Soho Pubs – Part 3

Just a relatively short post this Sunday as during the last week, all five days were on Jury Service, but it does give me the opportunity to continue the series of posts I started last August, looking at the pubs of Soho, and for part three, I am starting with:

The Spice of Life – Moor Street

The Spice of Life occupies a prominent position, at the end of two streets (Moor Street, to the right in the above photo, and Romilly Street to the left), and facing onto Cambridge Circus. In the over 200 years of the pub’s existence, it seems to have swapped the Moor Street and Romilly Street names, as the location of the pub, with today Moor Street being the address.

The pub seems to date from the late 18th century, when it was originally called the George, or the George and Thirteen Cantons, however I suspect the current building dates from the late 19th century and is of very similar architectural style to the Cambridge which I will look at next.

I cannot find any firm reference to this name, apart from it being used in a for sale advert in 1892 when it was listed as a “freehold property known as the George and Thirteen Cantons”.

The pub had a very similar, unusual name to another Soho pub, the Sun and 13 Cantons in Great Pulteney Street, and I assume the source of the name is the same for both, and from the Swiss watch-making community that lived and worked in Soho in the late 1800s.

By 1935, the pubs was known by two names, still the George and Thirteen Cantons, but also now the Scots Hoose.

I found this in newspaper reports on the 28th of September, 1935, where details of the will of a former licensee where given, as:

“John Ingram Moar, of ‘The Scots Hoose’, Cambridge Circus, London, licensee of ‘The George and 13 Cantos’, better known as ‘The Scots Hoose’ in Soho, who had been a licensee in the West End of London for over 50 years. Net personality £29,566; gross, £30,314.”

The George and 13 Cantons name seems have disappeared by the 1950s and 1960s, where the only reference to the pub is as “The Scots Hoose”, and a 1966 review in the Tatler provides an glimpse of the pub:

“The Scots Hoose, Romilly Street. Not surprisingly, the landlord, ‘Jock’ Ansell, is a Scot. He is a retired musician and has worked with such stars as Jack Hylton and Bruce Forsyth. His pub was once the haunt of the Crazy Gang. Nowadays he prides himself on the finest selection of whiskies in Soho. You can buy a nip of Glen Grant (100 degrees of proof malt whisky) for 3s 6d. Gold painted thistles decorate the walls, but otherwise the atmosphere is disappointingly English, with a recurring chant of ‘arf a bitter, guv'”

The description of the pub as “disappointingly English” does not do justice to the Scots Hoose of the 1960s, as it was a popular and well know music venue, as we find in the Stage from the 31st of August, 1967:

“In another popular North of the Thames pub, the Railway Tavern of Tottenham, the Kevin Lindsay Organ Trio has taken up residence, and in the West End’s only music-hall pub, the Scots Hoose, Cambridge Circus, Doreen Ansell has captured Wakefield born pianist Barry Booth, former MD for Roy Orbison, to provide the backing for popular residents Tommy Osborne and Roy Tierney.”

I do not think the description of the pub as a “music-hall pub” is that accurate, rather it was a pub which hosted live music, not traditional music hall acts, and in the 1960s and early 1970s, the Scots Hoose was one of the London pubs where many of the rising acts of the British Folk revival could be regularly found.

A regular was Bert Jansch, a Scottish Folk musician who had moved down to London, as well as Folk performers such as Ralph McTell, Richard Thompson and Sandy Denny.

One of Sandy Denny’s early home recordings was a song called Soho, a lyrical description of mid-1960s Soho, with the first few lyrics:

Come walk the streets of crime
And colour bright the corners
Of love with the earth

See the dazzling nightlife grow
Beyond the dawn and burning
In the heart of Soho

Hear the market cries
And see their wares displayed
Through the window of your soul

From Sandy’s performance of the song on Youtube:

The pub had changed name to “The Spice of Life” by the early 1980s, and as well as music, the pub seems to have been hosting plays, as there are adverts for these, with, for example, the following from “The Stage and Television Today” in March 1983:

“A COUPLA WHITE CHICKS SITTING AROUND TALKING, BY John Ford Noonan. Spice of Life, Cambridge Circus WC2 to March 26. Cast includes, Monica Buferd, Lynn Webster, Director Siobhan Nicholas”

Today, the Spice of Life is still an active music venue, with a regular Jazz Club, Blues, Soul and occasionally other types of acts such as Comedy performances.

The Cambridge – Charing Cross Road

The Cambridge is on the other side of Moor Street to the Spice of Life, but where the Spice of Life is slightly set back from Cambridge Circus, the Cambridge faces directly onto Cambridge Circus, and the pub has a Charing Cross Road address.

