Leake Street

Leake Street was once known as York Street and served as a gritty, industrial underpass for cargo storage and traffic beneath the bustling platforms of Waterloo Station. In the nineteen-twenties, the tunnel gained a reputation for hosting clandestine drinking dens that operated in the shadows of the railway lines. The name of the street today honors Doctor John Leake, an eighteenth-century physician who founded the Westminster Lying-In Hospital to provide medical care for expectant mothers.