The Clerk's House

The Clerk House stands at one hundred eighteen and a half Shoreditch High Street, a position that marks the precise transition between the sacred ground of the churchyard and the secular world of the city. Dating back to around seventeen thirty-five, this structure is the oldest building in Shoreditch. Its original purpose was as a watch house, a necessity born from the morbid realities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. During those years, an invigilator kept a constant vigil from the house, guarding the adjacent graveyard of Saint Leonard's Church against body snatchers looking to steal freshly buried remains for medical dissection.