by Albert Jack
Hundreds, if not thousands, of pubs all over the world are named in honour of famous figures from the past. Some, such as the Nelson and the Duke of Wellington (or Iron Duke), remain well known today, while others have all but faded into obscurity. I’d need several volumes to cover every historical figure who ever inspired a pub name, but I wanted to give you some interesting examples of some of the men, respected enough during their own century, for their names to still be written in big letters on a building in many of our towns and cities. And yet most of us today have no real idea who they are. Pubs like the Admiral Collingwood and the Prince Blucher are named after forgotten military heroes without whom Nelson and Wellington would not have won the Napoleonic Wars, despite what your history teacher told you.
Sporting connections
Alcohol and gambling have always gone hand in hand, but the connection between sport and pubs goes much deeper than a group of peasants gathering to bet on a cockfight (the Cock) or throw sticks at a ball (the Aunt Sally). Like the Angel at Islington, some pubs have become local landmarks. For example, there was once a Mr Ball, again over Islington way, who ran an establishment with a pond at the back filled with ducks. For a fee, drinkers could go outside and take a shot at the birds, and Balls Pond became a regular retreat for gun enthusiasts. His drinking house, no doubt named the Old Dog and Duck, no longer exists, but Balls Pond Road remains a busy thoroughfare in that part of London, thanks to the pub.
Many British sports evolved out of their connections with pubs. The rules of cricket were thrashed out by the Hambledon Club in the 1760s at the Bat and Ball Inn, where their team captain, Richard Nyren, was the landlord. The split between rugby and football (once the same game) was agreed in the Freemasons Arms in Covent Garden in 1863. One thing that has surprised me in my researches is just how many pubs are named after racehorses: I’ve added a list of my ten favourites to entertain you at the back of the book.
Terrible jokes
Pubs are also the focus of terrible joke-telling, as many names bear testament (see the Drunken Duck and the Quiet Woman, for starters). I started writing an entry about the Dew Drop Inn – it’s a pun on ‘do drop in’ – but found I was losing the will to live and had to stop. It just isn’t funny now, proving that joke names like this don’t always stand up to the test of time. It shows too how the spirit that lies behind the modern chain pub names that make jokes about firkins (a measure of beer) and tups (sheep) is far from new.
There are often several theories behind the name of a pub and I’ve included all those that seem to hold water or are particularly entertaining. Yet the same name can have confusingly different origins: of two pubs called the Case is Altered one might be referring to a famous legal battle, while the other could be a corruption of a Spanish term for ‘house of dancing’ (casa de saltar), but that’s all part of the joy of the hunt.
My only regret is that there are so many names and stories I can’t include simply because I haven’t got the space here to cover them. If you know a great story like the one behind the Bucket of Blood, the Flying Dutchman or Molly Malone’s, then do please let me know (at www.albertjack.com). I’m always keen to hear the story of a local that I have yet to stumble upon, or out of. And I’m already looking forward to embarking on another six-month pub crawl (I mean research study).
The pub was once described by seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys as the ‘heart of England while the church is its soul’. These days I would say he is only half right. There remain over 56,000 pubs in Great Britain, half of which are filled with youngsters who play loud music on a jukebox that sounds like somebody is hitting his lawnmower with a hammer, while the next-door neighbour shouts at him over the fence. The other half, however, are the perfect place to while away an afternoon with a pint and fine conversation while quietly contemplating what to do next. Well, that’s what I do anyway.
So take a seat in your favourite armchair by the fireside and join me on a pub crawl along memory lane and around history corner. We may be some time.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Ama and Grace Page for restoring some calm this year and reminding me of my place in the natural order of the household – last. But thanks also to Bessie, Herbert and especially Cricket for enabling me to feel superior in some small way.
Big thanks also to Robert Smith of the Robert Smith Literary Agency in London. This year, for the first time, I have nothing to thank Peter Gordon for. Perhaps he can put that right next year. Thank you, Aaliya Syed, for some last-minute research and Lara Carlini for all the illustrations.
The Penguin team also receive huge credit for all their effort and hard work. That’s my editor, Georgina Lay-cock, copy-editor Kate Parker and the Particular Books team of Helen Conford, Ruth Stimson and Alice Dawson; my publicist, Thi Dinh, cover designer Richard Green, book designer Lisa Simmonds, the production team of Ruth Pinkney and Taryn Jones, marketeer Jessie Price, worldwide rights manager Sarah Hunt Cooke and, of course, the brilliant Penguin sales department.
In this case it is only right to mention the staff at the Fat Cactus in Cape Town, my own favourite bar. Dimo Papachristodoulou (that sounds Greek to me), Celeste Perry, Lawrence Davis – the architect of the Albert Jack shooter (and yes, I did worry about that too, until I drank it) – Candice Kalil, Ryan Rossouw and Gareth Davis, Troy Kyle, my favourite writer and apparently an Anglican minister, and last but not least Tara Hood.
