There are of course many pub names that honour real people, often heads of state, key military figures or members of the royalty. There could easily be hundreds of entries, about each and every one of these people, but I’ve chosen to focus here on pubs named after non-literary figures¹ with strong connections to London (who are named in full, and without aristocratic title, just to keep the list shorter). Links to the relevant Wikipedia entries are given with the name, for those interested in learning more about them.

i. Sir Michael Balcon, 1896-1977

A film producer famous for his work at Ealing Studios, Balcon was born in Birmingham and relocated to London in his 20s. He was hired to head Ealing Studios in 1938, and it is his work with them which has led to his lasting reputation, responsible for putting out a number of memorable comedy films during the 1940s and 1950s particularly. The JD Wetherspoon pub chain has a habit of naming its pubs after notable local figures (a few others feature in this post), and their pub in Ealing W5 is no exception.

ii. Sir Colin Campbell, 1792-1863

This Glasgow-born soldier may have been Scottish, but the pub commemorating his name in Kilburn NW6 is now an Irish boozer.² As a military commander, he distinguished himself particularly in the Crimea, repulsing a Russian attack in Balaklava with his famous “thin red line” of soldiers. Although the 1st Baron Clyde appears to have had no personal connection to Kilburn, the pub may have been set up by one of his soldiers and named in his honour (there are still many Marquis of Granby pubs all over London, named for similar reasons).

iii. George Canning, 1770-1827

Figure 70. The George Canning (Denmark Hill SE5). It’s been renovated since this photo was taken.

A politician for most of his life, and even briefly the Prime Minister (for the shortest period of time of any PM), Canning was born in Marylebone to Irish parents, and educated at Eton and Oxford (as have been so many politicians). He spent far more time as Foreign Secretary, involved heavily in the Napoleonic Wars. His links with the area of the two pubs in London named after him (one in Denmark Hill SE5 (fig. 70), the other — since renamed as Hootananny — in Brixton SW2) aren’t exactly very clear, as he seems not to have had any links to South London (he lived mainly in central London, as might be expected, and died in Chiswick).³

iv. Charlie Chaplin, 1889-1977

A comedic actor of the silent era, and one of the most famous film stars of his time. He was born in Walworth, and through his parents became a music hall entertainer very early in his life. He relocated to the United States in his 20s and it’s for his work there that he is best remembered, though he was forced to relocate to Europe late in his life due to his political leanings. However, his connection with the area of his birth is remembered by the name of a local pub (attached to the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre).

v. Herbert Chapman, 1878-1934

Figure 71. The Herbert Chapman (Holloway N7).

Born near Rotherham, but strongly linked to Arsenal (the team’s stadium still based in the area near the pub bearing Chapman’s name, fig. 71) by virtue of having been its manager for ten years until his death. His playing career was undistinguished, but he was an influential manager and brought Arsenal its first ever FA Cup and a couple of League titles, setting them up by the time of his unexpected death as the dominant team of the 1930s.

vi. Thomas Cubitt, 1788-1855

Born in Buxton, Cubitt came to become the leading master builder in London by the mid-19th century. Though he was responsible for swathes of Bloomsbury, some of the Victoria Embankment, and part of Buckingham Palace, one of his greatest achievements was building much of Belgravia. It is for this work that a Belgravia gastropub commemorates him.⁴

vii. Nell Gwyn, 1650-1687

Figure 72. The Nell Gwynne (Covent Garden WC2), using an alternate spelling of her name.

A prominent early English actress. It is not clear where she was born, but she grew up in Covent Garden, where nowadays a pub with her name (fig. 72) adjoins a local theatre. She became a star of restoration comedies in the 1660s, though her theatre career came to an end when she became a mistress to the King, Charles II.

viii. Eva Hart, 1905-1996

Born in Ilford, Hart lived and died in Chadwell Heath RM6, where a (JD Wetherspoon, again) pub is named in her honour. As a young girl, she was a survivor of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 and was prominently involved in related activities for most of her long life.

ix. Marie Lloyd, 1870-1922

Another figure from the theatrical world, Lloyd was a famous music hall singer, born Matilda Wood in Hoxton (in the Borough of Hackney). She gained popularity from her teenage years on, and was known for her racy double-entendre-filled songs. The Hackney Empire, a theatre built as a music hall in 1901 (and at which Marie Lloyd performed), was extended between 2001-04, and its new bar was named after Marie Lloyd.⁵

x. Sir John Morden, 1623-1708

A merchant, Member of Parliament and philanthropist, born in London. Unlike some of the other figures listed here, Sir John did have a connection with the area where the (former) pub named after him is located, having in 1695 established Morden College in nearby Blackheath, which continues to exist even now as a residential care charity.

xi. Sir Robert Peel, 1788-1850

Born in Bury, Peel served as a Tory MP in a number of northern constituencies (including a few ‘rotten boroughs’). He was Home Secretary and twice Prime Minister (1834-35 and 1841-46), but is best remembered for creating the modern police force when he founded the Metropolitan Police in London in 1829. He was an opponent of George Canning (see above), and resigned as Home Secretary when Canning came (briefly) to power.

As a prominent figure in London history, a number of pubs were named after him (others not pictured here are in Walthamstow E17 and Kingston KT1), though none is particularly salubrious. The one on Bishopsgate (opposite the entrance to Liverpool Street station) is now closed, but still retains its tiling and is very close to the modern police station on that street.

xii. Sir Paul Pindar, 1565-1650

A merchant and ambassador to the Ottomans, Pindar was born in Wellingborough but came to London early in his life. He lived in Bishopsgate and his house became a tavern (the Sir Paul Pindar’s Head) in the 18th century. In 1890, however, the building was demolished to make way for Liverpool Street station and its façade preserved in the Victoria & Albert museum. The pub was rebuilt shortly after and then demolished again in 1990; the name of the pub at the ground floor corner of what is now an office building is the only remaining link to the site’s long history.

xiii. Montagu Pyke, d. 1935

Proprietor of a London cinema chain in the first decades of the 20th century. The JD Wetherspoon pub named after him on Charing Cross Road WC2 was originally built as the 16th (and last) of his chain of cinemas. His life was filled with incident, as he tried out gold mining and the stock market amongst other occupations, before settling on the cinema business. He was eventually bankrupted when his crooked methods of financing were exposed in 1915.

xiv. John Snow, 1813-1858

Figure 73. The John Snow (Soho W1).

Born in York and moving to London in his 20s, Dr Snow gained fame through his epidemiological studies of cholera in Soho. The result of his work was that cholera was recognised as being water-borne, and the outbreak in 1854 was traced to a water pump on what is now called Broadwick Street. As such, the pub nearest to that fateful water-pump (a replica stands outside the pub) was renamed in his honour (fig. 73).⁶ There’s a very fine book (The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson) written about his researches into cholera, which I’d warmly recommend reading for a portrait of society (and Soho in particular) in that era. Interestingly, Dr Snow was also a teetotaller.

There are of course many more pubs named after famous Londoners, and I can only hope to mention more of these in a future post.

Addendum

xv. Jeremy Bentham, 1748-1832

An important figure in the philosophy of law, and influential as a utilitarian, it is Bentham’s links to University College London (UCL) that are most pertinent here, and which have led a pub on nearby University Street to take his name. His connections with London start with his birth in Spitalfields and his education at Westminster School. He was not active in the establishment of UCL, but his work and ideals inspired its creation and he presides over it as something of a patron. Indeed, his skeleton, dressed in his clothes with a wax head, is still on permanent display in the building (the preserved head is locked away, however).

xvi. William Camden, 1551-1623

An antiquarian and historian of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Camden was born in London and lived his later life in Chislehurst, which is at least in the same general area of South-East London as the pub named after him (which is in Bexleyheath DA7).⁷

xvii. Sir Alexander Fleming, 1881-1955

The Scottish biologist best known for his work in discovering penicillin, Fleming moved to London and enrolled at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington in his mid-20s, where he qualified with distinction and thereafter worked. As such, a nearby pub takes his name.

xviii. William Webb Ellis, 1806-1872

Born in Salford and educated at Rugby and Oxford, Webb Ellis has only negligible links to London itself, having worked in several West End churches in the mid-19th century. Indeed, as an Anglican clergyman, Webb Ellis is hardly, one would think, a fit candidate for being honoured by an outpost of JD Wetherspoon’s Lloyd’s bar chain. However, it his link to the game of rugby union (of which he is credited as the inventor during his time at Rugby School, though there is little strong evidence for this) that ensures his ‘immortalisation’ by this bar in Twickenham — where the Rugby Football Union and one of the country’s largest rugby stadiums are to be found.

xix. Charlotte Despard, 1844-1939

Born Charlotte French and with a nascent career as a novelist, it was not until the death of her husband in 1890 that Ms Despard became prominent for her work as a suffragist and social reformer (including early charitable work on behalf of the poor, as well as women’s suffrage, and later a range of causes: “Save the Children, the Indian independence movement, theosophy, the Labour Party and the early British Communist Party, the London Vegetarian Society, and the Irish Self Determination League”⁸), before moving to Ireland later in her life. The area of London with which she is most closely linked is Nine Elms in Battersea: she lived there and stood for Parliament (on behalf of the Labour Party) in the 1918 general election. Although there’s a street named after her in Battersea, this pub takes its name from Despard Road near Archway N19 (at the corner of which the pub is sited). Her primary links with this area appear to be confined to her imprisonment (twice) in nearby Holloway Prison, in 1907.

