Sherborne Lane is situated in the City of London, 100 metres south-east of the Bank. In his analysis of the medieval forms of the name of this lane, typified by Shitteborwelane 1272/3, Ekwall suggested the existence of a jocular term shiteburgh for a privy. 1 Thus a humble outhouse had been dignified by the application of the word burgh, normally designating castles or towns. 2 Ekwall explained the subsequent development of the name as partly due to textual misreading of -burue as -burne ‘stream’, or simple spoken confusion of these words, and with euphemistic substitution of the first element. 3