Bucklersbury

Bucklersbury

South-east out of Cheapside, at No. 80, to Walbrook (P.O. Directory). In Walbrook and Cheap Wards.

Earliest mention: "Bokerelesbury," 1275 (Ct. H.W. I. 26).

Other names and forms: "Bokerelesberi," 6 Ed. I. (ib. 29). "Bokerellesbiry," 1307 (Cal. L. Bk. B. p. 197). "Bokerellesbury," 1336 (Ct. H.W. I. 415). "Bokelersbury," 23 Ed. III. (Anc. Deeds, C. 905). "Bokerelesbury Street," 24 Ed. III. 1350 (Cal. Close R. Ed. III. 1349–54, p. 277). "Bukleresbury," 41 Ed. III. 1367 (Cal. L. Bk. G. p. 220). "Bokeleresbury," 1414 (Ct. H.W. II. 402). "Boclersbury," 1499 (ib. 599). "Buklersbury," 1516 (ib. 622). "Bucklersbury," 1529 (L. and P. H. VIII. IV. Pt. 3, p. 2547).

In the earlier references above cited, it is the estate and tenement of Bucklersbury that are referred to and not the street. The earliest mention of the street appears to be about the 23 or 24 Ed. III., so that it may have been formed early in the 14th century.

Stow is under a misapprehension in stating that the estate or manor (as he calls it) and tenements belonged to one Buckle, as this is not the original form of the name. It is much more likely that the owners of the property were the well-known family of Bokerel or Bukerel, who took an active interest in municipal affairs, throughout the 13th century.

In 41 Ed. III. it was ordained that all exchanges of gold and silver were to be located in Bucklersbury, 31 Ed. III. 1367 (Cal. L. Bk. G. p. 220).

In later times the street was occupied by the Pepperers and Grocers (S. 82 and 262), and afterwards by Drugsters and Furriers (Strype, ed. 1720, I. iii. 50).

Bucklersbury, Cheapside, is a short street nearly opposite the Old Jewry on the right hand side of Cheapside, and leads to Charlotte-row at the side of the Mansion-house. Maitland, the city historian, says the proper name of this street is Bucklesbury, from a manor and tenements belonging to a person of the name of Buckles, who dwelt and kept his courts there; and bury being the name of a manorial dwelling-house. This was a spacious stone mansion, known, in the days of signs, by the name of the Old Barge by Wall-brook, to which, according to tradition, boats and barges came from the Thames up the Wall-brook, when its navigation was open. The presumed site of this mansion is still called Barge-yard, Bucklersbury.

In Shakespeare's days Bucklersbury must have been a herb market, for he compares a sweet odour to smelling "like a Bucklersbury in simpling time." At the west end of the Poultry, where Bucklersbury meets Cheapside, formerly stood the great conduit, which brought water from the conduit mead near Oxford-road and Paddington.

Bucklersbury, Cheapside,—commences at 80, op. the Old Jewry, on the R. extending to the back of the Mansion-house.

Bucklersbury, or, as Stow writes it, "Buckles bury," and "so called," he says, "of a manor and tenements pertaining to one Buckle who there dwelt and kept his courts,"¹ but in this, as in many of his derivations, he is in error. As Mr. Riley has shown, "the original name of this locality was Bokerelesburi, it being so called from the once opulent family of the Bokerels or Bukerels, who dwelt there in the 13th century."² Andrew Buckerel was mayor from 1231 to 1236. Bucklersbury led from the east end of Cheapside to Charlotte Row, the west side of the Mansion House, but has of late been cut in half and greatly diminished in extent by the formation of Queen Victoria Street. Stow says "this whole street, on both the sides throughout, is possessed of grocers and apothecaries," and the passages cited below show that long after his time druggists predominated here. Later it was noted for its taverns, and in recent years for its eating-houses, but most in their turn have migrated from it. The last of the "wholesale druggists" of Bucklersbury (Messrs. Horner), and one of the oldest houses in the trade, only withdrew in 1878, when the old buildings were sold by auction and cleared away, the site (2580 of square feet) having been let on an eighty years' lease at a ground rent of £1200 per annum. The street seems to be now most "possessed" of solicitors and wine merchants. [See Barge Yard.]

It is marvellous that such perfumes should make so sweete savours, if the divell were in them. If one divell be in so little porcion of incense, what a number of divells be there in all the apothecaries shoppes that are in Bucklersbury and elsewhere.—Becon's Works, 1563. [Here is a reference to assafoetida or Devil's dung.]

Bucklersbury, a street very well built, and inhabited by tradesmen, especially Drugsters and Furriers.—R. B., in Strype, B. iii. p. 50; B. ii. p. 200.

Mrs. Ford. Believe me, there's no such thing in me.
Falstaff. What made me love thee? let that persuade thee, there's something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn buds, that come like women in men's apparel and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time: I cannot; but I love thee, none but thee, and thou deservest it.—Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii. Sc. 3.

Mrs. Tenterhook. Go into Bucklersbury, and fetch me two ounces of preserved melounes (melons); look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he weighs it.—Westward Ho, 4to, 1607.

Mistress Wafer. Run into Bucklersbury, for two ounces of Drageon water, some spermacæty and treakle.—Westward Ho, 4to, 1607.

Ben Jonson, in his Bartholomew Fair, describing a countryman gazing at the painted signs and lower wonders in London, and naming the things that there was "no getting him away from," says, "I thought he would have run mad o' the black boy in Bucklersbury, that takes the scurvy, roguy tobacca there.—Bart. Fair, Act i. Sc. I.

If without these vile arts, it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there 'twill well.
     [i.e. to pack up groceries.]
Ben Jonson, To my Bookseller, Epigrams, vol. iii.

I know most of the plants of my country, and of those about me, yet methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred and had scarcely ever simpled further that Cheapside.—Sir Thomas Browne, "Religio Medici" (Works, vol. ii. p. 104).

Sir Thomas More was living in this street when he was raised to the Bench, and here his daughter (Margaret Roper) was born.

Before which time he had placed himself and his wife in Bucklersbury in London, where he had by her one son and three daughters in virtue and learning brought up from their youth.—Life of Sir Thomas More, by G.H., 1662, p. 7.

John Sadler and Richard Quiney, connections of Shakespeare, were grocers and druggists at the Red Lion, Bucklersbury.—Middlesex Arch. Soc. Trans., vol. iii. p. 578.

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¹ Stow, p. 97.
² Riley, Memorials, p. xviii.