Footnotes
[1] A post about pubs named after famous literary figures may follow in the future, as there are plenty of them.
[2] The hanging sign which depicted him was removed by the Irish owners, with some suggestion that it may have been because he was English, which is obviously incorrect. The same blog post notes that the film County Kilburn (2000, dir. Elliot Hegarty) was shot in the pub.
[3] It might also be noted he is not the notable Canning after which the area of Canning Town was named (that was probably Charles Canning, George’s son).
[4] Incidentally, the area of the Isle of Dogs known as Cubitt Town takes its name from his younger brother, William Cubitt.
[5] The pub that was demolished for the extension work had been named The Samuel Pepys, after another prominent London figure (a literary one, hopefully to be covered in a future post).
[6] It was for most of its history called The Newcastle-on-Tyne.
[7] He gives his name to the Borough and area of north-west London only indirectly, as Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (for whom Camden Town is named), took his title from his estate in Chislehurst, which was named for its original owner, William Camden.
[8] Margaret Mulvihill, “Despard, Charlotte (1844–1939),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004); online edn, May 2010 (accessed 14 October 2010).

I’ve already mentioned decorative tiling on pubs as a feature which helps to improve their appearance and draw people in. This is hardly the only strategy for enhancing the general attractiveness of the property; perhaps the simplest and most effective is the use of flowers and foliage. This can range from a few well-placed and colourful hanging baskets or flower trays above the doorway, to being so bedecked by ivy that the building underneath is barely visible. Hello, welcome back, it’s been a few months as usual!

Figure 74. The George IV (Kentish Town NW5).

There’s no real link between the amount and quality of foliage on display and the quality of the pub underneath (or its beer), but it at least betokens a certain regard for appearance that sets apart the publicans who really care about their premises. You may not be able to ascertain whether a good pint of ale will be available, but you can at least be sure that somebody cares about the pub experience enough to make it worth your while going in; there are worse methods by which to make a judgement about any particular pub.

i. It’s Just Sensible Branding

One of the cases where you can clearly see that the foliage is just part of the general branding exercise is with the All Bar One chain (for example, the branch on Holborn WC2, fig. 25). Not strictly pubs, but aiming for the wine-drinking¹ office worker demographic, these are marked out by their prominent central locations, wooden doors, soberly stringent capitalised lettering, and most distinctively of all, by their overflowing hanging baskets lining the windows.

ii. A Burst of Colour

The most common use of foliage is to give a burst of colour near the entrance. Hanging baskets of flowers draw the eye (and, the publican would hope, the custom) on busy pedestrian thoroughfares. You can see this in effect on one of the West End’s finest pubs, The Harp (Covent Garden WC2, fig. 75).

Figure 75. The Harp (Covent Garden WC2).

Here, as also on, for example, The Harlequin (Finsbury EC1), The Old Doctor Butler’s Head (Bank EC2), or The Blue Posts (Berwick St, Soho W1) and The Castle (Holborn EC4) — which add spiky potted plants to the general variety on display — there’s a conscious effort to differentiate the pub from the blandness of surrounding office blocks.

Particularly effective at this are The Exmouth Arms (Somers Town NW1, fig. 36), which maximises the space along both street-facing sides of the pub to showcase flower displays, and The Hope and Anchor (Camden Town NW1), which takes advantage of a low roof to load up on flowering foliage. Another strategy, where less space is available on the façade, is to have hanging baskets and flower beds at various levels — as on The Fox and Pheasant (Chelsea SW10), where both upstairs and downstairs windowsills, as well as the space between windows, is fully utilised.

Taking this to the extreme is The Churchill Arms (Kensington W8, fig. 76), where hanging baskets quite enshroud the pub building, from the roof down. No surprise either that this is a pub regularly featured in the Good Beer Guide, along with many a tourist brochure.

Figure 76. The Churchill Arms (Kensington W8).

iii. As Above, So Below

Branching out from hanging displays, many pubs also invest in street-level shrubbery and potted plants to add variety. The Cross Keys (Covent Garden WC2), where space is limited and the pub building is quite thin, adds them for decorative reasons.

However, such features can also be used as a way of either simply demarcating the outdoor drinking area (as at The Tarmon, Barnsbury N1, for example) or else, more extensively, creating a natural acoustic barrier between the outdoor area and particularly noisy roads, as at The Beehive (Hoxton N1) or The Alwyne (Canonbury N1, fig. 77).

Figure 77. The Alwyne (Canonbury N1).

Even when noisy roads aren’t an issue, sometimes pubs can only offer outdoor space at the front of the building (rather than the more usual beer gardens out back). Where such constraints exist, it can be difficult to provide adequate areas without obscuring the building behind, but foliage, used effectively, can easily improve such areas, as at The Olde Apple Tree (Peckham SE15). Relatively rare amongst London pubs in this regard is the use of hedges, which can be seen at The Clifton (St John’s Wood NW8), where the property, despite being in pub (and hotel) use, is typically residential in style to fit in with the surrounding area.

iv. Ivy League

Where foliage starts to get out of control is when ivy is introduced. There are of course plenty of restrained examples. The Clifton is one, using ivy sparingly, while The Railway Tavern (Broadgate EC2) is another, central London, example, where ivy makes a fairly bland building (and a fairly bland Greene King ‘traditional’ pub) more appealing to the passing commuter. The Albion (Barnsbury N1), meanwhile, uses its ivy to distinguish it from an otherwise unremarkable row of terraced (residential) properties.

However, there remains a small number of pubs which really maximise their use of ivy. The Faltering Fullback (Stroud Green N4), The George IV (Kentish Town NW5, fig. 74) and The Hemingford Arms (Barnsbury N1) all restrict the ivy growth to the ground floor level, but the effect is of a peculiarly colourful forest through which the prospective drinker must venture. It still may not be any guarantee of good beer on offer, but it certainly makes for a more attractive place to while away some time, which should surely be the aim of any good pub.

Endnotes

[1] Though as of 2010, some All Bar Ones have started offering draught ale in addition to the many wines.

My first post of 2010 (as many as three posts ago) was focused on the Monopoly board, so now that 2011 has come, perhaps it’s time for the second property along, which is Whitechapel Road, completing the brown set. Of course, rents along this thoroughfare of E1 are more than £60 now, but even having shed its 19th century reputation for criminality (a time when there were prominent slums in the area, and Jack the Ripper was committing his crimes), it’s still a relatively impoverished area. Moreover, where the community had originally comprised Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 17th century onwards (with a new influx of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews in the 19th century), it has since the late-20th century given way to primarily Bangladeshi immigrants, and is now dominated by the smells of the many restaurants and the vibrant colours of the clothing shops and stalls of the street market (which can be found most days along the main part of the road near the Tube station).

Figure 78. The Blind Beggar (Whitechapel E1).

Remaining Pubs

Of course, like any historically working class area, there were many pubs. Only a handful are still trading (one of which, The Nag’s Head, is a seedy-looking ‘gentleman’s venue’), and it seems as if more close with every passing year — only in the past year has The Grave Maurice closed, while Bar Nakoda (formerly The Black Bull) could be listed in the Good Beer Guide as recently as 2009.

