How did the Elephant & Castle in London get its name?
The name of the area derives from a pub of the same name which occupied the junction on which the Faraday memorial is now sited. The earliest surviving record of the pub’s name is in the Court Leet Book of the Manor of Walworth. The court had met at “Elephant and Castle, Newington” on 21 March 1765. Previously the site was occupied by a blacksmith and cutler – the Worshipful Company of Cutlers’ heraldry features an elephant with a castle on its back. ‘Newington’ is one of the most common place names in England (see Newington Green and Stoke Newington in north London), and from 1750 the area became more important and so the informal name, from the pub at this junction, was adopted. That pub site was rebuilt in 1816 and 1898, although the present Elephant & Castle pub, at the junction of New Kent Road and Newington Causeway, offering budget accommodation on its upper floors, was part of the 1960s comprehensive redevelopment. A common yet probably incorrect assertion is that the name of t
Something to do with a giraffe and a guesthouse? 🙂 I lifted this from a website for you (referenced below) Q] From Barbara Roth: “Sometimes American readers are completely bewildered by Briticisms. This is one puzzler: what is the origin of Elephant and Castle? Is it really from Infanta of Castile?” [A] As non-Brits may be puzzled by any reference to Elephant and Castle, let alone where the name came from, let me explain first that it’s a district in south London, an important road junction since at least the eighteenth century. It is now notorious for its two vast traffic circulatory systems around a rather tatty shopping centre and some brutalist architecture that houses a government department. Its name derives from the sign of a public house in the area, which shows an elephant surmounted by a castle. As you say, it’s often asserted that the name is a corruption of Infanta de Castile, usually said to be a reference to Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I (in Spain and Portuga
