London's Riverside Pubs, Updated Edition E-Book

Tim Hampson

• Herausgeber: IMM Lifestyle Books
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 194

Beschreibung

Applying the winning formula of London's Best Pubs to focus on riverside watering holes, this book shows the best that the capital has to offer along the Thames and the Grand Union Canal. Extending from Walton-on-Thames to Thamesmead, the book features 100 pubs, giving a variety of venues for the perfect afternoon by the river. Divided by area and accompanied by photography showcasing both exteriors and interiors, the pubs described here will appeal to a broad range of visitors, both tourists and London residents alike. Every entry features an overview of the cask ales on offer, together with informative historical and architectural snapshots and details on the character of each pub. This title is suitable for: visitors to London who are looking for great riverside locations; and London residents who are looking for a break from their usual pub choices.

Leseprobe

LONDON’SRIVERSIDE PUBS

LONDON’SRIVERSIDE PUBS

Tim Hampson

CONTENTS

Introduction

Where to go if you like...

Freshwater Thames

The Swan

The Anglers (Walton-on-Thames)

The Weir (Walton-on-Thames)

The Flower Pot

The Magpie

Prince of Wales

Kings Arms Hotel

The Albany

Ye Olde Swan

The Bishop

The Gazebo

The Ram

The Hart’s Boatyard

The Boaters Inn

Teddington to Putney

The Anglers (Teddington)

The Tide End Cottage

Barmy Arms

The White Swan

Watermans Arms

The Slug and Lettuce

The White Cross

Pitcher & Piano

The London Apprentice

The Bell & Crown

The City Barge

The Bulls Head (Chiswick)

The Ship (Mortlake)

Ye White Hart

The Bulls Head (Barnes)

The Mawson Arms

The Black Lion

The Old Ship

The Dove

The Rutland Ale House

Blue Anchor

The Crabtree Tavern

Duke’s Head

The Bricklayer’s Arms

The Boathouse

Chelsea to Tower Bridge

The Cat’s Back

The Ship (Wandsworth)

The Waterfront

The Cross Keys

The Waterside

The Riverside

Morpeth Arms

Tamesis Dock

Doggett’s Coat & Badge

The Black Friar

Founders Arms

The Pepys

The Banker

Old Thameside Inn

The Anchor

The Market Porter

The Mudlark

The Rake

The Barrowboy and Banker

The Horniman At Hay’s

The Dickens Inn

Tower Bridge Southside

Anchor Tap

All Bar One

The Angel

The Mayflower

Salt Quay

Ship and Whale

The Moby Dick

The Gipsy Moth

The Old Brewery

Trafalgar Tavern

The Yacht

Cutty Sark Tavern

The Pilot Inn

Anchor & Hope

Tower Bridge Northside

Town of Ramsgate

Captain Kidd

The Prospect of Whitby

The Narrow

The Grapes

Cat and Canary

The Fine Line

The Henry Addington

Pepper Saint Ontiod

The Ferry House

The Gun

Canalside/River Lea

The Black Horse

The General Eliott

The Weir (Brentford)

Grand Junction Arms

Union Tavern

The Bridge House

The Warwick Castle

Union Bar and Grill

Lockside

The Constitution

Rotunda

The Palm Tree

The Crown

Princess of Wales

Ferry Boat Inn

Pub addresses and websites

INTRODUCTION

This book is a journey, a tour from the greenery and gentle English countryside of Walton-on-Thames to the point where the River Thames almost meets the open sea. It is an expedition that embraces the fresh water of the Thames above Teddington and its locks, marking the river’s transition into a salty conduit that once brought the wealth of the world to the wharfs and docks that lined the riverside. The Thames and the other waterways which course through London are liquid history.

Royal connections

Walton-on-Thames is on the very western edge of London, a former Saxon settlement from where a river journey eastwards takes travellers past Hampton Court, built by Cardinal Wolsey from 1514 to 1521 but later aquired by Henry VIII. Its gardens are famous for their formal grandeur while the palace has a renaissance ceiling said to be one of the most perfect in the country. Then on to Kingston, once famed for its fisheries. The river was fordable here in Anglo-Saxon and Roman times, which probably bought wealth to the area. Its importance was cemented in medieval times when it was first bridged.

