Jeffrey Johnson’s Favourite Pubs
One day Jeffrey Johnson walked into the Bishopsgate Institute, deposited a stack of his splendid photographs with Archivist Stefan Dickers and left without another word. We can only conclude that these fond pictures from the seventies and eighties record the enigmatic Jeffrey’s favourite pubs. Some are familiar, but for the locations of the others – some of which are long gone – I call upon the superior experience of my readers.
Hoop & Grapes, Aldgate (Dentures Repaired)
Sir Walter Scott, Broadway Market
Knave of Clubs, Bethnal Green Rd
Dericote St, Broadway Market
Crown & Woolpack, St John St, Clerkenwell
Horn Tavern, Knightrider St, City of London (now known as The Centrepage)
Unknown pub
The Queen’s Head, City of London
The Queen’s Head, City of London
Unknown pub
Unknown pub
Old Bell Tavern, St Pancras
Magpie & Stump, Old Bailey
The Mackworth Arms, Commercial Rd
Green Man
Green Man
Marquis of Anglesey, Ashmill St
The Crooked Billet
The Bull’s Head (Landlords fight to save City pub)
The White Horse
The Olde Wine Shades, City of London
The Crispin, Finsbury Avenue
The Blue Posts, West India Dock Rd, Limehouse (Plasterer’s Required – Call at Back Door)
The Ticket Porter, Arthur St, City of London
Weavers Arms
Photographs copyright © Jeffrey Johnson
You may also like to take a look at
The Taverns of Long Forgotten London
Alex Pink’s East End Pubs Then & Now
The Gentle Author’s Next Pub Crawl
The Gentle Author’s Spitalfields Pub Crawl
The Gentle Author’s Dead Pubs Crawl
The Gentle Author’s Next Dead Pubs Crawl
The pub in photo number 》7《 is the PALM TREE, its still there, just off Grove Road near Mile End, it overlooks the canal, and the pub in photo number 》11 《 is the Crooked Billet at Walthamstow, (long gone) I used to walk past it almost every other week in the 70s on the way to Walthamstow Stadium just round the corner (incidentally also gone, only the tote remains), some good old photos hear, not long before just about the only thing that will be left of the London pub scene will be photos like these because their going down like nine pins now.
Wonderful photos, but how sad to see so many pubs boarded up and derelict.
When will the outcome of the hearing on Norton Folgate be known? Valerie
So many lovely buildings. That green tiled bottle place especially.
Lovely pictures ! What a shame that these old pubs have closed – all my life I’ve detested cigarette smoking, but I feel sure that the smoking ban in pubs led to the demise of some of these places. People enjoy smoking with their drink ! Hopefully most of these buildings are being preserved ? If its only in the form of apartments. The buildings themselves are of unique architectural value and will never be built like that again. Very sad….
The Green Man was situated at the junction of Sherbourne Lane off Queen Victoria Street. It was a Youngs pub and I used to have an occasional pint there. It was a real old pub, stained brown by decades of cigarette smoke.
The White Horse was in Little Britain, I have photographs of the same wall tiles and the front of the pub taken from Postman’s Park. The Bull’s Head was in Bishopsgate, not far from the legendary Black Raven where the Teddy Boys used to hang out. I believe the Blue Posts was off Cable Street but I don’t remember the name of the street. I have a vague memory of The Weavers Arms being somewhere near Barts Hospital but I could be mistaken.
Great pictures.
Correction: The Green Man was on the junction of Bucklersbury and Pancras Lane just off Queen Victoria Street. Both these streets have gone now, replaced by the ugly No 1 Poultry building that Peter Palumbo had built after he demolished the beautiful Gothic style Mappin and Webb building. The man was a philistine of the highest order.
Extraordinary collection! Each and every one of the closed down Public Houses looks
so desolate and cold now, when in in their day each and every one of them encompassed warmth, Jolliness, the familiar, friendship, worry, celebration, life, death. A whole motly crew of Humanity. Well done James.
Delighted to see the old Magpie and Stump again. And to report that the Hoop and Grapes is thriving, despite (or because of) its great age. Also thrilled to find that The Horn pub is not demolished, just renamed. I thought it had gone forever, along with most of Sermon Lane. Cheers!
No. 7 is not the Palm Tree, but I’d love to know what it is.
The Blue Posts in this post was at 73 & 75 West India Dock Road in Limehouse, it was for a time managed by Charlie Brown, whose famous pub was just across the road.
Interesting to read Malcolm’s comment that the area where The Green Man was situated has now been replaced by No 1 Poultry – the Wetherspoon’s pub in that building is also called The Green Man. Obviously a nod to its predecessor!
I agree with Malcolm Barr-Hamilton by the way, that’s not The Palm Tree in photo no. 7.
I am fairly certain I agree with Malcolm B-H that 7 is not the Palm Tree (though trying to find it on Google street view was a massive eye-opener!!!)… Am quite curious about 7 and which housing estate is beyond…
Malcom Barr-Hamilton you are RIGHT pic no 7 is NOT the Palm tree, I made a bit of a blunder on that one, NO excuses, Sorry.
No 7 is definitely not the Palm Tree, which is still standing near the canal. Don’t know what pub it was but I’ll bet it doesn’t exist anymore.
