Place name
Named after the patron saint of London, Earconwald or Erkenwald (died AD693) who founded two monasteries in England in the 7thCentury, Chertsey Abbey, in Surrey, for men in AD666, and Barking Abbey a year later for his sister, Æthelburg. Born in Lincolnshire, and supposedly of royal ancestry, the siblings served as the first abbot and abbess of their respective monasteries. Erkenwald went on to serve as Bishop of London between AD675 and AD693, during which time he advised King Ine of Wessex on his code of laws. Issued in about AD694 these Anglo-Saxon laws were the written rules and customs that remained in place until the Norman Conquest. They were the first issued by an Anglo-Saxon king outside of Kent, and the second in medieval Western Europe to be written in a language other than Latin. It is also thought that in AD677 Erkenwald converted Sebba, King of the East Saxons, to Christianity. This street had been partially laid out by 1898, at the time forming the northern border of the former St Pauls Church which was destroyed by Germans bombs during the Second World War.