Most well-known of those which are left is probably The Blind Beggar (Whitechapel E1, fig. 78), at the Eastern end of the road, just before it turns into Mile End Road. As the building itself makes clear, it was built in 1894, but like many Victorian public houses, it replaces a much older structure, and the pub has existed on the site since the 17th century. It is named for a popular tale of a nobleman who was reduced to poverty after being blinded in battle, and came to beg in the area; the rather elaborated story (as depicted on the pub’s sign, and set out in a 17th century play, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green) has him subsequently being taken in by a noblewoman.¹ Latterly, it became famous for being the location of William Booth’s first public sermon (against the vices harboured within), leading him to create the Salvation Army, and for being the site of a 1965 murder committed by local gangster Ronnie Kray.²

Of the other remaining pubs, there’s a pub aiming for a younger demographic called Indo as well as a rather gaudily-painted pub, the LHT Urban Bar, alongside the Royal London Hospital (accounting for the pub’s original name, The London Hospital Tavern). The only other drinking destination is more of a bar and music venue, The Rhythm Factory, though it was a key venue for the early-2000s rise of such bands as the Libertines and The Others.

Closed Pubs

Obviously, being predominantly Islamic, there is little call for pubs from the Bangladeshi population, and this may account for the relative few which remain. However, there are still quite a few remnants of a more alcohol-saturated history, even if those former drinking dens which can still be spotted lack the grandeur of the greatest Victorian pubs. Ground floors have been gutted for shops (as with small pubs such as The Lord Napier and The Lord Rodney’s Head, among others), though the larger building of The Royal Oak still leaves an imposing trace.

Probably the most striking former pub, mainly for not having had its ground floor (yet) replaced by plate glass, is Bar Nakoda (Whitechapel E1, formerly the Black Bull, fig. 79). The pub dates back several centuries, but has been rebuilt in mock-Tudor style in the early part of the 20th century.

Figure 79. Bar Nakoda (Whitechapel E1), now closed, formerly The Black Bull.

Footnotes:

[1] Taken from T.F.T. Baker (ed.), “Bethnal Green: Settlement and Building to 1836,” A History of the County of Middlesex, vol. 11, Stepney, Bethnal Green, pp. 91-95 (1998, online), accessed 18 January 2011. Further information from J.P. Alcock, London Inn Signs (Stroud: Tempus, 2007), pp. 28-29.
[2] More information on Wikipedia.

Appendix. List of Whitechapel Road pubs.

NORTH SIDE
5. The Angel and Crown. Demolished.
11-13. The Two Bells. Demolished.
17-19. The Nag’s Head (originally The Nag’s Head and Woolpack, on the same site). Still trading, albeit as a strip pub.
53-55. The King’s Arms. Demolished.
97-99. The Dolphin. Demolished.
133. Indo (formerly Ye Olde Blue Anchor and originally The Blue Anchor). Still trading.
181. The Duke’s Head (originally The Duke of Cumberland). Demolished.
187. The Pavilion. Still standing, now a shop called The Money Shop.
199. The Black Bull. Still standing, since known as Bar Nakoda, now a restaurant called Bombay Grill.
217. The Old Red Lion (originally The Red Lion). Still standing, now a shop called Sidhu.
233. The Star and Garter. Still standing, now a takeaway called Whitechapel Fried Chicken.
235. The Lord Napier. Still standing, now a shop.
269. The Grave Maurice (for a time called Q Bar at the Grave Maurice). Still standing, now a bookmakers.
285. The Lord Rodney’s Head (later Flunky Monkey, originally The Rodney’s Head). Still standing, now a shop called Shoe Box.
299. The Lord Nelson. Still standing, now a shop called Keya.
317. The Queen’s Head. Still standing, now a bookmakers.
337. The Blind Beggar. Still trading.
345. The Duke of Cambridge. Demolished.

SOUTH SIDE
14. The Old George (originally The George and Dragon or The George, on the same site). Still standing, since a sandwich shop, but now closed.
16-18. Rhythm Factory. Still trading.
78. The Veteran. Demolished.
100. The East London (originally The Earl of Effingham). Demolished.
120. The Royal Oak. Still standing, now a shop called Audiostar.
142. The Earl of Aberdeen. Still standing, now a shop.
176. LHT Urban Bar (originally The London Hospital Tavern). Still trading.
214. The Earl of Warwick. Demolished.

Since this blog was created, indeed probably since the last time it was updated, the term “craft beer” has become a much-ballyhooed part of the beer scene in London. There are still only a handful of pubs that might justifiably be called “craft beer pubs” according to the recent use of this term, but I’ll need to address what exactly it is before I can address the pubs themselves.

Figure 80. The Euston Tap (Euston NW1).

Definitions

The term “craft beer” originally came from the United States, ostensibly coined by the American Brewers’ Association, and developed in the 1980s and 1990s to distinguish the microbreweries and other small brewers from the major nationals (now all incorporated into global multinational drinks companies, the three largest being Anheuser-Busch InBev, SABMiller and Molson Coors). There’s no hard and fast rule, but annual outputs of less than 6 million barrels of beer are generally considered “craft” in the American context.¹

Britain, though, has always had a strong relationship with beer at a local and artisanal level. The product which has come to be known as “real ale” has a long history (lagers only became more prevalent in the UK around the 1960s and 1970s), and the vast majority of brewers have been small operations. In fact, in the 19th century and into the earlier part of the last century, there were few pubs who didn’t brew their own beer for sale. After a period of 20th century consolidation into a small number of very large brewing conglomerates, the older, more localised production of ale began to be kickstarted again by the formation of consumer rights group the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale (CAMRA, which soon changed the word “Revitalisation” to “Real” when it became clear that some kind of definition for the product they were lobbying on behalf of was required, and to make it easier to say). In the last few years, a rash of new brewers have started up around London (and the UK), often in convenient spaces under railway arches or in industrial units (Sambrook’s, Kernel Brewery, Redchurch Brewery, London Fields Brewery, East London Brewing Company, et al.).

Therefore, it is clear that the term “craft beer” can happily include most “real ales” — perhaps all if we use the American definition, as even the largest producers such as Greene King or Marston’s only make around half a million barrels a year.² And yet it is unlikely that many of the pubs I will look at below would stock these breweries’ products,³ implying a British definition of “craft beer” with a distinctly smaller output threshold.⁴ However, even some of these larger brewers like to experiment with beers: in this country, Fuller Smith Turner has their Vintage Ale range,⁵ while at a far far larger scale, in the United States Molson Coors has its “craft” brand, Blue Moon (though it should be noted that in the UK, Molson Coors have similar brands, brewing Worthington’s White Shield, as well as owning Sharp’s, the brewers of Doom Bar). Whether “craft beer”, then, should be considered as a level of output or as a matter of ethos already points to some confusion in the application of the terminology (and is, of course, a source of much heated debate). At a more emotive level, “craft beer” is often considered to be beer with taste or flavour, as opposed to what is sometimes affectionately derided in the United States as “lawnmower beer”⁶ even by those who drink it (perhaps a rough equivalent to our own “cooking lager”).

An argument could also perhaps be made in the UK that the single-minded focus of CAMRA and the “real ale” lobby means that there is no adequate space in the marketplace for those who want to feature the beers of quality independent brewers which do not conform to CAMRA’s “real ale” definition.⁷ Despite this, awareness of other beer styles has been around for a while now, and pubs such as The Dog and Bell (Deptford SE8) and Quinn’s (Kentish Town NW1) have had significant holdings of bottled European lagers for some time, while specialist beer retailer Uto Beer in Borough Market has been trading since 1999. With an increasing trend towards artisanal food and drink production at the same time as further importation of beers from the United States and the rest of the world, it was only natural that there would be an increase in the range of beers being brewed in the UK. With these trends as a background, the “craft beer” label was seized upon by those seeking to differentiate their non-”real ale” beers, and by the pubs serving those products.

The Pubs

There have long been pubs which have been championing ales from smaller British breweries (like The Wenlock Arms, Hoxton N1, or The White Horse, Parsons Green SW6, fig. 65, both frequently showing up in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide), as well as those mentioned above which had relatively early started stocking selections of imported beers. The reason they are not commonly called “craft beer pubs” is partly one of age (they were around before the term “craft beer” caught on in the UK), but also one of marketing. If a definition of a “craft beer pub” was one that stocked a large range of American “craft beer” (i.e. beers consciously made and marketed as such), then The White Horse would surely qualify (it even holds a regular and excellent American Beer Festival). The Rake (Borough SE1), dating back to 2006, would surely also do so, owned as it is by Uto Beer importers.

Figure 81. The Craft Beer Co. (Hatton Gardon EC1).

However, the recent tranche of “craft beer pubs” are primarily ones that have claimed that name. Aside from Scottish brewers BrewDog (who have yet to open a London outpost, but have designs on Camden Town), the strongest push has come from The Craft Beer Co. (Hatton Garden EC1, fig. 81), an incipient chain with its own branding, spun off from The Cask (Pimlico SW1). Other pubs which share much in common in terms of beer range and quality with longer-established outlets, but which seem more apt to the term, perhaps from attracting a younger clientele in a louder, more bar-like environment, are the three Draft House pubs (for example the branch at Tower Bridge SE1), along with The Jolly Butchers (Stoke Newington N16) and The Southampton Arms (Gospel Oak NW5).⁸

Figure 82. Mason and Taylor (Shoreditch E1), since closed.