If it were possible to enlarge the image just slightly, there’s a street name on the side of No.7. I just can’t see it.
The architecture of the pub looks less Bethnal Green and more Hackney.
I remember the Crooked Billet at Walthamstow very well, we always used to stop there on coach outings up to the ‘smoke’.
“The Olde Wine Shades” in Martin Lane is still very much alive and still an El Vino. It is almost empty these days whenever I go in there (as I have been doing, off and on, for twenty years). For many, many years it was managed by the formidable Victor Little: and a man who knew his wines and had very strict views about dress and behaviour. Victor was an old-school bar manager: he wouldn’t serve women at the bar; and if a man wasn’t wearing a suit and tie, he wouldn’t serve him either. There is still a photograph of him, attending to an enormous barrel of wine, hanging on the wall. Old lags (such as me) still refer to the place as “Victor’s”.
What is now a snug was once a small off-licence counter that opened onto the street. It is at the right-hand end of the building.
Although I’d encourage everyone to take the detour off Cannon Street to visit it, I’m afraid it’s a shadow of what it was. The new staff don’t have the passion for wine that Victor had, and so often it feels like sitting in the ghost of what was once a busy, noisy, companionable bar.
The Magpie & Stump (as seen her) features in Chapter 6 of Iris Murdoch’s debut novel Under the Net as part of an epic pub crawl through the City. Recommended.
There are some great photo’s in this collection. Does anyone have a photo of a pub long gone called “The Long Bar” which was at Aldgate, near the bus station?
I recognise the old price list of FINE OLD IRISH or SCOTCH WHISKIES it was found behind a plaster wall in the Red Lion pub in Whitechapel Road in the 80’s when they were refurbishing the pub. There used to be four pub’s between the corner of Vallence Road and Whitechapel Station.
The Black Bull, The Red Lion, The Star and Garter and The Grave Maurice , sadly all gone now
No.7 is the Lord Clyde in Deptford
Terry Hurlock, if that pub was still there I would buy you a pint for that, I’v spent most of the day trying to track down that pub, if only you had posted your information last night while I still had twice as much hair as I’v got now.
The pub that definitely is not the Palm Tree (snow in picture) is thought to be the Brunswick Arms, MacDonald Rd, Upper Holloway, N19. Pub was demolished in the 1980’s but the flats believed to be in Vorley rd still exist and look the same. https://goo.gl/maps/VbQahiHT8RF2
Answer courtesy of Aileen Reid on Facebook.
No 7 is Not the Lord Clyde in Deptford. I knew the Lord Clyde and that isn’t it.
This is the Lord Clyde in Deptford:
http://www.closedpubs.co.uk/london/se8_deptford_lordclyde.html
Not the same pub.
Hello, someone on the East End Memories group on Facebook alerted me to this and I can identify one of these pubs – the seventh picture, I think. It is the Brunswick Arms in Upper Holloway. I posted a load of map and photo evidence about it on Facebook but I don’t think I can here. But you can see an archive photo of it – http://archive.historicengland.org.uk/SingleResult/Default.aspx?id=1822765&t=advanced&io=true&pe=stiles&r=Photographer&l=all&page=29
The Weavers Arms was at 36 Sun Street, EC2 and was demolished in the mid to late 1980s during the building of Broadgate.
The Old Bell, St Pancras. We’ve been sold a pup there, it was part of a set built on Cheney Rd N1, for the 1992 film Chaplin. Cheney Rd no longer exists, but the building at the far end of the street, The German Gymnasium, is still there.
I knew the Weavers Arms in Sun Street EC2 very well as I worked opposite the pub for Clarksons Holidays in the early 1970’s and all the staff used to meet in the pub for a Lunch time drink etc. What a shame all these pubs have now gone and Sun Street is now almost unrecognisable from the 1970s.
Forgive my ignorance but who is Jeffrey Johnson?
I too remember well The Weavers Arms in Sun Street as I worked for Ring and Brymer throughout the 70’s, it also brings to mind all the little fascinating alleys and cut throughs all over that area, Happy days.
The photograph identified by another reader as the Crooked Billet in Walthamstow will make for poignant viewing for the comedian Freddie Davies, as it was here, as the age of ten, that he was placed on a barstool by his grandfather, the revue comic Jack Herbert, and went through his grandad’s act. Afterwards they passed the hat round so you could say technically that was his professional debut. I have seen photos of the pub from earlier in its life but never one like this. I am the cowriter of Freddie’s book Funny Bones, and an article about his connection to the Crooked Billet can be found here: https://funnybonesthebook.blogspot.com/2014/08/it-all-started-in-slough-no-make-that.html
Like Paul Robinson I also fondly remember the Weavers Arms in Sun Street.Clarksons Holidays was also my place of employ 1970-1973. Many a lunchtime and after work beverage and microwave meal was to be had with co workers. I luckily escaped to Australia a few months before Clarksons went belly up.
I was the Landlady of The Crispin after it had been refurbished in the sixties. It had a Shakespeare theme as I think it was near the site of the first theatre Shakespeare performed and wrote a play. Hearsay.
My father was an apprentice printer in Sun Street when the Crispin was a Beer House.he used to fetch Beer for the Printers.
Terrible that these old pubs have been pulled down for Develpment.