In Richmond little remains of a palace built by Edward I in the thirteenth century and subsequently enlarged by Henry VII. Here, the slopes on the banks give many fine views of the Thames and the bridge that was built in 1777. Two of England’s greatest painters, Turner and Reynolds, came to paint the beautiful scenes.

A further royal influence is found at Richmond Park that was created to provide a hunting ground for Charles I. Today it is one of London’s greatest parks, both a playground and home to a huge variety of wildlife, especially large herds of deer. It’s well worth making a detour to the top of Richmond Hill from where you can see the centre of London.

From Twickenham, east

Twickenham is another former Anglo-Saxon settlement, though today it is probably best known as the home of rugby union in England. Near the bridge is the original foundation of Syon, a monastery founded by Henry V to pay for the sins of his father. It was later moved to its current site. Syon House is now the home of the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, and the gardens were designed by Capability Brown. Look across the river and you’ll see the world-famous Kew Gardens, which has more than 25,000 plants. One of its most popular atractions is the Xstrata Treetop Walkway, which lets visitors wander through the tree canopy to see the gardens from a completely new perspective. There is also an underground Rhizotron display, showing how plants’ roots work.

From Kew the river then begins its journey through the centre of the capital, passing the Houses of Parliament and the Tower of London. The Houses of Parliament, or the Palace of Westminster as it is also known, date from the time of Edward the Confessor. It was a royal residence until the time of Henry VIII but was virtually destroyed by fire in 1834, and only Westminster Hall and St Stephen’s Chapel survive complete. It was rebuilt in the neo-gothic style in 1840. The Commons Chamber, where Members of Parliament debate, was destroyed by German bombs in 1941 and it was completely rebuilt and opened in 1950.

The skyline here is dominated by Big Ben, which is not the name of the Palace of Westminster’s clock tower but its giant bell. The chime is broadcast before the start of many news programmes, which first happened on New Year’s Eve 1931. Close by you’ll see the London Eye, a relatively new addition to London’s skyline. At 135m (443ft), it’s the tallest cantilevered observation wheel in the world, rising high above the buildings. Known as the ‘Millennium Wheel’ when it was opened in 2000, it is now one of the UK’s most popular tourist attractions. On a clear day it provides views for more than 40km (25 miles) in any direction. The giant wheel was intended to be an allegory for the end of the twentieth century, showing time turning from one century to the next.

The Millenium footbridge to London Bridge

Further down river, just past Blackfriars Railway Bridge, is London’s newest bridge – the Millennium footbridge – that links Bankside with the City. It opened on 10 June 2000 but was quickly closed two days later. People on a charity walk felt the bridge sway and it was quickly nicknamed the ‘Wobbly Bridge’. It remained closed for two years until engineers managed to solve the problem. The bridge offers a clear view of the south side of St Paul’s Cathedral, framed by the bridge supports, and some of the sweeping and soaring spires of Sir Christopher Wren’s other churches. A scene from the Harry Potter film The Half-Blood Prince was shot here.

St Paul’s is one of London’s most iconic and poignant images. A Christian church was certainly here in 604, and there might have been a Roman temple before that. A stone church was built in 675 but it was destroyed by the Vikings and rebuilt in 962, and that was in turn destroyed by fire more than 100 years later. The next church was completed in 1220 but it fell into misuse and was often used as a stables and by market traders. In 1634 Inigo Jones was commissioned to restore it, but his work was thwarted by the Great Fire of London in 1666. In 1675 work began on Wren’s new grand design, and this was finally completed in 1710 when the final block of Portland stone was put in place by Wren’s son. Restoration work in the 1930s, which saw the strengthening of the dome, probably saved it from destruction during World War II when bombs destroyed the high altar.