With a younger target demographic clearly in focus for these bars, one outcome has been a change to the layout of the pub space (though this is something that has been happening gradually for several decades). Both The Jolly Butchers and The Southampton Arms were long-standing locals’ pubs, but the respective spaces have been opened up, with carpets as well as partitioning removed, to create an open and vibrant (if not simply noisier) space. Other recent ventures have made a virtue of their modern spaces and lack of historically-suffused atmosphere, successfully importing the style of American beer bars (simple furniture, long tables, metallic trimmings) to the receptive yet fairly bland modern developments in which they are housed. Something of this style (along with the selection of craft beers) could be seen in earlier spaces like Microbar (Lavender Hill SW11, later The Ink Rooms, since closed) and Bünker (Covent Garden WC2, now closed) and has since been taken up most successfully by Mason and Taylor (Shoreditch E1, fig. 82), though Uto Beer have been in on the act with their shopping centre-based Tap East (Stratford E20).

This New World style can also be found in recent bars which have been set up in much older buildings. The Euston Tap (Euston NW1, fig. 80) is the best example of this, even using the “craft beer” handle in its logo, and which has adopted (partly out of necessity, due to its cramped English Heritage-listed space) a gleaming stainless steel American-style beer dispensing system, largely doing away with old world accoutrements such as pump clips, in favour of chalkboards. Not long after, The Old Red Cow (Smithfield EC1), another pub tucked into limited space, adopted a similar dispensing system to maximise the number of beers available. You can also see some of this modern style in The Old Brewery (Greenwich SE10), run by London brewers Meantime, much of whose output has fallen beyond CAMRA’s strict definitions.⁹

All these pubs are thriving, so clearly the “craft beer” label has popular cachet at the moment and is shaping the style (and, more interestingly, the beer range) of many modern pub and bar developments. Whether the trend such as it is, lasts, or effects any great change in beer-drinking tastes beyond merely the urban middle-class cognoscenti, remains to be seen.

UPDATE (Sep 2012) Mason & Taylor has now succumbed to commercial forces and closed. Despite garnering much critical acclaim, and hardly being empty on my visits, it could not generate enough income to make the site viable. BrewDog have stepped in to take it over, continuing its craft beer focus (craft keg, anyway).

Footnotes
[1] This information is taken from Wikipedia. By comparison, the smallest of the three brewers mentioned above (Molson Coors) has an annual output of around 42 million US barrels (which equates to 30 million UK barrels).
[2] Information taken from Beer Pages.
[3] Interestingly, some of them (such as Cask and The Craft Beer Co.) are actually in buildings leased from Greene King, though they are free of any beer tie to the Suffolk-based brewer, and therefore conspicuously do not feature any Greene King products.
[4] An excellent post attempting to sketch out some meaning for the term “craft beer” can be found on Pencil and Spoon, and expanded upon by Dave HardKnott.
[5] See the Fuller’s website.
[6] In other words, beer that perfectly complements a hot sunny day spent in the garden, under which conditions I personally quite like a fairly low-complexity lager as well.
[7] I should state that although I am not a member of CAMRA, I do not personally believe that there is any need for CAMRA to widen its remit to lobby on behalf of these new beers made via a different process to the one they have defined as “real ale”. The term “real ale” has meaningful currency for describing these cask-conditioned beers, and no one can deny the efforts CAMRA has made on its behalf since its foundation in 1971. Although there might be some sniping in insider circles, there’s no reason that a focus on “real ale” should thereby deny the quality or value of non-cask-conditioned beers, and indeed one can even find such beers dispensed at their annual Great British Beer Festival. However, this is a hotly-contested topic (provoking lengthy and impassioned discussion among my friends when I mentioned it in passing on a mailing list), which I have thus relegated to a footnote.
[8] And don’t make the mistake of thinking they are both run by the same outfit, despite surface similarities.
[9] Though Meantime has not by any means done away entirely with cask-conditioning (as BrewDog seem to have largely done in their bars), and The Old Brewery still has several handpulls dispensing ale, including their own London Pale Ale.

London Pubology, you may have noticed, has hardly been awash with content recently, not that I’ve ever managed more than a post every few months, but particularly in recent years. This is due to nothing more than my own inability to commit fingers to the keyboard (or whatever the modern equivalent of “pen to paper” might be). Fortunately, many others continue to write eloquently, both on blogs (I particularly commend Boak and Bailey), and in books (a recent favourite has been Adrian Tierney-Jones’s CAMRA’s Great British Pubs).

I had been thinking for some time that I might want to talk about beer books on here (specifically, those with a focus on London), but was unsure what to kick off with. I clearly missed the seasonal present shopping deadline for raving about Tierney-Jones’s book, though I still intend to get round to it, and maybe if you need present ideas for Mother’s Day you could go worse than either it or the book I’m about to mention.

Figure 83. The Local by Maurice Gorham and Edward Ardizzone.

So it was the other week that I found myself browsing at the excellent Big Green Bookshop in Wood Green, and came across a beautiful reissue of The Local by Maurice Gorham with illustrations by Edward Ardizzone. Both the book itself and its subject immediately appealed to me, and I am confident that they will appeal to the London Pubology reader as well.

This is a book with which I was not hitherto familiar, but it is entirely delightful. It is a slim volume brought to life not only by the colourful sketches but by the droll commentary on the many features of pre-war pubs in London. It is in fact, not unlike a historical London Pubology avant la lettre, for it was published originally back in 1939. There are chapters on West End pubs, games in pubs, pub eating, al fresco drinking, and other such topics.

There are of course some features of the pubs of this period which are no longer familiar to modern drinkers. For example, there is plenty of focus on the difference between public and saloon bars, the names (and sometimes even the physical separation) of which may survive in modern pubs, but rarely the social divide that is so deftly illustrated. Many of the drinks too are quite different. This is an era when asking for a “pint of ale” would get you a pint of mild (except in the saloon bar, where bitter was the standard drink, and lager in all cases was a minority interest), and there are plenty of strange beer combinations explained patiently in the glossary, e.g. “MOTHER-IN-LAW. A facetious name for stout-and-bitter.”

However, for the most part, the modern pub-goer will find plenty that is familiar. The carping about young people in pubs hasn’t much changed, nor the ire reserved for breweries taking over and modernising pub interiors and thereby jettisoning all the atmosphere and charm (even if now it’s more likely to be the faceless PubCos that are blamed).

It is most pleasing, though, when Gorham makes reference to a pub which still exists, though there are plenty too which do not. One can imagine that the charms of, say, The Star Tavern (Belgravia SW1) — discussed in the chapter on mews pubs — haven’t much changed in 75 years. Likewise, I would hope that readers in another 75 will still be able to find much to delight them in this slender volume.

Catalogue Information
The Local, illustrations Edward Ardizzone text Maurice Gorham.
First published 1939, new edition published 2010.
Published by Little Toller Books (an imprint of the Dovecote Press).
Hardcover. 96pp. ISBN 978-0-9562545-9-7.

There are many posts to be written here about the former pubs of London, and in the fullness of time (which has already been very accommodating) I hope to write about the many uses to which they have been put, including posts about former breweries and their tied pubs, and maybe a few more about notable districts (I’ve already done a post touching on Soho). First though, I want to talk about how one may spot former public houses, and some reasons they came to be closed.

Figure 84. The Victoria (Charlton SE7), now closed.

In London, as in most large conurbations, we are constantly surrounded by reminders of the past. But perhaps more than many world cities, London has been built and rebuilt countless times with (until recently) a fairly cavalier regard to the physical presence of the past. Ancient buildings and grand monuments alike have been demolished in the name of progress, and against this pubs have never really stood a chance. As a small example casting a particularly nostalgic shadow when we see old photos of them, coaching inns stretching back centuries and mentioned (or used) by the greatest of authors and historical figures, were swept away by past rebuilding (the last around the turn of the 20th century).¹ Even now, few pubs are listed historical buildings, and they continue to disappear as it suits developers (The Wenlock Arms [Hoxton N1] being only the most recent of such battles).

