For today’s post, a look at five more Soho pubs, and my monthly feature on one of the resources available if you are interested in delving into the history of the city, as well as my latest read.

The Shakespeare’s Head – Great Marlborough Street

The Shakespeare’s Head is on the corner of Great Marlborough Street and Foubert’s Place, and is a perfect example of the flamboyant architecture of many Soho pubs. Taller than the buildings on either side, and looking out across a junction, the pub cannot help but attract attention, which must have been the intention of the original architect.

The pub claims to have been on the site since 1735 when a Thomas and John Shakespeare were the original owners, and who gave their family name to the pub. They apparently claimed that they were distant relatives of William Shakespeare, but how much truth there is in the story, and just how distant a relative is impossible to tell.

The Shakespeare’s Head makes full use of the name in the decoration across the building with the pub sign showing an illustration of Shakespeare, and in a false windows on the first floor corner of the building, there is a life size bust of Shakespeare looking down on the streets below, and the thousands of people who visit Soho on a daily basis.

The bust of Shakespeare’s has a hand missing, the result of a World War II bomb landing nearby.

The street naming for the pub’s location is a bit confusing, as by the street signs on the sides of the pub it is on the corner of Great Marlborough Street and Foubert’s Place, however on the opposite side of the street which is Great Marlborough Street on the pub, is a name sign for Carnaby Street, so the street to the right of the pub in the photo appears to have two names.

The Great Marlborough Street sign is old whilst the Carnaby Street sign is new, and as the junction where the pub is located sits at the northern end of Carnaby Street, I suspect the extended use of this name is to capitalise on the recent history of Carnaby Street. The pub uses Great Marlborough Street as an address.

There is not much to be found on the history of the pub, and there are very few references to the pub in a newspaper search, which is probably a good thing as most newspaper reports are usually about some form of crime involving a pub. The current building seems to date from the 1920s.

Whatever the truth or distance of the Shakespeare connection, the good thing with the Shakespeare’s Head is the wonderful design of the building in an era of rather bland city architecture, and long may Shakespeare look out from his first floor window.

The Blue Posts – Kingly Street

Another large corner pub with an individual design, and the second pub with the name Blue Posts to be found in Soho.

The pub was originally called the Two Blue Posts and at the time of the pub’s opening in 1728, Kingly Street was King Street.

I mentioned in the description to the previous pub that there were very few newspaper mentions of the pub, as they were nearly always connected with some form of crime, and the first mention I can find of the Blue Posts is a really strange story that highlights the 19th century attitude to mental health, and the type of violent crime to be found on the streets (although this is an unusual example). The following is from the 21st of June 1871, under the title “TAMING LUNATICS”:

“Robert Hodgson, an attendant at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, was charged yesterday, at the Middlesex Sessions, with violently assaulting a man named Richard Walker. It appeared from the evidence that the prisoner, at twelve o’clock on the night of the 9th of June, seized hold of the prosecutor in the Golden Lion, Wardour Street, saying ‘I know you, you are the man I want to see, your name is John Taylor’. The prisoner then seized him by the collar, pulled him into the street, opened his waistcoat, and took a box of cigar-lights from him. A crowd collected, and then the prisoner pulled him through several streets to the Blue Posts, King Street, and having made him take off his clothes, struck him several times with his fist saying ‘That is the way we tame lunatics’. The prisoner then took him to the Bricklayers Arms in King Street and in front of the bar he hit the prosecutor several times times under the jaw with his fist, made him bite his tongue, and pulled him by the beard, saying he was an escaped lunatic.”

The “prisoner” did eventually leave the other man alone, who then went to the police who found and arrested the prisoner.

During the trial, the counsel for the prosecution “suggested that lunacy was infectious, and had spread from the inmates of Colney Hatch to one of their keepers”. The judge delayed sentencing until he had spoken with the authorities at Colney Hatch.

Although the Blue Posts only has a brief appearance in the above account, these stories do help illustrate what life was like around these pubs, and shows how mental health was viewed, even someone as educated for the time as a legal counsel suggesting that lunacy was infectious.

