Northgate Street or Stryd Pedwar a Chwech, Caernarfon
This street is home to the Black Boy Inn and is named as Black Boy Street on maps dated 1777, 1795 and 1800, and on a 1788 tax assessment. The alternative name Northgate Street comes from its position – leading to the aperture in the northern section of the medieval town walls.
A 1697 document in the Caernarfon Record Office (Gwynedd Archives) gives the name as Ashley Street alias Black Boy Street. An important building in the street was Ashley House, home to a family named Hasley. It was a street of lawyers at one time.
The Black Boy Inn was formed in 1828 by merging two earlier pubs, the King's Arms and the Fleur de Lys. One document from this period refers to the two pubs as the Black Boy and the Four Shillings and Sixpence. Stryd Pedwar a Chwech is the Welsh for ‘Four Shillings and Six Street’.
Historian Kenrick Evans has suggested that there was a lodging house in the street which charged 4s 6d per night. Others have suggested that 4s 6d was the price of a room at the inn, including a bottle of gin and a female companion for the night. Caernarfon was a port and had an extensive red light district.
Another proposed explanation for the name is that the inn sign of the Fleur de Lys consisted of 10 fleur de lys motifs in two rows, one containing six and the other four.
With thanks to Caernarfon Civic Society
Postcode: LL55 1RW