At the Synge of the Wodows tracked down?

Having drawn a blank as to where Peter Treveris printed his pioneering Great Herbal, I rang the local studies Library, in Southwark, and Patricia was able to track down a reference Treveris working at the 'Sign of the Three Widows'.

As to why his title page says 'Wodows' we don't know.  We had no luck finding out where in Southwark the 'Sign of the 3 Widows' was however.


Patricia used British History Online Old and New London Volume 6 which is about Southwark, and in the Inns section is this:

'Another inn, called the "Three Widows," was probably a perversion of the "Three Nuns"—the ignorant people after the Reformation confounding the white head-dresses of the religious sisterhood with those of disconsolate relicts. Here, "at the 'Three Widows,' in Southwark," a foreigner, Peter Treviris, in the early part of the sixteenth century, set up a printing-press, which he kept constantly at work for several years, as we learn from the titlepages of his books.'

Still have not found the location but Borough High Street is the most likely location.

Watch this space.

Patricia replied and said:

'I’ve checked a variety of our reference books on medieval and early modern Southwark, and found exactly one reference to Peter Treviris: E Boger, Bygone Southwark (Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co, London, 1895), pp 233-234, mentions that Treviris printed a copy of Higden’s Polychronicon in 1500, that, as of 1895, was in the British Museum: the bookplate says that Treviris’s workshop was “at the sygne of Saynte George in Powles Churchyard”.

So this means he was working from 1500 in St Pauls and then in 1516 (?) moved to Southwark.

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