The article also shows how human nature has not really changed. Where the article states that “a crowd collected”, and if the same thing happened in Soho today, a crowd would also collect, but these days they would all be filming the event on mobile phones.

The White Horse – Newburgh Street

Like many pubs in the area, the White Horse claims to be on the site of an original building dating back to the development of Soho in the early 18th century. The pub also claims that the galloping white horse was the sign of the House of Hanover that dates from the accession of George I in 1714, and that the use of the name and sign by inns of the time was a sign of their support of the new Royal House.

London’s pubs were once the meeting place for hundreds of clubs and societies, often societies that you would not have connected with the location of a pub, and for a number of years in the 1960s, the White Horse was the meeting place for the Royal George Angling Society, a long standing society who took their name from the first pub that they used for meetings.

This illustrates how pubs were far more embedded in society and everyday life in the past. They were not just a place for drinking, they were also a place for societies and clubs to meet. Individual pubs often had their own sports clubs, which added to their use as a place where communities would get together.

The White Horse also plays up to the stereotype of London policing in previous decades, where in a 1966 review of the pub in the Tatler, it is described as a “Quiet yet busy, little tavern. The landlord, a former detective, is helpful and genial, and attracts a wide cross section of drinkers. Among them are the sleekly dressed impressive looking policemen one finds stationed at West End Central in nearby Savile Row. An interesting pub, with interesting people.”

I bet is was an interesting pub with interesting people.

The current building dates from the 1930s, when it was rebuilt in an art-deco style.

The Red Lion – Kingly Street

Despite being a late 19th century build, the Red Lion looks as if has adopted the architectural style of earlier centuries. Like many pubs in Soho, there has been a pub here since the early 18th century.

As well as the clubs and societies mentioned with the White Horse, the Red Lion also shows how pubs were embedded in communities as they also were a place where inquests were held. In July 1833, it was reported that:

“SUDDEN DEATH OF DR TWEEDIE – On Monday an inquest was held at the Red Lion, King Street, on the body of Dr Tweedie aged 63. On Saturday night, Dr Tweedie, hearing that the kitchen chimney of his house in Southampton Row was on fire, ran down the stairs, and having procured two pails of water, with the assistance of another gentleman, extinguished it. The deceased then went up stairs, but had scarcely reached the landing, when he fell down, and was heard to groan heavily. The gentlemen immediately put him in a chair, but life appeared to have gone. In about two minutes, Mr Keeling, surgeon, Little Ormond Street, arrived and administered everything by which reanimation could be brought about, but without the desired effect. Verdict – ‘Death by the visitation of God”.

The Red Lion also served another common purpose of a pub, that of a mailing address, an example being in November 1835, when “a respectable young woman was looking for a situation as a Barmaid in a Wine Vault of respectable Public house”.

The Glass Blower –  Glasshouse Street

The name “Glass Blower” is relatively recent, as the pub was originally an early example of a type of 19th century drinking establishment called a Bodega. The South London Press on the 2nd of November 1872 explained the concept behind the Bodega:

“Since the ‘Bodega’ first startled London as a word of strange sound and unknown significance, it has rapidly asserted itself in public favour. Yes, it has over-stepped its original limits, and, taking the metropolis in sections, appears likely to bring the whole of it under conquest. But then even the Capital of the country may be taken by such an enemy with advantage rather than the reverse. The ‘Bodega’ means – but what matters to its meaning in Spain? In London it means a place where you can buy the best wines in glass or in bottle at the lowest remunerative prices. The ‘Bodega’ experiment has been tried so successfully in Glasshouse-street that Messrs. Lavery and Co. have now taken 13 Oxford Street to open on the same principle, and a very pleasant little inauguration dinner was given there on Saturday night, which gave infinite satisfaction to all present.”

The article brushes over the Spanish meaning of the word Bodega, but in Spain it is used for a winery, wine cellar, wine store etc. generally where wine is concerned, and its use in London in 1872 must have seemed rather exotic.

