I noticed this street a few days ago when I was meandering about in London and I wondered about its history and whether there were a few tales to tell. I’m not entirely sure that there are, indeed, the street only took its current name in 1935 as before that it was defined as being an extension of Great Queen Street. The street got its name from James Farquharson Remnant, 1st Baron Remnant, a British politician and lawyer. He was the Conservative MP for Holborn (the area where the street is located) between 1900 when he was elected unopposed until 1928. His great grandson, Philip John Remnant, is still in the Lords as a result of the hereditary Peerage, although he’s one of the elected ones by fellow Peers and he will be removed soon as part of the Government’s changes to the Upper House. I had to look this up, but apparently Remnant comes as a name from the Middle English remenaunt(e) ‘remaining part survivor’ perhaps used for someone whose siblings had died in infancy.
The street is the one in the middle of the image (the unnamed bit to the right of Great Queen Street). This map is from the 1880s and before they built the road known as Kingsway in the first few years of the twentieth century, which is what caused this stub of street to need a name of its own.
Incidentally, we can tell that the street sign is before the 1965 borough changes, the year that Holborn, Hampstead and St. Pancras were all joined together to form the Borough of Camden. As an aside, in 1900 the Borough of Holborn was formed when the below parishes were all merged together:
St Giles in the Fields and St George Bloomsbury
St Andrew Holborn Above the Bars with St George the Martyr
Liberty of Saffron Hill
Furnival’s Inn (part)
Gray’s Inn
Lincoln’s Inn
Staple Inn
And there’s Remnant Street in the middle, looking towards Kingsway (or the A4200 for those who prefer that). There was some excitement in November 1964, when the Daily Express reported that there had been an armed raid on the Post Office on the street, with a motorcycle escape by a gunman who took off with £240. And the News Chronicle reported in 1969 that self-service for postal orders had been introduced in London, at the Remnant Street Post Office. Indeed, nearly every mention of this street in newspapers on-line seems to be in reference to the Post Office. The building still stands, but the Post Office closed long ago and it’s now part of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies.
It’s not really the most exotic of streets, I could have chosen somewhere with a bit more obvious history, but there we go. I had thought that it might have been named as it was a bit of a remnant street, and although that oddly is indeed what it has become, that’s not the reason for its naming. There was some excitement at the other end of Remnant Street in 2018 though when the Co-operative Bank was shut and they opened up a Greggs in its place, but that’s about as far as I can go in terms of shattering stories about the street.
