The Streets Of London – Part Sixty Seven
Herbal Hill, EC1
We have seen that many of London’s streets are named after pubs that one stood there or a trade or industry or activity that once flourished in the area. If you walk down Clerkenwell in an easterly direction, then just before the junction with Farringdon Road, on the left-hand side you will find Herbal Hill. This street was previously known as Little Saffron Hill, only gaining its current name in the late 1930s.
Hard as it is to believe today when all around consists of brick, concrete and tarmac, but this area was once the one of the most fertile in the City with gardens and vineyards aplenty. As what might be termed a scientific approach to medicine was fairly rudimentary, much faith was placed on the homeopathic qualities of plants and spices. Rather in the way that we reach for an aspirin or some paracetamol when we feel under the weather, so half a millennium or so ago people would turn to herbal medicine to sooth away aches and pains. It was only in extremis that a doctor was summoned, partly because of cost and partly because there was little faith, and rightly so, that the doctor knew what he was doing.
Whole gardens or parts of gardens were given over to the cultivation of herbs to supply the herbalists or for home use and in the 16th century there was an established garden in what is now Herbal Hill. Who owned it is not certain. There was a nunnery, St Mary’s, to the east of Farringdon Road and so it is unlikely that their land stretched to our road. The next pretender is the Bishop of Ely who was reputed to have a fine garden and a flourishing strawberry patch. The latter gets a name check in Shakespeare’s Richard III; “My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn I saw good strawberries in your garden there.” Records suggest, though, that Herbal Hill was outside of the Bishop’s garden.
The likely horticulturist whose work is celebrated in our street’s name is John Gerard who moved from Cheshire to take up a position as the head gardener to William Cecil in 1577. He tended two gardens – one in the Strand and the other at Theobalds to the north of the Bishop of Ely’s gaff. Gerard lived somewhere between the two. He was a great experimenter and became famous for the range and variety of his plants and his ability to propagate unusual species successfully. In 1597 he wrote a book entitled Herball or Generall Historie of Plants which is reputed to be the first catalogue of all the plants to be found in a garden, although some say that it was a translation of a Flemish guide.
It is true that there are passages where Gerard compares and contrasts the fortunes of his horticultural endeavours with those of the Flemish. The following is an example “my selfe did plant some shoots thereof in my garden, and some in Flanders did the like, but the coldness of our clymat made an end of mine, and I think the Flemish will have the like profit of their labour.” Rather like dear old Monty Don, not everything he turned his hand to flourished. But it is hard to see that this is a mere translation. Whatever the truth is, Gerard’s expertise was recognised by Anne of Denmark in 1602, giving him two acres of land to rent where King’s College stands and his horticultural endeavours have borne fruit in the name of our street.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Anne of Denmark, Bishop of Ely's strawberry crop, Clerkenwell, Farringdon Road, Herbal Hill EC1, Herball by John Gerard, John Gerard, Little Saffron Hill, London's herbal centre, Richard III, William Shakespeare
