Gropecunt Lane

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Gropecunt Lane was a name used in Oxford, London and other English towns and cities in the Middle Ages for streets where prostitutes conducted their business. The name derives from cunt, the Middle English term for female genitalia, and the act of groping. There was also a Gropecunt Lane in Dublin, Ireland near where the Savoy Cinema is now. Later sensibilities changed many names of streets bearing this name to more polite variations.^[1]

In London, the street that was Gropecunt Lane was near the present-day site of the Barbican Centre in the City of London. The street was called Grub Street in the 18th century, but renamed Milton Street in 1830.^[2] Another street with a similar history in Southwark is Horselydown Lane ("whores lie down"), which is just to the south of Tower Bridge, and was also the site of the famous Anchor Brewhouse.

Oxford's Gropecunt Lane became Grope Lane and then Grove Lane. It runs from The High between University and Oriel to Merton Street, and then on between Merton and Corpus down to Christ Church Meadow. The part north of Merton Street is nowadays called Magpie Lane, but the southern part is still called Grove Passage, and the building in the south-western corner of Merton is also called Grove. The presence of a number of trees in this area perhaps suggested the name — until it was leased in 1513 for building, the site of Corpus was planted as an orchard and used as a garden for the junior members of Merton.

Historian Richard Holt and archaeologist Nigel Baker, of the University of Birmingham, studied sexually suggestive street names around England using the Historic Towns Atlas as a source.^[3] They intended to show that mediaeval prostitution was a normal aspect of urban life. According to Dr Baker, "Our study is that these lanes seemed to be centres of prostitution and all the ones we can track down are associated with the market place or high street. The news is that prostitution was not banished to the suburbs – it was going on in the town centre as part and parcel of normal marketing activity".

Southampton, Hereford, Reading and Worcester had streets named "Grope Lane" in their town centres; the more explicit "Gropecunt Lane" was located in Bristol, London, York and Newcastle. Other similar names included Love Lane, Fondle Street and Puppekirty Lane (meaning "Poke Skirt Lane").

Grope Lane, Shrewsbury

There is still a Grope Lane in Shrewsbury. It runs from where the market once was held in town, around the churches of St Alkmund's and St Julian's, to the High Street. Many of the rest of the streets called Gropecunt Lane, or similar, were altered to more innocent-sounding variants, most commonly "Grape Lane".

The association of all these streets with mediaeval prostitution is, however, disputed. In some cases they may simply have been "lovers' lanes". In other cases the words may originally have had different meanings, or referred to non-sexual forms of "groping". The Grope Lane in Shrewsbury is very narrow and dark, bending round in such a way that it is difficult to see ahead, so the name may merely have derived from the fact that one had to grope one's way along it. Likewise, "Horselydown" may derive, like other instances of Horsely or Horsley, from "horse lea" — a lea (meadow) for grazing horses. However, there is evidence that the Shrewsbury lane was recorded as "Gropecountelane" in 1561 and later, the "cunt" part being dropped by the early nineteenth century.

A "Gropecunte Lane" is the earliest citation in the entry for the word "cunt" in the Oxford English Dictionary, dating this usage to about 1230.

[edit] References

^ St. Pancras Soper Lane 145/39. Centre for Metropolitan History. Retrieved on August 09, 2005.
^ Grub Street. Hak Mao. Retrieved on August 09, 2005.
^ Baker, N & Holt, R. (2000). “Towards a geography of sexual encounter: prostitution in English medieval towns”, L. Bevan: Indecent Exposure: Sexuality, Society and the Archaeological Record. Cruithne Press: Glasgow, 187-98.

[edit] Further reading

Partridge, Chris. "A street by any other name... ...might be easier to sell.", The Observer, 2004-04-18.
McCue, Jim. "The meaning of body language", Daily Telegraph, 2005-08-08. — Gropecunt Lane and the change in language trends
Gropecunt lane. boners. Retrieved on August 09, 2005. — a photograph of an Irish newspaper mentioning Gropecunt Lane in Dublin
Sewell, Brian. "The pride of London but no gilded cage", London Evening Standard, 2001-05-11. — Gropecunt Lane in London
Barton, Laura. "Sidelines", The Guardian, 2005-04-07. — campaign to restore the name of Gropecunt Lane