Bull and Mouth Inn

Names

  • Bull and Mouth Inn

Street/Area/District

  • Bull and Mouth Street

Descriptions

from A Dictionary of London, by Henry Harben (1918)

Bull and Mouth Inn

On the south side of Bull and Mouth Street, in Aldersgate Ward (O. and M. 1677–Elmes, 1831).

Burnt in the Fire and rebuilt.

Rebuilt about 1830–1 as the Queen's Hotel. Archt., Savage: demolished 1887.

The inn is said to have derived its name from the sign of the Boulogne mouth or harbour, of which the present form is a corruption.

The site is now occupied by some of the new General Post Office Buildings, erected 1890–5.

from Lockie's Topography of London, by John Lockie (1810)

Bull and Mouth-Inn, Bull and Mouth-Street,—the first gate on the L. from 5, St. Martin's-le-Grand.

from A Topographical Dictionary of London and Its Environs, by James Elmes (1831)

Bull-and-Mouth-Inn, St. Martin's-le-Grand, is a large newly built establishment opposite the New Post-office, erected in a style of architecture much resembling the domestic style of Sir Christopher Wren's period. It was designed by Mr. Savage, the architect of Chelsea church, who has contrived a sculptured sign of the Bull and Mouth, of humorous proportions. The inn is said to have derived its name from having been the sign of the Boulogne-mouth of harbour, and that its present name is a corruption.

from London Past and Present: Its History, Associations, and Traditions, by Henry Benjamin Wheatley and Peter Cunningham (1891)

Bull and Mouth, St. Martin's-le-Grand, afterwards the Queen's Hotel, and very foolishly so-called. [See Bull and Gate.]

The Bull and Mouth Inn is large and well built, and of a good resort by those that bring Bone Lace, where the shopkeepers and others come to buy it. And in this part of St. Martin's is a noted meeting-house of the Quakers, called the Bull and Mouth, and where they met long before the Fire.—Strype, B. iii. p. 121.

Ellwood relates in his Autobiography that a Quaker's meeting held at the Bull and Mouth, October 26, 1662, was interrupted by a party of the Trainbands, and the Friends committed to Bridewell.

This, till the railways rose up, was a great London coach-office to all parts of England and Scotland. It was a family and commercial hotel, but is now (1888) cleared away for the new buildings of the General Post Office. There was also a Bull and Mouth Inn in Bloomsbury, of which there is a token in the Beaufoy Collection.