The Canterbury UAD states that The Bull Inn was located to the southern and eastern sides of the present Butter Market, which, during the 12th to 14th centuries, was known as 'The Bullstake', where a large stake placed in the centre of the square to which animals were tied and baited.

The Bull Inn, a substantial timber-framed building, was built in its present form in the mid-fifteenth century. The obituary of Prior Goldstone I (1449-68) tells us that the Prior built near the cemetery gate of the Priory 'unum aedificium lignium plures mansione constituens vocatum anglice Le Bole' (i.e: a wooden building, containing many lodgings, called in English The Bull).

This inn was built around a courtyard and had three main ranges. On the west was a double-jettied range facing the Buttermarket (Bullstake) which appears to have had original brick fireplaces on the eastern side, clearly the best rooms in the building. The north range, also double-jettied, face onto Burgate Street and the single-jettied eastern range faced onto Butchery Lane (formerly Sunwin's or Angel Lane). All the lodgings in the building were above shops on the ground floor and each group appears to have had a separate staircase as in the Colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, or the Inns of Court in London which all had similar origins. A large proportion of the building seems to have been divided into separate lodging chaambers, possibly up to thirty-eight above the ground floor shops along the street frontages. A main entrance into the courtyard was at the south end of the building in Butchery Lane.

The name 'The Bull' or 'The White Bull' goes back at least one hundred years earlier, given to the 'great stone house' on the site, built by the Priory at the end of the twelfth century. In a rental of c. 1200 this building is referred to as the 'Great Stone House' and in the City fee farm document (1234) it is recorded as 'the stone house opposite the old gate' (I.e. the Cemetery Gate to the Cathedral). A rental of c. 1370 (No. 71 in in the Cathedral Library) refers to a rent of 20 pence for the building 'in the corner of St. Andrew's parish, called the Whitebull'. In the lower parts of the largely fifteenth century stone cellars under Cranfields shop can be seen the remains of the late twelfth century stone cellar walls. Another part of the building is presently (2002) occupied by Liberty's of London.
When Liberty's planned to establish a major new store here large-scale restoration and refitting was undertaken, and the Canterbury Archaeological Trust were able to carry out a series of building recording programmes.

It is most likely that with a name such as The Bull the premises was an inn rather than just a lodging house.

Wharton, H., 1691, Anglica Sacra (Monograph). SKE30189.

Tatton-Brown, T., 1983, Building Recording, Interim Report of Work of the Canterbury Archaeological Trust (Serial). SKE30190.

Canterbury Archaeological Trust, 1991, The Pilgrim Inns of Canterbury (Monograph). SKE30157.