Blackfriars Gatehouse, London

The Blackfriars Gatehouse stood approximately where the Cockpit pub stands today in the City of London, a short walk away from the Blackfriars Playhouse Theatre in Ireland Yard. There, the King's Men company put on Shakespeare’s plays at about the same time as they did at The Globe.

The theatre itself stood on the site of a Dominican monastery established in 1275, located between the River Thames and Ludgate Hill, and dissolved in 1538 by King Henry VIII. Records say that William Shakespeare bought the gatehouse on 10 March 1613 from Henry Walker, a "citizen and minstrel (musician)" for £140 and left it to his daughter Susanna.

The deed of purchase for the property still exists and is kept at the London Metropolitan Archives, containing one of only six “authenticated” examples of Shakespeare’s signature. This is particularly significant because – although Shakespeare owned property in Stratford, it is the only piece of property he is known to have owned in London.

Given its convenient proximity to the Blackfriars Playhouse and The Globe, Shakespeare may have intended to make it his home, yet no evidence suggests that he lived here in the three years prior to his death in Stratford upon Avon in 1616.