The earliest surviving record we have found places the bookseller John Browne at “the sign of the guilded Acorn in Pauls Church-yard.”

Another contemporary source describes it more precisely: “at the guilded Acorn, neer the little north-doore in Pauls Church-yard.”

At this point, the Gilded Acorn was already a part of the extraordinarily vibrant community of printers, publishers, booksellers, writers and readers gathered around old St Paul’s.

A few years later, the sign appears again.

In 1656, bookseller Nathaniel Heathcoat is recorded “at the gilded Acorn” in St Paul’s Churchyard.

The name was evidently established enough at this point to no longer need directions, acting as an address in its own right.

By 1661, the Gilded Acorn had become associated with the bookseller and publisher who would give it its longest and most richly documented life: William Miller.

For more than thirty years Miller published and sold books from the Gilded Acorn, usually described as being near — or over against — the little north door of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Miller’s shelves represented a shop designed to cater to the broad interests of the community of intellectuals he found himself within; he had shelves covering history, politics, religion, and philosophy. And not simply content to provide fascinating topical literature, Miller also made sure to provide a range of writings, from poetry to speeches and even material designed purely to be witty and entertaining. Indeed it seems that even in Miller’s time, there was still an audience for light reading!

Moreover, Miller advertised that gentlemen could, should they frequent the Gilded Acorn, find Acts of Parliament, speeches by parliamentary figures and “State Matters”.

It was, in other words, a serious bookshop for curious minds.

Then came the Great Fire of London.

Old St Paul’s was destroyed. So was much of the bookselling world that surrounded it.

But the Gilded Acorn did not disappear from the historical record.

After the Fire, William Miller was once again publishing books under the name The Gilded Acorn, close to St Paul’s.

The buildings changed. The name survived.

Through the following decades, the Gilded Acorn appears again and again on the title pages and advertisements of seventeenth-century books.

William Miller published works ranging from theology and ancient history to politics, biography, poetry and humour.

In 1691, one of the books sold under the Gilded Acorn imprint celebrated wit, merry songs and ingenious writing — a wonderfully human counterpoint to Miller’s formidable stock of political and scholarly works.

In 1685, another bookseller, Joseph Watts, is also recorded at the Gilded Acorn, briefly adding another name to its bookselling history.

And as late as 1693, William Miller was still publishing from “the Gilded Acorn in St. Paul’s Church-yard”.

Then the historical trail grows quiet. For more than three centuries, the Gilded Acorn has been buried in the soils of time, consigned to history.

We have brought the name back.

Not as a claim that our shop is the same business that stood beside St Paul’s in the seventeenth century. It isn’t.

Instead, The Gilded Acorn at 1 Portsmouth Street is a deliberate revival of an extraordinary old London bookselling name — and of the idea behind it.

A bookshop should be more than shelves of books. It should select. Recommend. Challenge. Entertain. Introduce readers to things they did not know they were looking for.

More than 370 years after John Browne first sold books beneath the sign of the Gilded Acorn, that seems an idea worth reviving.