'Bucklersbury in simple time'

At the heart of the city of London in the late sixteenth century Bucklersbury was, according to John Stow, ‘on both the sides throughout possessed of Grocers and Apothecaries.’ 

The air along the street would have been filled with the aroma of the numerous spices and herbs, and would have been one of the most fragrant quarters of the old city. 

Indeed, when Sir John Falstaff ‘woos’ Mistress Ford in The Merry Wives of Windsor, he claims, with all his customary insincerity, to be an artless man who does not ‘smell like Bucklersbury in simple [when the herbs are flowering] time’. 

Image credit: "Bucklersbury in Simple Time." London edited by Charles Knight (Virtue, c 1880).