The building dates from 1887, and seems to have been part of the construction of Charing Cross Road, which also included the build of Cambridge Circus, although the pub was built on the site of a previous pub which went by the name of the King’s Arms.

Cambridge Circus is named after the Duke of Cambridge who officially opened Charing Cross Road on Saturday 26th February 1887, and the pub seems to have followed the same naming route, following the change from the King’s Arms.

Whilst the Cambridge has the usual news reports about the type of low level incidents and events, typical of Soho, in August 1991, the pub was part of the latest campaign of bombings by the IRA. The following is a typical news report from the time:

“A pub landlord said today he was shocked to learn he may have been the victim of an IRA firebomb attack. ‘The Cambridge’, in the heart of London’s West End, was badly damaged in the attack eight days ago.

But police have only just disclosed that the fire was likely to have been the work of the IRA.

Landlord John Pucci (50) said, ‘Police Officers came here and told me they thought the IRA was involved. It was a bit of a shock to say the least.

I don’t know why they picked on this pub. It’s not an Irish pub, or a police pub and we don’t hold meetings of any kind. It’s very much passing trade, tourists and people going shopping. I imagine the idea was purely to disrupt the West End.

Mr. Pucci, who has run ‘The Cambridge’ on the corner of Cambridge Circus in Charing Cross Road for five years said he was woken by the fire alarm at 7:15 am. When he opened the door between his flat and the top bar he was met by sheets of flame.

He said his wife Nina, his 20 year old son Julian and assistant manager Andrew Prime got out through the second-floor window only by climbing down a fire brigade ladder. Another five minutes and we would have been goners, he said.

The blaze completely gutted the top bar – the fire was so intense a television 25 feet from where the device was stuffed behind a seat, exploded.

Surveying the damage estimated at £200,000, Mr. Pucci said, ‘If it had gone off in the evening there would have been a few people roasted’. Remains of the device, about the size of a cassette tape, were found to be similar to incendiary bombs abandoned at Preston railway station in April.

Detectives believe the same kind of device triggered fires in several shops in the centre of Manchester.”

The bomb at the Cambridge was not the only time that Charing Cross Road was targeted during the IRA’s 1991 bombing campaign as later that year, in September, a similar incendiary bomb, but this time unexploded, was found in the Bargain Books of Oxford bookshop.

Thankfully, not all events in Soho’s pubs have been so potentially devastating.

Coach and Horses – Old Compton Street

The Coach and Horses on the corner of Old Compton Street and Charing Cross Road is interesting as it did was not originally built as a pub, but, as described in the details of the Grade II listing, is a “Rare survival of early house representing the earliest phase of Soho’s development”, and that it dates from the “Late C17/early C18 with later alterations”, so as the listing states, it really is a rare survivor from the first stages of Soho’s development.

I cannot find exactly when the building changed from being a residential house to a pub. The pub’s website states that it dates back to 1731. The first written reference I can find to the pub is rather confusing. It dates from the 3rd of December, 1814, where in the Durham County Advertiser, there is an advert. At the top a drawing of a stage coach with horses on the road, below which is written:

“The old established and original CITY OF DURHAM HOUSE, COACH AND HORSES, LITTLE COMPTON STREET, SOHO, LONDON. William Hopper (Late of the City of Durham) returns his most grateful thanks for the favours he has been honoured with since his Uncle’s death , and begs to informs his friends, countrymen and the public in general that very comfortable accommodation is afforded for their comfort. Wines and spirits of the best quality. Good beds are provided for his friends. Exclusive of the London papers. he takes in those of York, Durham, Newcastle and Dumfries.”

I am really not sure what this advert means. Is “City of Durham House” a sort of additional trading name for the Coach & Horses, which may have been the point where a coach service to the north east operated from (although I can find no other evidence of this, but it would explain the name of the pub), and which provided accommodation for those arriving from, or departing to the north east?

I have no idea, just one of those little historical mysteries. Note though that in the advert the pub was in Little Compton Street, which was the original name for the street prior to the construction of Charing Cross Road and the rename to Old Compton Street.

Although the pub still retains its original name, it has had a couple of name changes, first to Molly Moggs, in 1996, when it was one of Soho’s gay pubs, then in 2017 it changed to the Compton Cross, and following the purchase of the pub by Shephard Neame in 2019, along with a major restoration, the name returned to the original Coach and Horses.