The Reasons for Pub Closures

The closure and repurposing of pubs is an outcome of many different social trends over time: changes in population distribution; changes to work/living practices; the decline in social drinking (aspects of which are linked to law changes); the erosion of neighbourhood cohesion (changes to work practices, increase in public transport options); the explosion of property prices; the stranglehold exercised by PubCos; and others. I shall write below about just three such areas, before moving on to spotting former pubs.

i. Changes to Work in London

In many areas of London you may come across the occasional former pub, but nowhere to such an extent as in the former hubs of manufacturing and industry. When walking around the Docklands and Canning Town, one is constantly confronted by such reminders at every turn, and for every former pub still standing there’s probably another five or more which have been demolished entirely in the immediately surrounding streets.² The decline and disappearance of industry is one of the biggest stories in 20th century London, the docks of East London being only the most physically obvious locus of change. In every area where work was focused around factories and industry, the closure of pubs tracks this loss. Ironically, in modern London, brewing (albeit at a small scale) is just about the only area of manufacturing growth.³

ii. The Decline in Social Drinking and Erosion of the Neighbourhood

When pubs close in built-up residential areas (and the fact of pub closures is surely not under dispute, though one might quibble about the extent to which it is or has been happening), they are most frequently small local pubs. These are pubs, often in the back streets of an area, which catered to a predominantly working-class population who may not have travelled far for their work, and for whom the pub was a centre of social cohesion. Successful pubs in London now increasingly follow trends and chase the capricious middle-classes, and it seems the reason for that is primarily economic. Local pubs, which did not need to adapt to attract such drinkers, could rely on local trade, but with regularly increasing taxation on the price of drinks in licensed premises and the lure of cheaper bulk alcohol prices in supermarkets, the attractions of the pub have fallen amongst this traditional core of drinkers.

The closure of neighbourhood locals hasn’t even been entirely related to economic downturn or recovery, but to changing social attitudes among those passing laws (and their constituencies). Such changes in attitudes have been not only with respect to alcohol consumption, but also to smoking. Indeed, the 2007 ban on smoking indoors has frequently been cited as a key reason for pub closures.⁴ History shows that many of the biggest upheavals to the trade have come from changes in laws: the proliferation of gin houses (and the so-called “gin palaces”) in the 18th century and their subsequent disappearance is just one such story.⁵ The disappearance of neighbourhood locals now is another.

This is also partially related to the practices of modern PubCos, themselves affected by changes to laws governing the trade. Massive pub owners like Enterprise Inns and Admiral Taverns look for the maximum return from their investments, which happen to be in pubs. Those which fail as businesses (or just fail to make as much money as the property is worth, see below) are sold, and those which are successful attract heavier mark-ups from the PubCo, sometimes forcing even their closure.

iii. The Explosion in Property Prices

Another factor in the disappearance of pubs in central London has been the huge changes to property prices over the last few decades. This is both because the value of a pub as property can in many areas outstrip that pub’s ability to make money from their trade, and because the core drinkers supporting these pubs are forced from a gentrifying area (where affordable housing stock has been depleted) to more remote suburbs. This is particularly noticeable in the most affluent parts of town: there are plenty of former pubs in Chelsea and Kensington, for example, often looking quite different now as they’ve been comprehensively overhauled (closed pubs in poorer areas have usually suffered fewer cosmetic changes, and are still relatively recognisable).

Spotting a Former Pub

The simplest form is a pub which has been boarded up, otherwise retaining all its signage (such as The Victoria [Charlton SE7], fig. 84). These can survive in this form for years, depending on the value of the area and the long-term development plans a Council may have. If there’s no money for redevelopment, plans may be delayed and pubs may remain boarded for a long time. Even sites in central London can languish for years, for example the former Intrepid Fox (Soho W1).

Figure 85. The Talfourd Arms (Peckham SE15), now closed.

Pubs which have been converted to residential or other uses may still, however, retain some sign of their former use. This may be in the form of architectural lettering (etched into the surface of the building itself), hanging signs or etched windows. A relatively obscure back street local pub like The Talfourd Arms (Peckham SE15, fig. 85) may seem fully converted to a residential dwelling and almost impossible to discern as a former pub, but a very careful glance at the windows, almost entirely obscured by foliage, reveals that one still says “Public Bar”.

Sometimes even these tell-tale signs of a former pub may have been removed. In such cases, you may need to look for striking architectural features. Pubs will often have spaces where lettering or advertising would have been placed: a strip above the ground floor; a rounded corner; or an enlarged pediment near the roof where a fascia board with the name (or, more often, beer advertising) might have been placed. In the post about former pubs of Soho I mentioned above, you can see The Excelsior (Soho WC2, fig. 37), now demolished for the construction of the Tottenham Court Road Crossrail station. It has a certain pub-like structure, with a board where the contemporary shop name is shown, while the original pub name may have once been engraved at the pediment in the blank space under the “1889″ year of construction.

Figure 86. The Camden (Camden Town NW1), now closed.

Finally, there are those former pub buildings which have been reconfigured almost beyond any recognition. In these cases, the entire ground floor level may have been rebuilt with solid brick,⁶ the pediments removed,⁷ and any other identifying features minimised. You may only spot such pubs through diligent research, or from having seen it when it was open. It can be particularly difficult, for example, to discern a former estate pub, as these had always been integrated into the fabric of the surrounding estate, and relatively minor changes may serve to make them unrecognisable as pubs. The very first photo I used on this blog, in my post about estate pubs, was a photo of The Camden (Camden Town NW1, fig. 1). Without having been demolished, this is now entirely unrecognisable as ever having been a pub (fig. 86).

Footnotes
[1] There are some wonderfully evocative photos, for example, of The Black Bull and The Old Bell, both in Holborn, in Panoramas of Lost London: Work, Wealth, Poverty and Change 1870-1945 by Philip Davies (Croxley Green: Transatlantic Press, 2011). Both were demolished around the turn of the 20th century. The only remaining galleried coaching inn is famously The George (Borough SE1), about which Pete Brown has written a book.
[2] As a small aside, when my London Pubology website is up and running (I am hoping an early version will be in the next few months), you will be able to see all the former pubs of areas such as these plotted on a map, densely packed with the red markers of demolished pubs and the amber of closed ones (alongside a smattering of green flags showing open pubs). This site will essentially just present my database of all London pubs, and the research for it has rather occupied me recently (and probably will take many more years to bring to any state resembling ‘completion’).
[3] This information is entirely anecdotal and unresearched (I believe the term is “anecdata”). However, it is certainly true that the population engaged in manufacturing is lower in London than any other region in the UK, and is at a historic low in relation to the past.
[4] Many write-ups of the ban (such as that on Wikipedia) are almost solely focused on its effect on pubs.
[5] A story told very well in Patrick Dillon’s book Gin: The Much-Lamented Death of Madam Geneva: The Eighteenth-Century Gin Craze (Boston: Justin, Charles & Co., 2003).
[6] One such might be The King’s Arms (Bethnal Green E2). Without knowing the address, I could easily have walked right past it.
[7] On the former Three Compasses (Soho W1), an ornate pediment can be seen in an archival photo (reproduced at the British History site), though the existing building, now a restaurant, still has something of the look of a former pub.

Figure 87. The Search for the Perfect Pub by Paul Moody and Robin Turner.

If there’s one point upon which I can immediately ease the potential reader’s mind about The Search for the Perfect Pub: Looking for The Moon Under Water, it’s that the authors Robin Turner and Paul Moody are not in search of a Wetherspoon’s. They do of course find some; whether or not you happen to believe that JD Wetherspoon’s deserve a place in any search for the ‘perfect pub’, Tim Martin’s ubiquitous chain (about whom I do still mean to do a post at some point) has at least tossed its hat in the ring for this particular competition. And while it may not in the end be their ideal, they do give Wetherspoon’s a fairly even-handed treatment. No, it’s the faceless corporatised chains that most draw their ire as, taking Orwell’s 1946 panegyric to his favourite pub The Moon Under Water as their starting point, they survey the state of the British pub at the start of the 21st century.

And, as the book’s first half progresses, what a pitiable state it seems to be in. Corporate machinations are only the beginning, as shifting tastes and demographics, and the effects of taxation and government policy — particularly the much-maligned smoking ban — all take their toll on this quintessential institution. We are introduced to rather too many neglected local pubs only barely outliving their aging regulars, hopeful managers ground down by the low wages and exploitative practices of their pub companies, and themed bars offering the blandest of pre-packaged experiences. Each attracts its share of impassioned jeremiads from a range of well-chosen interview subjects, whose clearly articulated anger seems to be the only source of hope as we fade to black among the bleak surrounds of London Pub (Bloomsbury WC1, fig. 54).

