Garlic is a stong-smelling, pungent-tasting bulb used extensively in cooking as a flavouring agent.

The area in which Garlick Hill is situated used to be known as Garlickhythe, named after the hythe, or jetty, at which garlic was imported in the Middle Ages. Garlick being an archaic spelling of the food, the hill would have originally run down to the river and this jetty, and was built in the ninth century to lead up to the market in Cheapside.