Place Name
Wulfstan (died May 28, 1023) was an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of London as well as holding the posts of the Bishop of Worcester, and Archbishop of York at the same time. He became the Bishop of London in AD996 and eight years later was elected simultaneously to the diocese of Worcester and the archdiocese of York. He became well known as a writer of sermon on the topic of Antichrist, writing such lurid prose as: “Woe then to him who has earned for himself the torments of Hell. There there is everlasting fire roiling painfully, and there there is everlasting filth. There there is groaning and moaning and always constant wailing. There there is every kind of misery, and the press of every kind of devil. Woe to him who dwells in torment: better it were for him that he were never born, than that he become thus.” In 1014, as archbishop, he wrote his most famous work, a homily which he titled the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, or the Sermon of the Wolf to the English. He also drafting law codes for both kings Æthelred the Unready and Cnut the Great of England. He is considered one of the two major writers of the late Anglo-Saxon period in England. After his death in 1023, miracles were said to have occurred at his tomb, but attempts to have him declared a saint never bore fruit. This is one of a small number of Edwardian streets built in 1911 that are named after bishops of London, who were lords of the manor of Fulham. Their former summer house, Fulham Palace, is a few miles away and Wormholt, as the area was referred to, was considered the waste ground of the manor and used for “depasturing cattle and swine of copyhold tenants”.
