Place Name
This comes from the Middle English word meaning animals’ entrails, bowels, offal and guts which were carried down this lane from the butchers of Eastcheap to the barges on the River Thames, at Rothersgate. Pudding being a savoury meat wrapped in sausage-like casing that was steamed or boiled. This old watergate which was first recorded as Rederesgate in the early 12thCentury, comes from the Old English words hrȳther and geat meaning cattle gate. By 1301, Pudding Lane was known as Rederslane and Retheresgateslane in 1323. It was only by 1360 that its present name began to take shape as Puddynglane and late, in 1373, as Retherlane alias Puddynglane. It was Puddinglane by 1506. In John Stow’s Survey of London from 1598, he describes the street: “The butchers of Eastcheape have their skalding house for hog there, and their puddings with other filth of beastes, are voided down that way to their dung boats on the Thames.”
