Literary London

Where the books were written, set, sold, printed and buried: from the Globe to the graves, the bookshops to the presses.

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Aldgate: Chaucer's rooms over the gate

Where Chaucer lived for twelve years, in the rooms above the eastern gate of the City, and wrote The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls.

Writers' housesFree

In 1374 the City leased Geoffrey Chaucer the dwelling over Aldgate, rent free, on condition he kept it in repair and let nobody use it as a prison, and he lived there until 1386 while he walked each day to the Custom House on the river to count the wool duties; the dream poems of those years, with their narrator falling asleep over a book after a day of reckonings, are the rooms speaking. The gate came down in 1761 and the City's first blue plaque, put up for him in 1923, has since been lost, so what marks the spot is the Corporation's marker for the gate itself, at the corner of Jewry Street, with the traffic of the A11 passing where the pilgrims' road to Essex began.

Where
Aldgate High Street at Jewry Street, EC3N 1AH
Nearest station
Aldgate · 1 min walk

A street corner; the marker is on the pavement.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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