Farringdon Without Ward , Corporation of London

The City of London was divided into wards for the purpose of government as early as Norman times. The wards had responsibility to keep the peace, supervise trade and oversee sanitation, and each ward has the right to elect an Alderman and Commoners to sit in the Court of Common Council.

One of the twenty-six wards of the City of London, lying outside the City walls to the west, extending north to the parish of Clerkenwell, south to the Thames and west to the City of Westminster. To the east it adjoins the wards of Farringdon Within and Aldersgate. This ward was formerly part of a single ward of Farringdon until 1393/4, when, due to the increasing population in the area outside the City wall, it became a ward in its own right, and had a separate elected alderman.

The records include a number of the records of the Whitefriars Precinct within the ward of Farringdon Without. The precinct or liberty comprised the site of the former Whitefriars monastery, founded in 1241, strteching from Whitefriars Street east to Temple Lane west, and north from the Thames almost to Fleet Street. The precinct was constituted a civil parish in 1858, although it had been included in Holy Trinity Gough Square for ecclesiasical puposes from 1842.