A quirk of history in London’s Mayfair
Weighhouse takes its name from Weighhouse Street
A modern economy requires accurate measurement of time, length, volume and weight.
When England introduced the short-cross silver penny in 1180, the new coins specified exact weight and purity, driving renewed efforts to improve and regulate weighing.
By 1268, City of London records show that the King’s Weigh House was already an important source of revenue for the Crown. Located on Cornhill from at least early 1500s, the King’s Weigh House moved to Little Eastcheap following the Great Fire of London in 1666.
It was upstairs in this building that in 1695 a meeting house for dissenters from the Church of England was founded: the King’s Weigh House Chapel. The congregation moved to a larger building on Fish Street Hill in 1834, but had to move out for the construction of Monument Station in 1883. A site was found in Mayfair, at the junction of Duke Street and Robert Street, and a new church built, to a design by Alfred Waterhouse, architect of the Natural History Museum, and consecrated in 1891.
Robert Street was renamed Weighhouse Street, and today, the building houses London’s Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral.