Locksmith EC3R: The Market Minted On A Coin

EC3R covers Eastcheap and the streets around it, one of the oldest continuously named corners of the City. The name itself comes from an Old English word, cheap, meaning market, with East distinguishing it from Westcheap, the street now called Cheapside. What makes Eastcheap unusual is the proof behind that name. A silver penny minted in London between roughly 1035 and 1037, during the reign of Harold I, names both a moneyer and the street he worked on. It's thought to be among the earliest known instances anywhere of a London street name preserved on physical evidence rather than just a written record.

For centuries afterward, Eastcheap did exactly what its name promised. It was the City's main meat market, lined on both sides with butchers' stalls, loud and busy long before anyone thought to write its history down properly.

A Real Tavern That Became A Stage Set

Among the market's taverns, one became genuinely famous. The Boar's Head, first recorded in the 14th century through a bequest naming it directly, was a real, working inn long before anyone connected it to literature. Shakespeare later used it as the setting for Falstaff and Prince Hal's scenes in both parts of Henry IV, turning an ordinary City tavern into one of the most quoted drinking dens in English writing. The actual building burned down in the City's great blaze of 1666, and was rebuilt in brick two years later, a carved boar's head set above its door. It stood until 1831, when it was finally cleared for road improvements. Its original sign survived the demolition and now hangs in the foyer of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, across the river from where it once stood.

So this small stretch of the City gave England some of its earliest written proof of a street's own name, and later lent an ordinary tavern to one of its most enduring plays. We're not in the business of literature or numismatics, just doors, but we like working somewhere with that much paper trail behind it.