Cheapside is the former site of one of

the principal produce markets in London, 

cheap, broadly meaning "market" in

medieval English. Many of the streets

feeding into the main thoroughfare are

named after the produce that was once

sold in those areas of the market,

including Honey Lane, Milk Street, 

Bread Street and Poultry.

 

In medieval times, the royal

processional route from the Tower of

London to the Palace of Westminster 

would include Cheapside. During state

occasions such as the first entry of 

Margaret of France (second wife of King

Edward I), into London in September 1299,

the conduits of Cheapside customarily

flowed with wine.

 

 

 

During the reign of Edward III in the 14th century, tournaments were held in adjacent fields. The dangers were, however, not limited to the participants: a wooden stand built to accommodate Queen Philippa and her companions collapsed during a tournament to celebrate the birth of the Black Prince in 1330. No one died, but the King was greatly displeased, and the stand's builders would have been put to death but for the Queen's intercession.

On the day preceding her coronation, in January 1559, Elizabeth I passed through a number of London streets in a pre-coronation procession and was entertained by a number of pageants, including one in Cheapside.

 

Meat was brought in to Cheapside from Smithfield market, just outside Newgate. After the great Church of St. Michael-le-Querne, the top end of the street broadened into a dual carriageway known as the Shambles (referring to an open-air slaughterhouse and meat market), with butcher shops on both sides and a dividing central area also containing butchers. Further down, on the right, was Goldsmiths Row, an area of commodity dealers. From the 14th century to the Great Fire, the eastern end of Cheapside was the location of the Great Conduit.

 

 

Charles Dickens, Jr. wrote in his 1879 book Dickens's Dictionary of London:

"Cheapside remains now what it was five centuries ago, the greatest thoroughfare in the City of London. Other localities have had their day, have risen, become fashionable, and have sunk into obscurity and neglect, but Cheapside has maintained its place, and may boast of being the busiest thoroughfare in the world, with the sole exception perhaps of London-bridge."