The historic pubs that Make Britain great...
If these hostelries were good enough for Shakespeare, Dickens and Sir Christopher Wren, than Express writer JAMES MURRAY is keen to learn more
AS WE enter Ye Olde Watling pub in the City of London, its cheery landlord Lee Walton breaks off from putting up Christmas lights to announce: “The history man is here!” Lee instinctively knows what tour guide John Warland needs to lubricate his larynx, so even though it’s 10.30 in the morning, he jumps down from his ladder to pull his first pint of the day.
Nursing a frothy pint of London Pride, John relaxes among the mighty beams, which have offered silent support to countless drinkers over the centuries.
“This is one of the oldest pubs in Britain, never mind London,” he explains, between sups. “It’s probably been a pub for more than a thousand years because it’s named after Watling Street, a Roman thoroughfare which dates back to AD46. It started in Dover, came through what was then Londinium, and went all the way to north Wales. This pub is such a survivor.”
And it’s still going strong despite the pandemic, several lockdowns and continued working from home, all of which have drained custom.
With a new strain of Covid now causing concern, the hospitality trade is braced once again for a body blow at what should be its most profitable time of the year.
Figures reveal the total number of pubs operating in the UK fell by 3,247 between March last year and September 2021 – leaving just under 48,000 licensed premises open.
Independently-run pubs accounted for nearly three-quarters of all closures between July and September.
Back in Ye Olde Watling, John – author of Liquid History, a guide to London’s greatest hostelries, and a respected pub tour guide – continues: “Imagine no coffee shops, office blocks or fancy restaurants. Many, many centuries ago this would have been a room in a house with just some simple wooden furniture and a fire.
“The husband was probably working around the Thames, as a customs official perhaps.To earn extra money his wife would be making what we’d call home brew and running the pub.
“Come the Great Fire of London in 1666, it burnt down but it was rebuilt two years later, probably with some of the timbers damaged in the fire. Look at that upright, slightly curved beam over there. I reckon that was rescued from another building damaged by the fire.”
Joining us for a natter, landlord Lee adds: “I live above the pub with my wife Dominika and our baby.You can really sense the history up there. The floors go up and down and the walls have supports to even everything up.”
“Well,” John tells him, “it was good enough for Sir Christopher Wren when he was building St Paul’s Cathedral.
“He based himself in the rooms upstairs, where you sleep. He laid his plans out, spoke to his builders, in your front room. It took 35 years to build the cathedral so he spent a lot of time here.”
But we didn’t have the luxury of time, we were off to the next history lesson… at The Cockpit, a wedge of elegant grandeur in St Andrew’s Hill, round the corner from the Mansion House, where drinkers used to bet on the cock fights held there.
“The owner of the losing bird would be hoisted up inside the pub and pelted with bottles by those who’d lost their bets,” says John, a former greenskeeper at Wentworth golf club. “It would have been really wild in here. You can imagine feathers flying, blood, beer on the floor, shouting, sweating. It must have been deafening.
“William Shakespeare walked over this ground many times. We know he bought a property called The Blackfriars Gatehouse in 1613 which is on this site or very near. It was also destroyed in the Great Fire.”
Some of his plays were staged nearby before the Bard moved across the Thames to establish a theatre.
The present pub was built in the 1840s and had various names but was renamed The Cockpit in 1849. Paintings on the wall capture cockfighting scenes and landlord Dave Cook, 71, who has run the pub with wife Patricia for 30 years, has created a mini museum of historical artefacts on an unused balcony.
WITH THE City workforce not yet back to full strength, he worries. “We’ve got the history and the charm – now all we need is more customers. We long to see the pub buzzing again. We’ll retire soon but we know The Cockpit will go on. It has survived worse things than Covid.”
Walking west from St Paul’s we come across an art nouveau gem with unique artworks based on the Dominican monks who lived on the site from 1276. Built in 1875, The Black Friar is a wedge-shaped building sitting among a warren of alleys. In 1905, landlord William Petit gave it the makeover of all makeovers.
Henry Poole, master of the Art Workers’ Guild, created mosaics for the outside and carved figures, and architect H Fuller Clarke revamped the inside with 50 different types of marble.
“Stepping into the restaurant area is like entering a grand Turkish bath with superbly cut marble,” says John. “It is a Byzantinestyled dining chamber, unique to the country. There is nowhere else quite like it.
“There are art nouveau butterfly motifs, marble clocks and window frames. The stained glass artwork is as good as anything you would see in a cathedral.
“Monks gaze down on you and your eye is drawn to bizarre carvings – Humpty Dumpty, a bear and a honeypot, a Lilliputian scene in an alcove with sleeping giants. The value of
‘The owner of the losing cock would be hauled up inside the pub and pelted with bottles’
this work is unknown but I would say it is priceless.” There’s even said to be a ghost.
“You can just imagine a monk-like figure in black appearing from behind one of the marble columns, walking about and then disappearing through the curved mosaic ceiling designed to fit snugly into the railway arch.”
JOHN, savouring his pint of Landlord ale, adds: “It is probably the world’s first themed pub and certainly the best.The monks are omnipresent but there is humour here too. It is just a delight. We are lucky to have it.”
The fact that we do is largely down to late poet laureate Sir John Betjeman, who led a campaign to stop the pub’s destruction to make way for offices in the 1960s. Sustained by the Black Friars’ steak and ale pie and sticky toffee pudding, we head off to a pub that should be called the Christopher Wren, but is in fact named The Old Bell Tavern.
While the architectural genius was hobnobbing at the Watling ale house, he had this pub built for the builders working on St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street.
“It makes perfect sense,” explains John, 39. “Wren knew he had to keep his workers happy. They would literally get up, have a pint of beer and then walk 10 yards to get to work. The church is magnificent, so they did a great job.
“This pub is full of level changes and fireside snugs. There is a stunning stained glass window at the front, which would have been the off-licence.” While on Fleet Street, it would have been disrespectful to pass by the
small alley that leads to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (rebuilt in 1667). Ale has been supped here since the 1540s.
Over the open fire, there’s a painting of a waiter who would probably have served Charles Dickens in the 1800s.
“To think that Dickens relaxed in this very room, sharing a joke with his friends and planning his books,” ponders John. “Oh to hear him talk about Tiny Tim, Little Nell, David Copperfield...”
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Darnay celebrates freedom with a “simple supper and a few fine wines” at the Cheese. Many years later it’s next claim to fame was Polly the Parrot, an African grey whose blue language kept customers chuckling for 40 years. When she fell off her perch in 1926, she was stuffed and put in a glass case behind the bar.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain, Voltaire and Dr Johnson all drank here, but none made such an indelible mark on pub history as John Warland. Leading these pub tours is thirsty work, but, hey, someone’s got to do it.
Liquid History: An Illustrated Guide To London’s Greatest Pubs by JohnWarland (Bantam Press, £12.99) is out now. For free UK P&P on orders over £20, call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832 or visit expressbookshop.com
For more information on JohnWarland’s London pub tours, visit liquidhistorytours.com