London Bridge was always falling down – well, so the nursery rhyme says – but the bridge’s latest incarnation, which opened in 1973 with its flying, sweeping design by Harold King, looks secure enough. No one knows when the first bridge was built here, but certainly by Roman times there was one. Destroyed and rebuilt many times, a stone bridge was built in 1176. It later became a street across the Thames with shops, houses and a chapel but eventually they fell into disrepair or sank into the London clay. This bridge lasted until 1825 and it’s here that London originally began. This is where the Romans, with their elephants, settled in AD43.

Londinium and the frost fairs

The Romans called the place Londinium, though they retained the ancient Celtic name for the river, Tamesis. The emperor Claudius clearly realized the strategic importance of the site. The rise and fall of the tide meant that the invaders’ boats, carrying cargo, soldiers and much more, could travel many miles inland. And while the marshy land was not ideal for building, it did give access to many parts of England and remained the only place in London where you could cross the river by bridge, certainly until 1750.

A mini-ice age engulfed the northern hemisphere from the fifteenth century, causing the Thames to freeze on many occasions, creating havoc for maritime trade. However, from the seventeenth century the freezing created a new form of entertainment, the frost fair. Londoners, ever willing to make a profit from any situation, organized stalls on the ice, selling freshly cooked food or souvenirs while jugglers and clowns entertained large crowds. The frost fair of 1813–14 was the last because Europe was warming up and a new bridge, built some 10 years later, had much wider arches, improving the flow of water. And when the Victorians harnessed new technology, installing locks and building the great docks, much of the flow of the Thames came under human control. The river has never frozen since.

The Tower to the Thames barrier

Journeying east, look north and you’ll see the Tower of London’s White Tower, built by William the Conqueror as a garrison and armoury to keep him safe from the people he had invaded. It has since been a royal palace, a zoo and was once the home of the Royal Mint. It was also a prison until 1820 where the kings of Scotland, France and England, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas Moore, Sir Walter Raleigh and even the future Queen Elizabeth I languished (for six months in the case of the young princess) or were beheaded. The entrance to the tower from the river is known as Traitor’s Gate and through its portal many a sad soul took their last steps. The nearby impressive Tower Bridge, which opened in 1894, is a steel structure with neo-gothic towers made of stone. Its two 1,000-ton bascules still regularly open to let river craft pass beneath.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, London was the largest city in Europe and the home port for the expanding British Empire. The river was so busy at this time that Daniel Defoe estimated that there were about ‘2,000 sail of all sorts not reckoning barges, lighters or pleasure boats or yachts’ using the wharves and quays that are the start of London Docks. St Katherine’s docks are to the east of the Tower, and from the bridge down to Tilbury there were once five great systems: London & St Katherine, India and Millwall, Royal Victoria & Albert, King George V and, on the south side, the Surrey Commercial. In their heyday each dock would have specialized in particular goods. At Limehouse a lock gives access to Regent’s Canal and the Lee Navigation, the journey’s end for most inland craft.

Downstream the river passes the revitalized docklands in the Isle of Dogs area with huge offices where there were once wharfs and cranes. On the south side stands the grandeur of Greenwich, with the Old Royal Naval College one of the river’s most fabulous landmarks. The glorious eighteenth-century building was designed to house old and disabled seamen on the site of a former Tudor palace, a favourite residence of Henry VIII and the birth place of Elizabeth I. Inside the Royal Naval College is the spectacular Painted Hall, now used as a dining room, with paintings by Sir James Thornhill that took 19 years to complete. This is where the body of Lord Horatio Nelson lay in state after his death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

Finally, on to the Thames Barrier that was built in the 1980s to stop rising tides from flooding London. The first line of defence against a surging North Sea, the Thames Barrier was officially opened in 1984. So far it has done its job well, protecting London from the powering tidal Thames but, if the battle is won, the war is not. London is built on clay and is slowly sinking into it. One day a new and even more powerful redoubt will have to be built.

The many faces of the Thames

It is not hard to imagine the Thames with one of its many cloaks on. The river has seen Celts, Angles and Saxons living alongside it. The Thames is the tranquil, magical and sometimes chaotic world of Three Men in a Boat and The Wind in the Willows. The Thames was the world’s greatest port. The Thames saw the scavenging mudlark and thieving footpad (two obsolete words, the first meaning someone who scours the river mud for anything of value, the second a robber). The Thames is where Samuel Pepys watched the flames engulf much of the city during the Great Fire of London. There is the Thames of industry and sweating stevedores (or dock labourers). And there is the Thames where, in 1790, William Wordsworth composed a poem from Richmond Bridge, called ‘Lines written near Richmond, upon the Thames at Evening’. He wrote, ‘Glide gently, thus for ever glide, O Thames! that other bards may see’. In 1819 Joseph Turner painted a panorama of the Thames, entitled ‘Richmond Hill, on the Prince Regent’s Birthday’.

Perhaps one of the most potent images is of the Thames as a royal river. Elizabeth I was born in Greenwich, imprisoned in the Tower, she reigned at Whitehall and died at Richmond. The Thames was wider then and the water purer. Salmon and swans would watch the spectacular state barges travel up to Hampton Court or even Walton Court or down the river past the glories of Greenwich.

Alehouses, inns and taverns

The River Thames is the UK’s second longest river and the longest in England. It stretches for 345km (215 miles) from its trickling source in the Cotswold Hills to the tumultuous open sea. From Walton-on-Thames eastwards there are 34 bridges, almost one for every mile to the Thames Barrier with many pubs en route. And it is beer that should be enjoyed in these pubs.

Nothing remains of the places where early Londinium residents drank beer. By the medieval period the streets of London would have had many alehouses, which looked little different from the surrounding houses where the householder – often a woman known as a ‘brewster’ – served home-brewed ale and beer. Some might have even offered accommodation, often no more than bedding on the floor or in a barn, perhaps sharing with horses.

Inns were purpose-built buildings for travellers and, since old London was a busy port and a place for pilgrims, the inns would have been packed. There was a large number around London Bridge, many of the inns being owned by the powerful monasteries. One – the now demolished Tabard, which was south of the river – was where the writer Geoffrey Chaucer sent off his travellers on the road to Canterbury in 1380.

Besides the alehouses and inns there were taverns but, since they sold wine, which was then expensive, there weren’t that many. However, some were built with galleries around a courtyard to provide an area for plays. One good example is the George, a short walk from the south side of London Bridge, off Borough High Street, Southwark, which still has some of its galleries intact. (Details of this pub are not in this book but they can found in London’s Best Pubs.) All three kinds of drinking house advertised their business with a sign outside the premises. A pole above the door, garlanded with foliage, signified an alehouse. From the fourteenth century, inns and taverns hung out a pictorial sign by which they could be identified in an illiterate age. In the sixteenth century many alehouses did the same. The tradition has continued to this day for licensed premises, since they were exempt from the Georgian restrictions on hanging signs. Many of the earliest signs used images drawn from heraldry, but by Georgian times there was greater variety reflecting trades, political affiliations and even events on the other side of the world.

From opulence to disrepair and success

By the mid-eighteenth century larger alehouses in London were becoming widespead, while inns beside the major roads or wharfs grew in grandeur with new ones being created to meet the needs of those now travelling by coach. (During this period the alehouse began to be known as a public house.) From the start of the nineteenth century the practice of building purpose-built pubs took hold and, as the population grew, so did the number of pubs. The late Victorian era also saw the creation of ostentatious interiors, notable for their opulently decorated mirrors, tiled walls and etched glass. And the development of the canals saw many pubs built to provide both drink and food for their new clientele. Furthermore, the development of the railways meant that pubs were now built in places, such as Hampton Court, to attract the day trippers.

However, the twentieth century saw many London pubs fall into disuse or disrepair because of the Great Depression, the two world wars and the fact that the city was no longer a thriving port. Furthermore, after 1945 there were government restrictions on building materials, with housing taking priority. But by the 1970s pubs were making a comeback. Old favourites were restored, new ones were built, people became more affluent and started eating out in pubs while women became more economically and socially independent and wanted pubs to suit their tastes. In addition, the riverside and the docks were redeveloped and had brand new pubs while old buildings, which might once have been a warehouse or bank, were converted into glittering glass palaces where people could enjoy themselves. The very best pubs were entering a new era of success.

