A historical site about early London coffee houses and taverns and will also link to my current pub history site and also the London street directory
MERMAID TAVERNS.
The celebrated Mermaid, in Bread-street, with the history of " the Mermaid
Club," has been described in Vol. I. pp. 8-10; its interest centres in this
famous company of Wits.
There was another Mermaid, in Cheapside, next to Pauls Gate, and still another
in Cornhill. Of the latter we find in Burn's Beaufoy Catalogue, that the
vintner, buried in St. Peter's, Cornhill, in 1606, " gave forty shillings yearly
to the parson for preaching four sermons every year, so long as the lease of the
Mermaid, in Cornhill, (the tavern so called,) should endure. He also gave to the
poor of the said parish thirteen penny loaves every Sunday, during the aforesaid
lease." There are tokens of both these taverns in the Beaufoy Collection.
References :
Lots of references are made to two sources on the
internet archive
:
Edward Callows, Old London Taverns &
John Timbs, Club life of London Volume 2