‘Here lyeth Black Tom of the Bull Inn in Bishopsgate, 1696.’
From the Bull in Bishopsgate it is not a far cry to the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate. There are two versions of this sign, and though comparatively modern they are worth describing, partly for their quaintness, partly from their interesting associations; they are both preserved in the Guildhall Museum. One was placed over the front entrance of the Queen’s Hotel, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, formerly known as the Bull and Mouth, which was built in 1830 on the site of the old coaching inn with that sign. A statuette of a bull appears within the space of a gigantic open mouth; below are bunches of grapes; above, a bust of Edward VI. and the arms of Christ’s Hospital, to which institution the ground belonged. Beneath is a tablet, perhaps from the old inn, inscribed with the following doggerel rhyme:
‘Milo the Cretonian an ox slew with his fist,
And ate it up at one meal, ye Gods what a glorious twist.’
Another version of the sign, which is said to have been put up about the beginning of the century, was over the entrance to the Great Northern Railway receiving-house in Angel Street, formerly the back entrance to the inn yard. This, together with the Queen’s Hotel and all the ground as far as Bull and Mouth Street north, has now been taken by the Post-Office authorities; the amount of compensation paid to the Great Northern Company having been £31,350.
The Bull and Mouth was one of the most famous coaching inns. Strype, writing in 1720, describes it as ‘large and well built, and of a good resort by those that bring Bone Lace, where the shopkeepers and others come to buy it.’ He also tells us that ‘in this part of St. Martin’s is a noted Meeting House of the Quakers, called the Bull and Mouth, where they met long before the Fire.’ The name is generally supposed to be a corruption of Boulogne Mouth, the entrance to Boulogne Harbour, that town having been taken by King Henry VIII. This elucidation is said to have originated with George Steevens, who has been called a mischievous wag in literary matters. Boyne thinks it might have been originally the Bowl and Mouth, both known London signs. A seventeenth-century trade token was issued from a house with the sign of the Mouth in Bishopsgate Street, and the Mouth appears in the rhyming list of taverns, which is to be found in Heywood’s ‘Rape of Lucrece.’ Stow mentions the custom of presenting a bowl of ale at St. Giles’s Hospital to prisoners on their way from the City to Tyburn, and according to Parton there was a Bowl public-house at St. Giles’s. Bowl Yard, a narrow court on the south side of High Street, St. Giles’s, disappeared about 1846. Mr. Wheatley, points out in ‘London Past and Present’ that our inn is probably identical with ‘the house called the Mouth, near Aldersgate in London—then the usual meeting place for Quakers,’ to which the body of John Lilburne was conveyed on his death, August 29, 1657. Five years afterwards, namely on October 26, 1662, it appears from Ellwood’s ‘Autobiography’ that he was arrested at a Quakers’ meeting held at the Bull and Mouth, Aldersgate, and confined till December in the old Bridewell, Fleet Street.
The Bull and Mouth was at its zenith as a coaching inn during the early part of this century, just before the development of railroads. Mr. Edward Sherman was then landlord, having succeeded Mr. Willans in the year 1823; he also had the Oxford Arms, Warwick Lane. It was he who rebuilt the old house, and made stabling underground for a large number of horses. When the business of coaching came to an end, the gateway from St. Martin’s-le-Grand was partially blocked up and became the main entrance to the hotel, which, under a new name, flourished till its final closing in the autumn of 1886. On September 28 of that year, the stock of wine, amounting to 750 dozen, was sold; during the winter the house was used as an adjunct of the General Post-Office. In July, 1887, the Jubilee fittings of Westminster Abbey were sold by auction in the large coffee-room. They consisted of Brussels carpets, hangings, cushions, etc., and produced upwards of £2,000. In the space cleared shortly afterwards for the new post-office, a large piece of the City wall has been discovered. The old Bull and Mouth Inn, destroyed in 1830, with its three tiers of galleries, was very picturesque: many illustrations of it exist.
A seventeenth century trade-token was issued from a Bull and Mouth in Bloomsbury, still represented by a modern public-house at No. 31, Hart Street.
A wooden carving of a Civet Cat was some years since the appropriate sign of an old-fashioned perfumer’s shop in Cockspur Street. An illustration of it appears in the Illustrated London News for December 13, 1856.
