descriptionThe Cockpit pub marks the approximate site of Shakespeare’s gatehouse. On 10 March 1613, Shakespeare bought the old priory gatehouse from Henry Walker, ‘citizen and minstrel (musician)’ for £140. It was later bought at an auction in 1843 by the City of London Corporation for £145. The deed of purchase for the property still exists today and is housed at the London Metropolitan Archives; it contains one of only six “authenticated” examples of Shakespeare’s signature. The property is particularly significant because – although Shakespeare owned property in Stratford – it is the only property he is known to have owned in London. Given its convenient proximity to the Blackfriars Playhouse and The Globe, Shakespeare may have intended to make it his home, yet no evidence suggests he lived here in the four years prior to his death in 1616.
