St Benet Sherehog was one of. the City churches that was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and never rebuilt. It was originally dedicated to St Osyth. A corrupted form of this name can still be seen in “Size Lane” – a very short alley behind No1 Poultry. Here you will find a blue plaque and a carved stone memorial to the church of St Benet Sherehog. This area was the centre of the wool trading district of the City (see also the lost church of St Mary Woolchurch Haw which stood where Mansion House is today). A “shere hog” is a castrated ram after its first shearing (I try not to think about this this when I am in the barbershop).
The church of St Benet was built on this site some time before 1111 AD. We know what the church looked like from the copperplate map from 1550 and also from the Wyngaerde Panorama of around the same time. See below for these pictures. The church of St Benet Sherehog was not rebuilt after the Great Fire and the parish was combined with St Stephen Walbrook.
I have published a blog post of a walk around the City to discover the lost churches dedicated to St Benet with an accompanying Google Map
