as Lombard Court and Bengal Court. Together they preserve the tight, back‑lane grain of the pre‑modern City in contrast to the broader post‑war streets.
  • 20 Gracechurch Street and Barclays Bank
    Much of the older yard was swept away in the late 20th century to make room for 20 Gracechurch Street, a post‑modern office block originally built for Barclays Bank that took over the whole corner plot. The development merged many smaller buildings into one large complex, reshaping George Yard into the more open, two‑part courtyard you see today

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