Part investigative journalism, part wistful reminiscing, often within the same chapter, the book’s two authors manage to create a very readable narrative which, if it feels gloomy as the first half of the book ends (half-empty), builds a slightly more positive picture with the second (half-full?). It’s exactly the right sort of tone to take with this history, as the institution of the pub is one peculiarly bound up with peoples’ lives and memories. It’s in these encounters, with drinkers, publicans, politicians and pundits — all in the end raconteurs in the best sense — that the book is at its strongest and it makes perfect sense that most of these conversations take place in the boozer (even if this, as the acknowledgements suggest, may not always have been entirely the case).

If this feels like the sort of impassioned yet even-handed account of the modern pub scene that any one of us could or should have written, it’s only because the authors’ voices are so very reasonable. It would be a mistake to underestimate the value of this book because of its chatty, friendly, non-hectoring tone, so unusual in most partisan accounts of British drinking. This is a fantastic and beautifully crafted story and I can warmly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the pub (and surely I can safely assume anyone reading my site will fall into that camp).

But what of the perfect pub? If it’s Orwell who sets the challenge, it’s Orwell too who provides a telling clue to the answer. It ends up being the youthful bloggers and brewers interviewed near the end who concede that the quality of the beer or the pub hardly matters in the end. Perfection is an ever-changing set of goalposts, differing from person to person and perhaps not easily summed up in a 10 point list. The key is in the search, and I only hope that search will continue long into the future.

Catalogue Information
The Search for the Perfect Pub: Looking for the Moon Under Water, by Paul Moody and Robin Turner.
First published 2011.
Published by Orion Books.
Hardcover. 288pp. ISBN 978-1-4091-1267-9.

Moving swiftly along as ever, let’s return to the Monopoly board (UK edition). This is the only property on the board named for a single building, and that building is, thankfully for our purposes, a pub. Or perhaps rather an “inn”. Though there’s nothing especially precise about any of the terms used for drinking places, it is one of the oldest and represents an establishment that serviced travellers with food and lodgings,¹ which the Angel once did.

Figure 88. The Angel Inn (Islington N1), now closed.

Of course, nowadays it’s neither pub nor inn and offers none of those functions: it’s a bank. There’s a plaque commemorating its inclusion on the canonical Monopoly board, but there’s nothing to indicate its former use (aside from the existence next door of a Wetherspoon’s pub, opened in 1998 and opportunistically named The Angel after its predecessor). Before it was a bank, it was a restaurant. It hasn’t been a pub since around 1921, when it was sold by the brewers Truman Hanbury Buxton to Lyons, who promptly reopened it as the Angel Cafe Restaurant.² Which means it wasn’t even a pub when the Monopoly board was set.

So what’s the reason for its prominence, giving its name as it does not only to a tube station, and by extension an area of London, but also to a (fairly cheap) property on Monopoly?

Earliest History

What is now this stretch of Islington High Street was once part of the Great North Road, a coaching route leading from the City of London to the north (and now largely followed by the A1 trunk route).³ It was, as it remains, a major artery and as such has always been well-provisioned with hostelries. Records for the area go back as far as the 16th century and even then mention four or five establishments on this road in the immediate vicinity, with many more mentioned in records over successive centuries.⁴ Some of these almost certainly existed further back in time, and although the earliest firm record of the Angel Inn is in 1614 (as The Sheepcote), its existence may stretch back as far as the 13th century.⁵

Coaching Inn

The Sheepcote was rebuilt as a coaching inn in around 1638, and may have taken the Angel name at that time. For around two centuries it was one of the prime sites on the coaching route, being located just by the final hazardous stretch into the City. The Great North Road on which it sat originally led from Smithfield Market along St John Street, with another major route leading from the City along Goswell Road. When City Road was built in the mid-18th century, a tollgate was set up where it joined these other, older routes. The Angel was sited at just the point where all these routes converged.

It wasn’t until 1819 that it was demolished and replaced by something like the building that stands today (the present building with its impressive dome dates from a later rebuilding in 1899).⁶ Though this was hardly the end of the coaching era (some of London’s other coaching inns survived until the late-19th century), it’s fair to say that it was only a matter of decades before the coaching trade would be consigned to irrelevancy by the coming of the railways.

The Area

Like several parts of London (the Elephant & Castle, Fitzrovia, Swiss Cottage, and possibly Nunhead, though there’s a fuller post to be made on this phenomenon), the name of the most prominent pub has also come to be used for its surroundings. In the case of the Angel, it’s more of an enclave between Clerkenwell and Islington, and as its placement on the Monopoly board suggests, not always a particularly salubrious one. Even now, there are patches of estate housing, particularly on the Pentonville side of the Angel, which remain fairly rough compared to their wealthier, upmarket neighbours in Barnsbury and Canonbury, while Chapel Market retains a rambunctiousness that contrasts starkly with the thoroughly ersatz, middle-class shopping experience that is Upper Street.

The latter provides more of a clue to the area’s current character, it having made great gentrifying leaps since the Monopoly board properties were chosen in the 1930s. Some even say the choices were set at a meeting in the Angel itself.⁷ Given the game’s subject, a bank seems an appropriate setting for this legacy, and maybe if the same choices were made today, the meeting would happen at a bank. In any case, the Angel Islington remains a prominent landmark, one perhaps more coveted now than when it was a pub.

Footnotes
[1] Paul Jennings, The Local: A History of the English Pub (Stroud: Tempus, 2007) pp19-38. Jennings has a very useful discussion of the many distinctions, noting that ‘inn’, ‘tavern’ and ‘alehouse’ are the oldest terms, “used in a government survey of 1577, which provides the first detailed information we have on drinking places”.
[2] This and other basic historical information is in the Wikipedia entry.
[3] Wikipedia entry.
[4] T.F.T. Baker and C.R. Elrington (eds.), A History of the County of Middlesex, volume 8, Islington and Stoke Newington Parishes (1985) p45, accessed online at British History.
[5] Russ Willey, Chambers London Gazetteer (London: Chambers, 2006) p11. Subsequent details about the change of name and the hazardous nature of City Road also come from this entry.
[6] Ben Weinreb and Christopher Hibbert (ed.), The London Encyclopaedia (London: Macmillan, 1983) p22.
[7] Wikipedia entry.

So this post isn’t about my usual topics, it’s more of an announcement that my London Pubology website is now up and live, so do feel free to visit it. It’s a fairly straightforward (and rather dry) list-based site which started as a way to present my pub photos. That was of course, also the genesis of this blog, but pubology.co.uk is less concerned with context than with information, really. It’s my pub database essentially.

I should clarify that it is not intended in any way to compete with or replace Kevan’s excellent Pubs History (Dead Pubs) website. I have used that site for research purposes and linked to it wherever possible; it is still the best source for historical census and directory information about pubs across the South-East of England (the notes and sources for my information are a rather late addition to my own work which I’m still adding). Instead, what I’m trying to build up is a list of all drinking establishments past and present, plotted carefully on a map of London, with links to sources and resources, and of course a photo if I have one. In this sense, it’s very much a work in progress, and so far I have only put up a smallish number of postcode areas (for that is how it is organised), and even those still require much work.

What I am keen to try to figure out, though — and this is where my readers can help — is what kind of use it can be. I want it to be useful to people, so I’d really appreciate suggestions for improvements or changes. I have my own ideas of course, and I am working with Kake from Randomness Guide to London (who has been invaluable in getting this site actually made) to improve it all the time. But it would still be really helpful to be able to get some ideas about things that could be changed to make it more accessible, to give it wider value.

In the meantime, there it is. Do have a look

I wanted to do a quick update with some happy pub news, for two reasons. The first is that I very rarely get around to updating this blog, what with spending my spare time updating my London Pubology database website, not to mention the occasional time spent in an actual pub (such as last night, when I was with friends enjoying a Thornbridge Brewery tap takeover at The Craft Beer Co. Pentonville N1). The second reason is that we are often fed news stories about how many pubs are closing every year/month/week/minute; it always makes for doleful reading (though I’d question where some of those statistics are coming from in some of the stories).

So I thought it might be nice to feature a former pub building that has been rescued from its alternative latter-day use and returned to us as a pub. Here it is five years ago, which as far as I’m aware is what it’s looked like since it closed around the start of the 1990s (when it was called The Stick of Rock) and until it reopened earlier this year.

Figure 89. The Stick of Rock (Shoreditch E2), closed.

And here it is earlier this month, with the original name (presumably) revealed and those ugly roller shutters removed, but otherwise much the same.

Figure 90. The Well and Bucket (Shoreditch E2).