So the Glass Blower pub was the site where the Bodega was first introduced to London as the article confirms that this was where the Bodega experiment was successfully tried.

In July 1904, the Tatler had an article describing how actors would cluster at specific types of establishment, and described: “The ‘Bodegas’ are the most popularly patronised of these”.

Although a name for a type of establishment, Bodega was also the name of the company that owned and ran these places, the Bodega Company Limited. It is perhaps an early example of a company / brand that establishes a similar type of venue across multiple locations – a type of bar / restaurant which is all too common to find across the streets of London today.

Not quite the same, but today, many of the pubs in Soho are Greene King pubs, including the Glass Blower, the Blue Posts and the Shakespeare’s Head just from today’s post. They do have an individual look and feel, and to be honest, with the rate of pub closures today, I am happy for any company who keeps London pubs open.

I cannot find out exactly when the Bodega in Glasshouse Street changed to the Glass Blower, however it was still operating as the Bodega in 1958, when on the 1st of August the Bodega had placed an advert in the Middlesex Independent for a Barmaid.

The Glass Blower is now a very prominent corner pub that always seems to be doing well when I have visited.

A quick run through of five more Soho pubs, and now my monthly feature on one of the resources that I use to help research London’s history if you are interested in delving into more detail.

Resources – Historical Directories of England & Wales

If you have ever wanted to find where a business was based in a London street, or walk through a street to discover the people and companies that were based in the street, then there is a wonderful resource that can help. The Historical Directories of England and Wales, hosted by the University of Leicester, and they have been published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 UK Licence, which makes the content available to use under the terms of the licence.

It is not just London which is covered. There are trade and local directories for much of the country.

The link to access this resource is: https://leicester.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p16445coll4

where you will be met with the following screen:

For the purposes of the blog, I am interested in London, and when you click on the entry for London you are presented with a list of directories and filters for the periods covered:

As with the mapping available at the National Library of Scotland featured in my last resources post, these directories are a way in which a quick search can turn into a full evening of exploring London’s streets. An example of the level of detail available is shown in the following example.

As the last Soho pub in the above post was in Glasshouse Street, I searched for Glasshouse Street in the Post Office London Directory for 1895, and here is a detailed list from the directory of who occupied the street 130 years ago:

And to confirm the details for the Glass Blower pub, at number 42 we can see Bodega Co. (The) limited, George Courtney sec. Initially many of these establishments were named with the full company name, but as with the Glass Blower, after a while they just became known at the Bodega.

The listing also shows where the street in focus intersects with other streets (for example in the above – “here is Air Street”). This is really useful to help with referencing streets numbers from the directory with street numbers of today where streets have been renumbered, or individual plots consolidated. For places badly damaged during the last war (such as the City of London), this addition of where other streets joined is really useful as it helps locate the lanes, alleys, courts and indeed streets, which after bomb damage, were not rebuilt post war and have been lost completely.

These directories are a wonmderful resource provided by the University of Leicester, and help provide another layer of understanding to the history of the city’s streets.

What I Am Reading – The Dream Factory by Daniel Swift

The recreation of the Globe at Bankside has probably resulted in the Globe being the most famous of the early London playhouses, even if the current incarnation of the Globe is not quite at the location of the original.

The Bankside area also had the Bear and the Rose playhouses, although the Bear was mainly for bear baiting with plays as a side line.

Before all of these was a playhouse in Shoreditch, created by James Burbage in 1576, and this, the first commercial playhouse in London, is the focus of Daniel Swift’s book, along with the story of how Elizabethan Theatre began to flourish, with Shakespeare weaving through the story.

The book is very readable, and does, as the sub-title states, tells the story of “London’s First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare” (who would go on to lend his name to a pub in Soho – a tenuous link with the rest of today’s post).

The book is published by Yale University Press, who have a good selection of books on London’s history and architecture. They also publish the Pevsner Architectural Guides and the recent editions of the Survey of London, numbers of which I have purchased over the years.

A recommended read if you are interested in the story of the first playhouse in London, along with London generally at this significant time.

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