Bank Street and Figtree Lane

Of all the short roads in the city centre that contain a lot of stories (and there are plenty of them) Bank Street might be the shortest of them all - and probably the one most packed with historic buildings. It also has some small side roads with interesting stories too - Figtree Lane probably the best known of them. It may be surprising that those side roads weren’t laid out coming off Bank Street, but that Figtree Lane, New Street, Scargill Croft, and an un-named Meetinghouse Lane, all in fact pre-date Bank Street, appearing on the Fairbank plan of 1771. They are really even older than that - all appear as narrow lanes on the 1736 Gosling town plan, although only Figtree Lane is named. This is a very old and historic area of the town - long before Bank Street came along, adding its own chapter to the story.