Linking Fiction to History - Bokerel House

Throughout the No Man is Her Master series, the saga of Christina Kohl is meticulously interwoven into actual places that exist in the 14^th century. From the Kohl’s family home on Fischergrube street in Lübeck to the various castles, inns, and guildhalls she visits on her adventure quest, I try to establish the settings of the novels in structures and along streets and byways familiar to travelers in medieval England.

The most recurrent setting in the series is her London home, Bokerel House, situated along Bucklersbury Street in Cheapside. Contrary to the name, Cheapside is an affluent locale in the medieval era, the name originating from the word chepe, a Saxon word meaning a market. The street is originally called Bakereleburi, after the eminent and very affluent Bokerel family who dwell there in the 13^th century. Andrew Bokerel, a prominent pepperer, is Mayor of London from 1231 to 1237 and maintains an imposing aristocratic manor house and estate there.

It is easy to imagine that, after Andrew’s death without issue in 1237, his family divests themselves of Bokerel House sometime over the next seventy years and Gerhardt Kohl makes the purchase. After her uncle’s death at the end of No Man’s Chattel, Christina becomes the owner of the property when her aunt enters Aldgate Abbey.

Prominent along Bucklersbury Street in medieval London are the shops of several skinners (furriers). There are also numerous apothecary shops, whose trade in spices and sweet-scented herbs seem to permeate the street with a most pleasant scent.

Clearly, this arrangement extends into Shakespeare’s time, as Falstaff exclaims in The Merry Wives of Windsor:

“What made me love thee? let that persuade thee, there's something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog, and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn buds, that come like women in men's apparel and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time: I cannot; but I love thee, none but thee, and thou deservest it.” Merry Wives of Windsor, Act iii. Sc. 3

What a perfect place to situate Christina, who makes her fortune in the trade of furs from ‘Rus and who would certainly revel in residing on a street characterized by pleasant aromas rather than the unpleasant stench of most London thoroughfares.