Cuckold's Point

Cuckold's Point, also Cuckold's Haven, is part of a sharp bend on the River Thames on the Rotherhithe peninsula, south-east London, opposite the West India Docks and to the north of Columbia Wharf. The name is associated with a post (which may have been a maypole) surmounted by a pair of horns that used to stand at the location, a symbol commemorating the starting point of the riotous Horn Fair, which can also symbolise a cuckold.

The Horn Fair was a procession which led to Charlton. It is said that King John, or another English monarch, gave the fair as a concession, along with all the land from the point to Charlton, to a miller whose wife he had seduced after a hunting trip, though this story is disputed.

Cuckold's Haven is first mentioned in writing on 15 May 1562, in The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London; the entry reads "Was set up at the cuckold haven a great May-pole by butchers and fisher-men, full of horns; and they made great cheer". Only two years later, however John Taylor (the Water Poet), lamented the marker's absence — in verse. It may have been a temporary or occasional structure, therefore.

Cuckold's Haven appears on a 1588 government map of London's river defences at the time of the Spanish Armada; in the context, it is a shown as recognised landmark for mariners.

Cuckold's Point was also the location of a riverside gibbet, where the bodies of executed criminals (usually river pirates) were displayed as a deterrent to others, while it also gave its name to an adjacent shipyard during the 18th century.^{[citation needed]}

For some reason English Renaissance drama was fascinated by the subject of cuckoldry, and Cuckold's Haven featured in many a play, including The London Prodigal (attributed to Shakespeare — probably falsely); Eastward Ho! (by George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston, for which the authors had a spell in jail); Northward Ho! (a reply to the former); The Isle of Gulls; and The Witch of Edmonton, which contains the line

confidence is a wind, that has blown many a married Man ashore at Cuckold's Haven.

Cuckold's Point is mentioned in the diaries of Samuel Pepys. On Friday 20 February 1662/63, Pepys described a river journey from Woolwich back to The Temple: