Black Boy…’ can be found in the names of many UK pubs, roads and pathways but it has an obscure origin.

Several theories have surfaced: of origins in the coal industry or chimney sweeps, as an evolution from maritime buoys, or that it relates to the childhood nickname of King Charles II, to name a few. Rochester’s Black Boy Alley was once bordered on its west side by the Black Boy Inn, with its roots in the English Civil War (1642–1651).

The junction of the alley with the High Street today was once the approximate site of Saint William’s Gate and the passage beyond possibly once known as the Pilgrims Passage, being the approach for medieval worshippers visiting the shrines of the Cathedral. The portion of the south side of the High Street cut by the alley today can be traced back through leases to the sixteenth-century when it was a series of residences, cellars, and possibly shops and public houses facing into the High Street.

One of the most thorough surveys of the Cathedral estate ever conducted was by parliament in 1649 in the months after the abolition of the Dean & Chapter, with the intention that properties be sold. Although this sale never took place and the Dean & Chapter were reinstated at the Restoration in 1660, the survey is preserved in the archives of the Dean & Chapter, now at Medway Archives (DRc).

Parliamentary survey conducted 1649 of the Chapter Capitulary estate (DRc/Esp/1).

Folio 107 of the survey records the earliest evidence yet identified of Rochester’s Black Boy Inn. No name is included in records from before this time.

A later assessment dating to 20th February 1660/1 (DRc/Ele/135) records:

‘a cellar called the Black Boy under the same roof on the same side of the High Street lying west of the Black Boy and north of St. Nicholas church yard.’

Rochester’s Black Boy Inn located within a cellar to the east of the alley was among a considerable number of pubs to choose or change their name in the middle of the seventeenth-century, during or shortly after the bitterly fought English Civil War. King Charles II (1630–1685) had a dark complexion and black hair, taking after his maternal grandmother Marie de Medici's Italian side of the family, and was nicknamed Black Boy by his mother. The name was appropriated by Royalists during the English Civil War and made its way into the names of pubs of Royalist supports, possibly to clearly identify themselves for any prospective clientele with Parliamentarian leanings. The Royalist army famously comprised of many upper-class cavalrymen but also many lower-class foot soldiers. Although the experiences of these men rarely made it into the written record, it seems divisions persisted between the battle-scarred veterans for decades (see Stoyle 2003).

There was probably a certain amount of irony in the nickname at the time. Charles II was born into the Royal House of Stuart, whose reign lasted much of the early colonial period. The Stuarts set up the Royal African Company in 1660 with City of London merchants to trade along the west coast of Africa. It was led by the Duke of York, who was the brother of Charles II and later took the throne as James II. It shipped more African slaves to the Americas than any other single institution in the history of the Atlantic slave trade (Pettigrew 1978).

Rochester has often been described as Royalist. An enormous carved wooden coat of arms of Charles II hung over the inside of the Great West Doors, recorded in an inventory of c.1678 (DRc/Elf/2).

The arms were restored and re-sited at the east end of the South Quire Aisle in 1960.

The Cathedral does seem to have occasionally suffered from this Royalist association. Although surviving evidence of Parliamantarian zeal in the Cathedral fabric such as broken statues has probably been over-estimated, first-hand records do survive of certain episodes of iconoclasm, particularly of items deemed overtly Catholic or associated with nobility. It is perhaps telling that the only surviving mural memorial from before this time bears considerable damage. The memorial to nine times mayor of the city William Streaton (d.1609) features two robed figures kneeling in prayer. Its original vivid colours were restored when it was moved from the South Nave Transept to outside the Lady Chapel in 1992.

A collection of military uniforms and arms from the decades after the war survive in the Cathedral collections today. Records show the six buff coats were purchased in 1684 with other items forming part of the equipment of a troop of six soldiers, maintained as the Dean and Chapter's contribution to the local militia.  Although the king commanded these forces, the men and equipment were supplied by land or property owners. The militia could be called out for local police actions, to keep the peace, and in the event of a national emergency.

One of the six leather buff coats in the collections of the Dean & Chapter, maintained for the local militia in the decades after the English Civil War. Graffiti have been carved into the stocks by successive users.

When some of the pubs named Black Boy disappeared over the intervening centuries, their names were occasionally preserved in those of adjacent roads or pathways. The Black Boy Inn existed for a considerable time, and the alleyway eventually became notorious for prostitution and public urination. Records exist of the Cathedral’s Canon in Residence insistence in the 1840s that someone was paid to flush the alley each morning (something with which modern residents of the High Street will sympathise).

The alley is clearly shown as existing in its current form in the earliest Ordnance Survey such as the 1867 map.

Another aspect of this heritage is the response in the intervening centuries. Historic road and street names can form a powerful sense of place, and often are a relatively fixed datum from which to orient our understanding of the evolving topology of historic urban spaces from the Middle Ages through the Modern Era. But as the Civil War slipped long from living memory, many Black Boy pubs reinterpreted their names, either with themes of coal, buoys or Charles II, or with racialised caricatures. Ingrid Pollard (2008) conducted a 20-year photographic study of the legacy of Black Boy pub signs, including how some of these were used to indicate the racial prejudices of their proprietors well into the very recent past.

This research was spurred by the considerations on contested heritage in the wake of Black Lives Matter movement. The modern Black Boy Alley sign was stolen in May 2021, raising the question of how we might respond. Regardless of any plans for replacement or otherwise, the significance of this place name to our understanding not just of Rochester’s Black Boy Alley but of Black Boy alleys and pubs around the UK that can trace their names back to the English Civil War, is surely worthy of preservation.

Jacob Scott
Research Guild

You can read more on the English Civil War in Randolph Jones’ Acts of Parliament 1649 and 1650.

Acknowledgements

This article is the result of discussions with the Chapter of Rochester Cathedral, Alan Ward and Rochester Cathedral Archaeologist Graham Keevill, and members of the City of Rochester Society. We are indebted to the staff at Medway Archives for facilitating the archival research.

References and Further Reading

DRc codes refer to unpublished documents within the Medway Archives.

Holbrook, D., 1994, Rochester Cathedral 1540-1983; A record of maintenance, repair, alteration, restoration, decoration, furnishing and survey of the fabric. Available here.

Pettigrew, W. A., 1978, The Royal African Company and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672-1752. UNC Press Books. Available here.

Pollard, I. 2008. Hidden in a Public Place: A Report on the Research Findings Undertaken During an Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellowship in Creative and Performing Arts 2002-2005. International Music Publications, Limited.

Stoyle, M. 2003. ‘Memories of the Maimed: The Testimony of Charles I’s Former Soldiers, 1660–1730’, History, Vol. 88, No. 2 (290) (APRIL 2003), pp. 204-226. Wiley. Available here.