Milk and Honey

Whilst rushing around the city this morning on the way to a client I was pondering some of the interesting street names. In medieval times Cheapside was ‘the’ place to get your produce – ‘Cheap’ being old English for ‘market place’ and not just referring to a place to get bargains! The streets leading off from Cheapside refer to their primary produce, I know there’s a Poultry, a Milk Street, a Bread Street and I discovered today the tiny Honey Lane. And Honey Lane had a splendid stone bee over its entrance. The bakers were all in Bread Street, cows were kept in Milk Street and I guess Honey Lane would have been full of hives. Now the streets in this area are full of financial institutions, coffee shops and the odd mobile phone shop. I’ve never seen a baker and I certainly haven’t seen a cow or a chicken or even a stray bee for that matter. Though there is the restaurant ‘Coq d’Argent’ at No.1 Poultry which I always believed has a certain synchronicity. I haven’t been there for a while but I don’t recall it only serving chicken – it would seem rather appropriate but extraordinarily unlikely. Maybe Milk Street would be a good place for a cheese shop and clearly Bread Street should be lined with sandwich shops. Slightly further east of the city is Artichoke Hill which I would guess is a more recently named street and I am delighted to see that there are any Tomato Roads, Streets or Lanes etcetera. Though it’s not surprising as who’d want to live there?