Shoreditch

Map

The overlays that highlight 17th century London features are approximate and derived from Wenceslaus Hollar’s maps:

Open location in Google Maps: 51.522511, -0.074749

4 Annotations

First Reading

Pedro  •  Link

Shoreditch...Brewers Phrase and Fable

according to tradition, is so called from Jane Shore, who, it is said, died there in a ditch. This tale comes from a ballad in Pepys' collection; but the truth is, it receives its name from Sir John de Soerdich, lord of the manor in the reign of Edward III. 1
"I could not get one bit of bread
Whereby my hunger might be fed... .
So, weary of my life, at length
I yielded up my vital strength
Within a ditch ... which since that day
Is Shoreditch called, as writers say."

Duke of Shoreditch. The most successful of the London archers received this playful title. 2
"Good king, make not good Lord of Lincoln Duke of Shoreditch!"--The Poore Man's Peticion to the Kinge. (1603.)

Second Reading

San Diego Sarah  •  Link

Plague had been a constant threat in London since Medieval times. The outbreak of 1665 began in St. Giles-in-the-Fields and spread to devastate the over-crowded, impoverished areas of Stepney, Shoreditch, Clerkenwell, Cripplegate, St. Giles' and Westminster.

Bill  •  Link

Shoreditch, a manor and populous parish, at the north-east end of London, between Norton Folgate, Hoxton, and Hackney. The old way of spelling the name is Soersditch, but the derivation is uncertain. That it was so called after Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV., is a vulgar error.
The popular notion had early taken material form in the Jane Shore Inn, of which there are 17th-century tokens extant. The inn still exists—No. 103 Shoreditch High Street
Soersditch, so called more than four hundred years since, as I can prove by record.—Stow, p. 158.
The Manour of Soersditch with the Polehowse and Bowes (so expressed in the Record), lately belonging to John de Northampton of London, Draper, was granted 15 Richard II. to Edmund Duke of York, and Earl of Cambridge, and Edward Earl of Roteland [Rutland], son of the same Edmund and Isabel.—Strype, B. iv. p.50.
---London, Past and Present. H.B. Wheatley, 1891.

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

1663

1666

1667