I would not of course be surprised if that’s just a replica of the original painted signage¹ but it looks pretty good nonetheless. Inside, as is the modern custom, any internal divisions have been removed, the floor is stripped back to the boards, and what remains of the wall tiling has been retained and buffed up (photo of the interior). It’s very much a modern pub, but in an area where too many of these have been lost in favour of bars and clubs, it is, pleasingly, still a pub.

So that’s a rare one for the other column of the ledger, pubs that have been found again.

Footnotes:
[1] For example, they have a mock-up of an old-fashioned sign on the inside wall, though it seems that the company who made it specialises in such signs. There’s a similar one behind the bar in the above-mentioned Craft Beer Co. pub.

*shuffles quietly in* Hello, it’s been a while.

So back in the day, when I was actually writing posts (though I never really got above one every month at best), I did round-ups of postcode areas. London has a lot of them, especially when you consider the outer London boroughs, but it’s the way I’m organising my London Pubology website, which is these days where I’m putting most of my attention. Perhaps I will write more of these posts to highlight new areas I’ve added, and writing them may spur me to write more in general. In the meantime, think of this as a little pub-related walking tour of an area. This after all is how I experience bits of London sometimes, and it’s certainly how I experienced UB7, having ventured out to that part of the world for the first time ever yesterday, to take photos.

Figure 91. The White Horse (Longford UB7).

So your first burning question is likely to be “Where is UB7?” if you haven’t already exclaimed “But that’s not London!” To get the latter issue out of the way, it’s been part of Greater London since 1965,¹ falling within the London Borough of Hillingdon (before that it was in Middlesex, as it still is to the Post Office ²). To cover all the different areas that could be considered (and have historically been considered) to make up London would take a longer post than anyone would wish to read, but for my purposes, an area being geographically located within Greater London makes it London.

UB7 is a postcode lying to the far west of Greater London and is bisected by the M4 motorway. It lies to the north of Heathrow Airport and to the south of Hillingdon and Uxbridge (the head town from which it gets the ‘UB’ postcode prefix), taking in the conurbation of West Drayton and Yiewsley, as well as the villages of Harmondsworth, Sipson and Longford. Unsurprisingly, given its location, a large proportion of the employment in this corner of the world is related to the nearby airport. In fact, the continued existence of parts of UB7 — specifically Sipson and some of Harmondsworth — have in recent years also been under threat from that very airport (though these plans have largely since been shelved).³

Yiewsley

It would take the insight of a greater geographer than I (well, it would probably take a local) to disentangle Yiewsley from West Drayton to its immediate south, but the railway line and the Grand Union Canal alongside which it runs form a convenient boundary between the two (though historically it’s a bit more complicated than that). Of the two, Yiewsley is the more recently developed area, and it began to be built up from when the canal was cut through in the late-18th century.⁴ To one such as myself walking around it, Yiewsley feels rather more recent even than that, its High Street in particular dominated by large modern stores, residential blocks and unremarkable stretches of post-war shop units, among which the (shuttered) Red Cow feels somehow typical. (The George and Dragon to the north is older and still operating, but doesn’t make a particularly strong visual impression.)

Figure 92. The Brickmakers (Yiewsley UB7).

Until the mid-20th century, Yiewsley was a centre for brickmaking, with the brickfields employing a sizable number of local labourers. The pub pictured here (The Brickmakers, formerly The Brickmakers’ Arms, fig. 92) is one of the sole remaining hints at this manufacturing past, which at a commercial scale goes back to the 19th century, though there are indications it may have started as early as the 15th century.⁵ Industrial units still dominate the eastern stretch of Yiewsley along the Grand Union Canal and then for several miles more through adjoining Hayes — including the curious and very recent little enclave of Stockley Park (with its own postcode and its own Wetherspoon’s)⁶ — but most of the pubs which once served this thirsty population (The Dawley Arms, The Rising Sun and The Foresters’ Arms) have since disappeared.

West Drayton

A much older settlement lying to the south of the railway line, West Drayton village was historically an agrarian community focused around The Green, a verdant rectangle of grass with roads and homes on its edge dating back as far as the 16th century (though the settlement can trace its roots for several centuries before this). None of the taverns on The Green itself are still going (The Swan was rebuilt in the 1960s and only recently demolished), though The King’s Head building is still there, little altered it seems, and blending in seamlessly as a residential property (which is quite often what pubs were in the past, i.e. houses that were open to the public).

Figure 93. The Railway Arms (West Drayton UB7).

Development extended to the north of The Green with the opening of the canal (by 1800) and then the railway station (in 1838), meaning that The Railway Arms (fig. 93) is the oldest remaining pub.⁷ Over recent years it appears to have gone through a patchy period, closing and opening several times, but it’s an attractive building with its balcony and large upstairs windows. Further residential development to the south and east in recent decades has also included a flat-roofed estate pub The Cat and Fiddle!, still clinging on with the addition of a jaunty exclamation mark, while a much older pub overlooking Fray’s River (The Angler’s Retreat) has recently closed, presumably finding that neither angling enthusiasts nor the adjoining caravan park (itself carefully tucked out of sight) have contributed sufficiently to its survival.

Harmondsworth and Sipson

These two villages, lying a mile apart and connected by Harmondsworth Lane, have their own extensive history, with the former dating back as far as West Drayton if not earlier, though both have remained very much sleepy and village-like at their cores (despite the larger modern commercial developments at their fringes). I know Harmondsworth’s name from the address listed on the colophon page of many Penguin Classics books I read when I was younger (though Penguin Books has since left the area). To most, though, if they know it at all, Harmondsworth is famed especially for its Tithe Barn, one of the largest of its type remaining in the country, a timber-framed construction built in 1427 by the manor’s then-owner Winchester College. The church of St Mary’s is even older, and I wouldn’t be surprised if its inns dated back as far, though records do not reveal precisely when these were established (as records rarely do when it comes to pubs).

Figure 94. The Sun Inn (Harmondsworth UB7), now closed.

At the village’s heart is The Five Bells and The Sun Inn (fig. 94), with The Crown just to the side, an impressive number of pubs for such a small location (even if the one pictured closed in 1913). All of them definitely existed in the 18th century, and it’s likely that the Sun Inn’s building dates to the 16th century.⁸

From here, it’s no great effort to walk to nearby Sipson, even smaller and arrayed lengthwise along Sipson Road, where there are two further pubs — The Plough and The King William — though a third, The Crown, has for the last few years been a restaurant.⁹

Longford

Crossing the A4 from Harmondsworth and heading south-west past the Colnbrook Bypass, we come to the last stop on our tour, the village of Longford. The Bypass prompted a lot of development when it was constructed in 1929 (not the least of which was a prominent and quite recently-demolished pub at its intersection with the old Bath Road, The Peggy Bedford¹⁰), but in some ways it helped to protect Longford from too many changes and preserve its villagey feel. Even Heathrow seems a distant and shadowy presence, until that is an airplane taking off a few hundred metres away shatters the tranquillity — which only happens every few minutes. The lunchtime table of office workers from nearby British Airways headquarters toasting a colleague on her imminent departure for a new job also suggested the character of the area when I visited the area’s oldest remaining pub, The White Horse (fig. 91), which nestles only a few metres away from the more reserved presence of The King’s Arms. Both are situated on the Bath Road, which for just this mile or so is a quiet village high street, thanks in part to that Bypass as well as to a fortuitous curve in the road, shielding the village centre from the world beyond, where Bath Road soon swoops over the M25.

It is, in short, a fascinating area where the sylvan pleasures of a pastoral existence constantly rub up against the frightening monolithic conformity of modern development, even if it never seems quite as existentially bleak as in, say, the novels of JG Ballard. The drinking establishments reflect this too, as the number of preserved pubs of the past contend with an increasing number of modern redevelopments and vacuous hotel bars with their particularly transient guests. Current government policy has preserved some of this for another few years at least, but who knows what further changes might be in store.

See also:
For a full list of current and former pubs in the UB7 postal district, see the London Pubology site.