The Pillars of Hercules – Greek Street

I have included the Pillars of Hercules in Greek Street, although despite the pub sign hanging from the front of the building, the traditional Pillars of Hercules closed in 2018.

The name comes from the promontories on either side of the straights of Gibraltar, and which form the entrance to the Mediterranean. The name is of some antiquity and was used by Pliny the Elder in the first century AD, and is almost certainly much older.

The pub sign shows Hercules with his back to one pillar, and his hands on the front of a second pillar. The relevance of the entry to the Mediterranean is that it would have once been the limit of the known world, and was the furthest point to which Hercules ventured, or that Hercules is holding back, or narrowing the entrance, or the pillars are holding up the sky – there are a number of interpretations.

There has been a pub on the site since 1733, although I cannot find confirmation that the name has remained the same since that date, although it has been in use for a long time.

The pub closed in 2018 and reopened as Bar Hercules, and is now a Cocktail bar within the Simmonds chain.

The present building is relatively recent, having been built around 1910, and when open, the pub had a lovely sign running above the pub and over the passage which is the entrance to Manette Street, as shown in this photo from 2008:

Attribution: Ewan Munro from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Today, the front of the old pub looks very sad following the lost of the pub name:

I do not know why the original pub closed, from memory, it always seemed to be busy, and on summer evenings, the pavement outside would be crowded with drinkers.

A sad loss.

The Green Man – Berwick Street

As can be seen in the above photo, the Green Man occupies two buildings. They both have individual Grade II listings, and the Green Man did not always occupy both buildings.

The building on the right is the original Green Man, with the listing stating that it is a Public House, early 19th century.

For the building on the left, the listing states “Former terrace house. Front of same build as early C19 adjoining No. 57 but probably refronting of earlier C18 fabric.” so it was originally a house, and seems to have an older internal fabric than the original Green Man building.

The listing for the pub states early 19th century, and the first record of the pub that I can find is from 1822, when, in a court case a prisoner was being tried for a number of offences, including stealing “a new pair of linen sheets” from the Green Man after he had stayed in one of the pub’s rooms.

The Green Man was one of the pubs in London that held “Repeal Meetings”. These were meeting organised by the Repeal Association which was an Irish movement founded by Daniel O;Connell in 1830 to campaign for the repeal of the 1800 Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland.

Other London pubs holding repeal meetings during the same week (15th January 1842) included the Union Arms on Holborn Hill and Buckley’s Rooms in Old Boswell Court.

The campaign seems to have been for an independent Ireland, but still within the British Empire – “the same right of legislative independence as England, always subject to the constitutional supremacy of the British Crown” as described in one of the speeches during the Repeal meeting in the Green Man.

Many London pubs were places where campaigns such as the Repeal Association would meet, and they would also be the meeting places of various clubs and associations, and one club meeting in the Green Man was, perhaps rather unusual for central Soho, as the Green Man was the meeting place in the 1870s for the United Marlborough Brothers – one of the very many London Angling Clubs that met in lots of pubs across the wider city.

I cannot find when the Green Man took over the house next door to become the double fronted pub we see today, however it is a wonderful survivor and as far as I can trace, the Green Man has been the continuous name of the pub since the pub was opened over 200 years ago.

A few more of the many pubs that can still be found across the streets of Soho.

alondoninheritance.com

8 thoughts on “Soho Pubs – Part 3

  1. Robert Pallone

    Good on you for giving us some more of your treasure despite the week of jury duty. Thank you!

    I often wonder at the desire of new owners to change an ancient name. Bar Hercules doesn’t improve on The Pillars of Hercules in my mind. Why discard the connection to the pub’s past?

    Robert
    Lugano, Switzerland

    Reply
  2. Mike Paterson

    I regret now not actually going into the Pillars of Hercules simply because someone told me it wasn’t much cop (always be the judge of that, folks!). More of a personal blow was the loss of the Gay Hussar restaurant next door.

    Reply
  3. Justin Ward

    The Spice of Life – The somewhat dated word, coined perhaps to replace ‘music hall’ for the sort of shenanigans that went on in the ‘Scots Hoose’ is of course ‘variety’.

    Reply
  4. Tracy

    I Worked in the Brighton branch of Book Bargains in 1991, I remember the bomb. It was a Sony (other brands available) Walkman stuffed down between the shelves and wall. One of the assistants found it and took it to the manager! He said Look at this it’s full of sand.

    Reply
  5. Jonathan

    Another excellent post.

    Manette Street running through the Pillars of Hercules is named after Dr Manette, the fictional character from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities who lived with his daughter in dwellings behind the pub.

    Reply

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