Brewing beer

The Thames, as we know it today, was created 10,000 years ago, formed as the ice that had covered most of the UK melted away. People have lived along the Thames Valley since prehistoric days, 6,000 years ago, and it seems likely that these early settlers who were attracted by the fertile ground turned from hunter-gatherers into farmers. They grew grain to feed themselves and their animals, and also started to make and consume a mysterious drink that made them feel good – beer. The ingredients couldn’t be simpler: cereal (normally barley), water and yeast; today hops are added, but there is plenty of evidence that other plants and herbs were once used to inject flavour and/or keep the beer from spoiling. We know that barley, an essential ingredient of most beers, was grown 5,000 years ago and a British coin from about the first century BC has an ear of cultivated barley on one side. Ale, like bread, was an essential part of everyone’s diet.

It is likely that once the Romans left London, alehouses sprang up next to London Bridge and along the main roads. An alehouse was probably no more than a simple hut with a branch from an evergreen bush hung outside on a pole to attract customers. Later, with the arrival of William the Conqueror, the population around London Bridge grew and so did the practice of brewing beer. In fact by 1437 brewing in London had grown to such an extent that a charter was granted to brewers in the city of London to form their own trade association, the Brewers’ Company.

By the sixteenth century there were great beer houses close to St Katharine’s dock near Tower Bridge, with beer also being exported overseas to the Low Countries to be consumed by British troops. But it was in the Reformation, when a large number of Flemish immigrants settled in Kent bringing with them the practice of growing hops, that the traditional way of making beer was challenged. There was a huge row about the efficacy of using hops in beer, but from then on the practice was adopted.

London’s brewers

As London grew as a great trade centre, so brewing increased. In the early part of the sixteenth century there were 26 large brewers in the city, though most beer drunk here was still made by publican brewers. By the seventeenth century the City of London had more than 400 taverns, with names that were still commonplace 200 years later, brewing by the Thames or close to it. Courage, Whitbread and Charrington were on the river or had their own wharfs, and became part of the growing capitalist, industrialized society that saw London brewers send their beer across the globe. It wasn’t uncommon for admirals to send urgent requests to London brewers, complaining that the brewers in towns like Newcastle couldn’t supply enough beer to meet the demand.

In the fourteenth century the farmers of England looked to London as the market for their grain or hops, and accordingly great warehouses were built. Barley from Hertfordshire came by boat down the River Lea while craft brought the hops up the Thames from Kent. Beer production was now on a massive scale to slake the thirst of the 700,000 people living in the London area. Beer was a vital source of carbohydrate and, because it had been boiled, it was safer to drink than water.

New competition

The area around London Bridge became an important brewing centre. The soft water extracted from London’s wells was particularly good for the brewing of darker beers, such as milds and porters. The trade grew and London (with a population of more than three million in the 1870s) was, without doubt, the greatest brewing centre in the world. However, as tastes changed and transport became easier because of the canals and railways, people started to drink the lighter-coloured ales and bitters brewed in Burton upon Trent and Yarmouth. London’s brewers started to lose their preeminence and at railway stations such as St Pancras giant vaults were built to store the barrels of beer coming from the Midlands.

Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century London’s brewers were gripped by merger mania, and many were bought by brewers from other parts of the country and later from overseas. This, combined with the rapid rise in property prices and the fact that roads replaced rivers and canals as the main means of transporting goods, meant that the City of London was no longer a brewing centre. By 2010 all but one – Fuller Smith & Turner – of the many brewers operating in Victorian London had gone.

However, brewing in the capital is not dead, and a new breed of smaller brewers now exists. London is home to some of the country’s most creative brewers, as more than 60 have opened in the last few years. And where better than a pub on the River Thames or on one of London’s other waterside locations to have a drink?