Boar's Head Inn

The Boar’s Head Inn was a celebrated tavern in Eastcheap, London, where Shakespeare’s characters Sir John Falstaff and Prince Hal gathered in the early 15th century. The inn appears in Henry IV, Part 1, and was run by Mistress Quickly. Though no record shows it existed when the play is set, Shakespeare knew a real inn of that name in his own time. Established before 1537, it survived the Great Fire of London in 1666 and was rebuilt, operating until the late 18th century. The original building was demolished in 1831, but its boar’s head sign was preserved and now hangs in Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. Near the site stands a neo-Gothic warehouse built in 1868 by Robert Lewis Roumieu, designed to recall the inn. Its exterior features a carved boar’s head and portrait heads of Henry IV and Henry V. Critics have called the building one of London’s most eccentric Gothic designs. The inn’s legacy lives on in Eastcheap, where Roumieu’s warehouse remains a striking landmark. Nearby, the old inn-yard theatre in Whitechapel once staged plays from 1557 onwards. Though the tavern itself is gone, its story is woven into London’s history and Shakespeare’s plays.