Place Name
Named after a public house that stood in Aldersgate Street until it was knocked down in 1879. It was a favourite tavern of 16thCentury actors and literary types, even featuring in a ditty by Ben Jonson who finding the inn closed went to the nearby Sun in Long Lane. He wrote:
Since the Half Moon is so unkind
To make me go about,
The Sun my money now shall have
And the Moon shall go without.
The thirst that from the soul doth rise
doth ask a drink divine;
But might I of Jove’s nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
