Home > Encyclopedia > Placeography > Sites

The Barge

roseAgas Map
roseModern Map
roseList documents mentioning The Barge
roseList variant names and spellings
Located in Cheap Ward, The Barge was, in 1270, described as houses called Bukerelesbury as it was formerly owned by Thomas Bukerel (Carlin and Belcher 65). Eilert Ekwall notes that [t]he wealthy and influential Bukerel family is recorded in London from about 1100 and that the property had probably descended to [Thomas Bukerel] from Thomas Bukerel senior, his father, who probably died c. 1240(Ekwall 196). In 1414 the house began to be referred to as le Barge, and in Stow’s London, The Barge was described as a manor or great house in a great stone building, then surviving [only] in part (Carlin and Belcher 65). Stow states that:
This Mannor or great house hath of long time béene diuided and letten out into many tenements: and it hath béene a common speech that when the Walbrooke did lie open, barges were rowed out of the Thames, or towed vp so far, and therefore the place hath euer since béene called ye Old barge. (Stow 1:208)
It is also stated that The Mercers had houses [at The Barge] (Harben 46). Lastly, the houses [g]ave name to [the] street called Bokelersbury (Carlin and Belcher 65), and, according to Harben, this name seems to have been formed early in the fourteenth century (Harben 113).

References