Boar's Head Inn

The Eastcheap Boar's Head Inn in 1829, shortly before demolition. The original Boar's Head sign is in the centre of the building, which was no longer an inn. On the ground floor are a perfume shop and a hat shop.
51°30′38.41″N 0°5′1.78″W / 51.5106694°N 0.0838278°W
The current building near the location of the Eastcheap Boar's Head Inn. This was built as a warehouse in 1868. The exterior is decorated with references to the original tavern. It is currently an office building.
Close up, showing boar's head decoration

The Boar's Head Inn may refer to a number of former taverns in London, most famously a tavern in Eastcheap which is supposed to be the meeting place of Sir John Falstaff, Prince Hal and other characters in Shakespeare's Henry IV plays. An earlier tavern in Southwark used the same name, and an inn of the name in Whitechapel was used as a theatre.

A number of other taverns and inns have since used the name, typically with reference to Shakespeare.

In London

Eastcheap

The Boar's Head Tavern, on Eastcheap is featured in historical plays of Shakespeare as a favourite of the fictional character Falstaff and his friends in the early 1400s. The landlady is Mistress Quickly. It was the subject of essays by Oliver Goldsmith and Washington Irving. Though there is no evidence of a Boar's Head inn existing at the time the play is set, Shakespeare was referring to a real inn that existed in his own day. Established before 1537, but destroyed in 1666 in the Great Fire of London, it was soon rebuilt, and continued operation until some point in the late 18th Century, when the building was used by retail outlets. What remained of the building was demolished in 1831.[1] The boar's head sign was kept, and is now installed in Shakespeare's Globe theatre.[2]

The site of the original inn is now part of the approach to London bridge in Cannon Street. Near the site on modern Eastcheap, architect Robert Lewis Roumieu created a neo-Gothic building in 1868, originally functioning as a vinegar warehouse, though since converted into offices. The building makes references to the Boar's head Inn in its design and exterior decorations, which include a boar's head peeping out from grass and portrait heads of Henry IV and Henry V.[3] Nicholas Pevsner described it as "one of the maddest displays in London of gabled Gothic brick." Ian Nairn called it "the scream you wake on at the end of a nightmare."[4]

Others

There was another Boar's Head Inn, at Whitechapel, the courtyard of which was used as an Inn-yard theatre to stage plays from 1557 onwards, known as the Boar's Head Theatre. It was refurbished in 1598-99.[5]

There was Boar's Head Inn, at Southwark, owned by Sir John Fastolf, who is the source for the character-name of Falstaff.[6] While the Eastcheap Boar's Head Inn is not known to have existed during the reign of Henry IV, this inn may have done.

Other Boar's heads

The Boar's Head Inn may also refer to a hotel and resort located in Charlottesville, Virginia. Owned by the University of Virginia, it is likely that it was named after the London establishments.

There is also a Boar's Head Pub located at 161 Ontario Street, in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. Stratford is noted for its long running annual Shakespeare Festival and its Shakespeare-themed street names, restaurants, hotels, and craft shops.

References

  1. ↑ Henry C. Shelley, Inns and Taverns of Old London, Boston, L.C. Page, 1909, p.21.
  2. ↑ Asbury, Nick, White Hart Red Lion: The England of Shakespeare's Histories, Oberon, 2013, p.52.
  3. ↑ Crawford, David, The City of London: its architectural heritage: the book of the City of London's heritage walks, Woodhead-Faulkner, 1976, p.56.
  4. ↑ Christopher Hibbert et al, The London Encyclopedia, Macmillan, 2011, p.263.
  5. ↑ Herbert Berry, The Boar's Head Playhouse, Associated University Presses, 986, pp.81 ff.
  6. ↑ Wm. E. Baumgaertner, Squires, Knights, Barons, Kings: War and Politics in Fifteenth Century England, Trafford Publishing, 2010, chapter "Sir John Fastolf".

See also

Bibliography

External links

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