Footnotes:

[1] As ever, refer to Wikipedia for more information about the administrative reorganisation of the area around London under the Local Government Act 1963 (Wikipedia link), which took effect on 1 April 1965.
[2] The postal counties were discontinued officially in 1996 (Wikipedia link), but are still optional and occasionally crop up. To recap, Middlesex no longer exists in any meaningful way.
[3] There’s a long article over at Wikipedia detailing the proposals. One wonders what the effect on the area would be if the airport were entirely relocated elsewhere in the country (as some alternative proposals suggested, the most reported — perhaps because the most extreme — being ‘Boris Island’ in the Thames Estuary). However, from a realistic point of view it seems unlikely that total relocation will ever happen.
[4] When built this was called the Grand Junction Canal. It was given assent for construction in 1793 and was fully open by 1800 (Wikipedia entry).
[5] According to Susan Reynolds (ed.), A History of the County of Middlesex, volume 3 (1962, accessed online, British History Online link), there was an area called ‘Brick-field’ in West Drayton in the 16th century. The last of the brickmakers left in 1935 as the resources were used up, and the industry was extended to sand and gravel extraction from this point onwards.
[6] It was built in the late-1980s (so, at the same time as the Docklands were rather more famously being retrofitted for late capitalism) and is a sort of airless West London model workers’ community albeit at a smaller and more appropriately boutique scale: well-kept open space, an upmarket golf course, a shopping centre by an artificial lake, many many office blocks and roads along which very few people are permitted to drive. Refer to “Stockley Park” in Russ Willey, Chambers London Gazetteer (Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap, 2006). Incidentally, that postcode is UB11, and of course London Pubology has (a brief) a page for it.
[7] The West London Pub Guide, 2nd ed. (St Albans: CAMRA, 2005) states it was built in 1820, though this is 18 years before the arrival of the railway, so either it had a different name when it opened, or CAMRA’s information is incorrect.
[8] T. F. T. Baker, J. S. Cockburn and R. B. Pugh (eds.), A History of the County of Middlesex, volume 4 (1971, accessed online, British History Online link).
[9] While I’m talking about Sipson, I should mention in passing The Three Magpies (TW6), which though it is in a different postcode district, still falls under this area historically and has just as much history as the pubs above, even if it now feels overwhelmed by the thundering passage of the Bath Road out the front and the airplanes behind.
[10] Prior to being named after her, this pub was called The King’s Head, and naturally had quite a long history in the area, the last century of which was under the proprietorship of the Bedford family. One can only imagine the force of personality Mrs Bedford must have wielded in the locality to have had the pub take her name.

Recently, I had beery evenings over three successive nights that took in three very different kinds of pub, almost a tour of London’s pub history in a way. It got me thinking about the internal layout of pubs and how this too has changed over time. I mean, mainly it got me thinking about how nice beer (and socialising with friends over beer) can be, but this isn’t a beer blog, so back to pub interiors.

Figure 95. The bar in the back room at The King William the Fourth (Leyton E10).

The first evening was as part of a pub crawl organised by the Londonist website, focusing on ‘Ye Olde’ pubs, and it started at arguably¹ the most venerable of all London city pubs, Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (Holborn EC4). The brewer that owns and runs the establishment, Samuel Smith’s, is known for enhancing the historical appeal of its pub estate,² but one gets the feeling that little work was needed on this site. It consists of a large number of rooms which, in the way of very old buildings, feel as if they’ve been been idiosyncratically fitted to the space available rather than the space being at the service of any kind of coherent plan (and which must be a nightmare for those trying to retrofit accessibility). There’s a single entrance at the side, so there’s no segregation at this point, although there are remaining indications that some of the more far-flung subterranean spaces were once reserved for men only. There are also a number of upstairs levels which will always have been intended for private functions and meetings (amongst other uses). After all, historically the public house hasn’t been a place just for conviviality and drinking, but for hosting meetings and gatherings, including at one time the day-to-day work of local dignitaries and officials — the public house being basically the original conference centre.

With a far larger, more wide-ranging and, dare I say it, more keenly priced beer selection than the Cheshire Cheese,³ one of East London’s finest pubs is The King William the Fourth in Leyton, home of the Brodie’s brewery, which hosts an annual Easter beer festival known as the Bunny Basher. I’ve only been going for two or three years yet it already feels like time-honoured tradition, but that’s the kind of atmosphere that the best pubs can inspire. This Victorian corner edifice dates from 1891, at a time when rebuilding pubs in ever more imposing and sumptuous forms was at its height. Like any of these pubs — and like the refurbished Sam Smith’s ones already mentioned — it would once have been split into at least two (but probably more) internal rooms with names like the Public Bar and Saloon Bar, perhaps a Ladies Bar, a Tap Room or a Jug & Bottle (for off-license beer sales). There’s still a sense of that division in the narrow passage between the front and rear spaces of the pub and their separate bar areas (though the rear bar is now unused, fig. 95).

However, as with most other pubs of the era, partitioning walls and doors have long since been removed in the modernising zeal of the mid- to late-20th century. Despite this, there’s still a sense of two different worlds coexisting, especially at the beer festival. Part of the front room is occupied by a stalwart of local drinkers, whose beers of choice are given a wide berth by the beer tourists in from the reaches of Hackney, Islington and beyond. A wall might once have divided these tribes, and in truth some pubs still retain the sense of an uneasy detente between them in the absence of such a wall, but here there’s no sense of ill will or distrust: everyone has their place in a good pub and all should be welcome to it.

Figure 96. Looking across the trestle tables to the beer fridges inside Mother Kelly’s (Bethnal Green E2).

Striking a bold contrast is the newest — indeed, one of the most recent to open in London. Mother Kelly’s (Bethnal Green E2, fig. 96), which I went into on the Thursday before Easter and which had been open for just over a week by that point, is the latest example in the ongoing evolution of the drinking establishment, which some may feel more comfortable calling a bar than a pub, perhaps, though it serves a wide variety of primarily draught beers on its 23 taps. It’s also housed in a railway arch, which seems to be the kind of site increasingly being claimed by London’s brewing confraternity, though that may largely be because there’s little other accommodation in inner London that’s affordable.

Yet in some respects this is nothing new for London. It’s not the first pub to style itself a ‘tap room’, which as mentioned above is itself just an historical name for one of the rooms in the older, Victorian form of the public house (originally, one imagines the room where the beers were dispensed, but over time it lost that meaning). This new establishment has only ever had one room of course, because it’s a railway arch, but the affectation also links it to similar tap rooms attached to breweries in arches nearby, like the London Fields Brewery (Hackney E8) up the road or, in South London, Brew by Numbers (SE16) and Anspach & Hobday (SE1), just two of the brewers on the increasingly well-known ‘Bermondsey Beer Mile’.

If I like it, that’s largely because it appeals to some of my own predilections in beer, but at the same time I recognise it only serves one narrow (if increasingly larger) segment of the pub market, and not even one that I necessarily want to inhabit all the time. It seems as if the Victorian ideal of separating the different classes and categories of drinker is now being applied to the market as a whole, so where once there were rooms (one for the riff-raff and one for the gentlefolk, one for the men, another for the ladies), now there are entirely separate establishments. There were back then, too, though — there were beer houses and wine merchants and (more in the 18th century) gin shops nestling up against the public house. Modern Bethnal Green feels like a modern case in point: Mother Kelly’s is to the rear of a traditional locals’ boozer, The Dundee Arms, which is itself sat alongside a cocktail bar baiting its trendily-bearded target audience with the sobriquet Satan’s Whiskers.

So perhaps the lesson is that not all pubs are for all people, and that that’s fine. Perhaps even my impression of the harmonious union of drinkers at the King William the Fourth is a fiction too — I after all speak from a world of middle-class entitlement, and it may be the locals only thinly tolerate my presence the better for their local to stay open and (relatively) unchanged. There are certainly cases where such inroads have tilted decisively towards more exclusionary spaces.⁴ Indeed, there are plenty of pubs that more people than I have mourned the loss of, even as they are still open and trading. However, writing right now (and setting aside the troubling closure of some fine community pubs), the wide variety of drinking establishments in London seems exciting, so quite how it will develop will be of great interest.

Footnotes:

[1] The question of what is the oldest pub in London (or indeed, in any given place) is one of those eternally-debated issues which, like other perennial favourites such as “does God exist?”, are ones to which there is effectively no possible answer, and the responses to which in any case aren’t really very meaningful. It’s objectively an old pub in an old building, so let’s leave it at that.

[2] By this I mean that they have a habit both of preserving historical pub interiors (which is to be commended), but also of recreating them where these interiors had been knocked through or modernised prior to their arrival.

[3] Those writing about Samuel Smith’s pubs often frame their discussion with respect to the brewer’s keen pricing, but this really just applies to the draught beer, and even here there have been significant increases in price over the last few years. If you are drinking their wine, spirits or bottled beer, you won’t really notice much difference with any other local pub. Whereas, at the time of writing, all pints at the King William IV of their own Brodie’s beers cost £2.50.

[4] I wanted to use the term “hipsterism” but I’m well aware this is a contentious word (Chris Hall has written well about it) and I don’t want to contribute to it becoming another class-based hate term like “chav”.