Meanings
- The hill on which St. Paul’s Cathedral in London is built.
As for the other syllable of London’s name, the “ Dun ” or “ Strong Place,” was undoubtedly on the hill called Ludgate Hill, on which St. Paul’s Cathedral stands to-day.
1918, Burton Holmes, Burton Holmes Travelogues: London. Paris. Berlin, The Travelogue Bureau, page 11 - A street in the City of London that runs from St Paul's Churchyard, joining Fleet Street at Ludgate Circus. There was once a railway station named Ludgate Hill.
It belonged to that incredible trio, St. Paul's, Ludgate Hill and Holborn, so close together that a long train could almost be in all three stations at once. Ludgate Hill has gone into the dusty limbo of forgotten stations, but its subterranean brassy bar long survived in the arches below, [...].
1941 August, C. Hamilton Ellis, “The English Station”, in Railway Magazine, page 356
Origin
Despite the claim by the Norman-Welsh Geoffry of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae that Ludgate was so called for having been built by the ancient British king called Lud—a manifestation of the god Nodens—the name is believed by later writers to be derived from "flood gate" or "Fleet gate", from "ludgeat", meaning "back gate" or "postern", or from the Old English term "hlid-geat", meaning "postern" or "swing gate".
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Ludgate Hill. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Ludgate%20Hill
“Ludgate Hill.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Ludgate%20Hill. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Ludgate Hill,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Ludgate%20Hill.
Source: Ludgate Hill on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.