East End pubs
There are many ways to explore the history of the East End of London. Walking the streets is one of the best. And if you can punctuate your walks with visits to some of Tower Hamlets more historic hostelries, all the better. Especially as East End pubs frequently have fascinating histories of their own. Often, in areas redeveloped beyond recognition, the pub is the oldest building left standing.
In the first of an occasional series, we’re going to look at the pubs which stretch out from St Katharine Docks, through Wapping and Limehouse to the Isle of Dogs. This could provide a good (though depending on your refreshment of choice, increasingly unsteady) afternoon’s walk. In months to come we’ll be looking at pub routes in other parts of the borough.
Ironically though, our route starts with a pub that has only stood in its present site for 30 years. The Dickens Inn, in St Katharine Docks is an odd mix of historical accuracy and 20th century conservation. The timber pub, originally a brewery and built in 1793, was discovered by builders demolishing a later brick-built warehouse in Docklands. The warehouse had been used to store spices. It was moved to its present site in 1974, as part of the regeneration of St Katharine Docks, themselves built in the 1820s. In 1976, Cedric Charles Dickens, grandson of the great novelist, officially opened the ‘old’ pub, now clad in modern weatherboarding but with its 18th century interior more or less intact. Today this 18th century building, with a 20th century façade, named after a 19th century author, and plonked in its present site in the mid 1970s, is a favourite with tourists who want to see what a real, old London pub is like.
Heading east, The Town of Ramsgate, on Wapping High Street, is one of Britain’s oldest surviving pubs – in fact it was probably serving beer during the War of the Roses in the 1440s. Tradition has it that Judge Jeffreys was caught here as he tried to escape to France. The Hanging Judge had of course despatched 300 or more East Enders, guilty and innocent, on the gallows behind the pub. He’d sentenced 800 more to transportation.
Just a few yards to the east of the Town of Ramsgate is the Captain Kidd, another Wapping pub with a bloody and criminal history. This inn was named for pirate William Kidd who, in 1701, was hanged in the streets of Wapping, then covered in tar and hung in chains at Tilbury – a grisly warning to other would-be pirates.
From here you can gaze across the river to the Mayflower at Rotherhithe. Another pub with a terrace backing onto the river, the Mayflower was the place where the Pilgrim Fathers moored their ship before setting off for America in 1620.
Heading further east to Wapping Wall we come to the third of the trio of historic Wapping hostelries, the Prospect of Whitby. Former regulars include the painter William Turner (famous for his seascapes and Thames pictures of course), diarist Samuel Pepys and Judge Jeffreys again. The Prospect of Whitby has a number of claims to fame in East End history – some stand up to scrutiny, some wither fairly quickly. Coming up to its 500th anniversary, the former Devil’s Tavern was a meeting place for smugglers and cutpurses. It’s also the home of one of the East End’s more fanciful myths … that the first fuschia in England was sold here by a sailor on his return from the Far East.
The Barleymow, in Narrow Street, isn’t as ancient as its Wapping neighbours but is an interesting bellwether of changing times in Docklands. Once the dockmaster’s house it has been pressed back into service, providing food and drink to the new Docklanders.
In Our Mutual Friend, a novel featuring the lightermen and dockers who worked on the Thames, Charles Dickens wrote of a riverside pub called The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. Tradition has it his description was based on the Bunch of Grapes public house in Limehouse, known today as the Grapes.
‘The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building … Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water … The available space in it was not much larger than a hackney-coach; but no one could have wished the bar bigger.’
Take a break in the cosy Narrow Street pub today and you’ll see that not that much has changed in the last 150 years.
Heading east again, you’ll find that Canary Wharf is, unsurprisingly, short on historic pubs, but the Henry Addington nods at the past, being named after the Prime Minister who opened the West India Docks in 1802.
A better bet is the Gun in Coldharbour, on the eastern edge of the Isle of Dogs. This was a trysting place for Lord Nelson and his mistress Lady Hamilton. It was also a traditional rest and refreshment spot for Thames lightermen waiting to dock their barges in the West India Docks.