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Boar's Head Inn, Eastcheap

Buildings and structures demolished in 1831Demolished buildings and structures in LondonFormer buildings and structures in the City of LondonFormer pubs in LondonPubs in the City of London
Boars Head Tavern (1829)
Boars Head Tavern (1829)

The Boar's Head Inn was a tavern in Eastcheap in the City of London which is supposed to be the meeting place of Sir John Falstaff, Prince Hal and other characters in Shakespeare's Henry IV plays. The Boar's Head Tavern is featured in historical plays by Shakespeare, particularly Henry IV, Part 1, as a favourite resort of the fictional character Falstaff and his friends in the early 15th century. 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. The boar's head sign was kept, and is now installed in the Shakespeare's Globe theatre.The site of the original inn is now part of the approach to London Bridge in Cannon Street. Near the site, at 33–35 Eastcheap, the architect Robert Lewis Roumieu created a neo-Gothic building in 1868; this 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. Roumieu's building originally functioned as a vinegar warehouse, though it has since been converted into offices. Nikolaus 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".

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Boar's Head Inn, Eastcheap (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Boar's Head Inn, Eastcheap
King William Street, City of London

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N 51.51085 ° E -0.086647222222222 °
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King William Street

King William Street
EC4R 9AD City of London
England, United Kingdom
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Boars Head Tavern (1829)
Boars Head Tavern (1829)
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Monument to the Great Fire of London
Monument to the Great Fire of London

The Monument to the Great Fire of London, more commonly known simply as the Monument, is a fluted Doric column in London, England, situated near the northern end of London Bridge. Commemorating the Great Fire of London, it stands at the junction of Monument Street and Fish Street Hill, 202 feet (62 m) in height and 202 feet west of the spot in Pudding Lane where the Great Fire started on 2 September 1666. Constructed between 1671 and 1677, it was built on the site of St Margaret, New Fish Street, the first church to be destroyed by the Great Fire. It is Grade I-listed and is a scheduled monument. Another monument, the Golden Boy of Pye Corner, marks the point near Smithfield where the fire was stopped. The Monument comprises a Doric column built of Portland stone topped with a gilded urn of fire. It was designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. Its height marks its distance from the site of the shop of Thomas Farriner (or Farynor), the king's baker, where the blaze began. The viewing platform near the top of the Monument is reached by a narrow winding staircase of 345 steps. A mesh cage was added in the mid-19th century to prevent people jumping to the ground, after six people died by suicide there between 1788 and 1842.Three sides of the base carry inscriptions in Latin. The one on the south side describes actions taken by King Charles II following the fire. The inscription on the east side describes how the Monument was started and brought to perfection, and under which mayors. Inscriptions on the north side describe how the fire started, how much damage it caused, and how it was eventually extinguished. The Latin words "Sed Furor Papisticus Qui Tamdiu Patravit Nondum Restingvitur" (but Popish frenzy, which wrought such horrors, is not yet quenched) were added to the end of the inscription on the orders of the Court of Aldermen in 1681 during the foment of the Popish Plot. Text on the east side originally falsely blamed Roman Catholics for the fire ("burning of this protestant city, begun and carried on by the treachery and malice of the popish faction"), which prompted Alexander Pope (himself a Catholic) to say of the area: The words blaming Catholics were chiselled out with Catholic Emancipation in 1830.The west side of the base displays a sculpture, by Caius Gabriel Cibber, in alto and bas relief, of the destruction of the City; with Charles II and his brother, James, the Duke of York (later King James II), surrounded by liberty, architecture, and science, giving directions for its restoration.It gives its name to the nearby London Underground station, Monument.

City bonds robbery

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