Finally to you, my reader. I hope you enjoy discovering as much as I have the surprising history behind the culture that we all take so much for granted.
Albert Jack
Cape Town
June 2009
The Addison Arms
THE WRITER WHO UNWITTINGLY INSPIRED A REVOLUTION
Now almost forgotten, his works barely read, Joseph Addison (1672–1719) was in his day a hugely influential author, whose writings inspired the rise of the middle classes in Britain (intentionally) and sparked revolution in America (unintentionally).
Addison met his lifelong friend Richard Steele (1672–1729) at Charterhouse School in Surrey in the 1690s and their intellectual partnership was to bring them fame and success. Addison and Steele were obsessed with the follies and foibles of their fellow countrymen and how to improve society. When they set up the Spectator in 1711, their stated goal was ‘to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality… to bring philosophy out of the closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and coffeehouses’. Catering for the interests and concerns of the newly emerging middle classes, the Spectator was a huge success: Addison calculated that it was read by 60,000 Londoners, a tenth of the population of the city at the time.
In 1712 Addison wrote his most famous work, Cato, a Tragedy, a play based upon the life of the Roman politician and statesman. Cato the Younger (95–46 BC) was the implacable foe of Julius Caesar and a famously stubborn defender of republicanism: when Caesar conquered the Senate, Cato committed suicide rather than live in a country ruled by a tyrant. The play enjoyed a long run throughout Britain, Ireland and the New World and many believe it was the literary inspiration for the American War of Independence over half a century later (see also THE JOHN PAUL JONES and THE MOLLY PITCHER).
The war had many causes but prime among them was the British government’s demands for huge taxes while denying its colony any political voice or influence. The Founding Fathers who saw Addison’s play were understandably enthusiastic about it, dealing as it did with themes of individual liberty versus tyranny, republicanism versus monarchy, and showing its hero’s determination to cleave to his beliefs come what may. George Washington is known to have had Cato performed before his Continental Army while the soldiers were encamped for the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge. They must have been duly roused by it as the next summer saw their decisive victory over the British.
Interestingly, many well-known quotations from the American Revolution echo lines from Addison’s tragedy, su
ch as Patrick Henry’s ‘Give me Liberty, or give me Death’ or the immortal words of Nathan Hale (America’s first spy and a national hero): ‘I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.’ Addison had written, much earlier, in his play (Act 4, Scene 4): ‘What a pity it is / That we can die but once to serve our country.’ History had turned Addison’s fiction into fact. Which would have horrified the wit who once famously said: ‘we are growing serious, and let me tell you, that’s the next step to being dull.’
The Admiral Collingwood
THE FORGOTTEN HERO OF THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR
Admiral Collingwood (1748–1810) is another forgotten hero, celebrated today only by pub names throughout Britain and America (including the Collingwood Arms and the Lord Collingwood), but one who deserves to be rehabilitated. Not that he would have cared, mind you. His memorial reads: ‘He was a typical north countryman, never duly elated by success or depressed by failure, caring little for public applause.’
Cuthbert Collingwood was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and went to sea as a volunteer at the age of eleven. In 1777 he was sent to the West Indies where he met Horatio Nelson (see also THE ADMIRAL DUNCAN), serving as a lieutenant on the same ship, and they began a lifelong friendship. Both men were noted for their ambition and their courage. Their stories are intertwined but history has only remembered Nelson even though Collingwood was arguably Nelson’s equal or even his superior in seamanship and strategic thinking.
In 1775, at the age of twenty-seven, Collingwood distinguished himself at the Battle of Bunker Hill at the start of the American War of Independence. His subsequent rise through the naval ranks was as impressive as Nelson’s over the following years, and by 1783 the two friends were commanding their own vessels, working together to prevent American ships from trading in the West Indies.
Collingwood established his reputation as a fighting commander at the Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797 on board HMS Excellent. In 1803, at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, he blockaded the French fleet at Brest in north-west France and the following year was promoted to vice admiral in command of a squadron tasked with harassing the French navy at every opportunity.
In 1805 Collingwood encountered sixteen French and Spanish warships close to Cadiz at the mouth of the Mediterranean. By hoisting a series of misleading flag messages, he managed to fool his opponents into believing he commanded many more ships than the three he had and thus succeeded in blockading the port completely as, fearing a vast enemy fleet was waiting for them just over the horizon, the French refused to leave the safety of Cadiz. Soon, Collingwood was joined by Nelson and between them they laid the plans to trap the enemy along the coast at Trafalgar, Nelson leading one column of warships and Collingwood the other. It was Collingwood who engaged the enemy first, inspiring Nelson to comment: ‘See how that noble fellow Collingwood carries his ship into battle’ (words subsequently engraved on the Collingwood Monument at Tynemouth).
When Nelson himself was famously shot dead during the early stages of the battle, Collingwood assumed total command of the fleet as the action thundered all around. He made several crucial alterations to Nelson’s battle-plans and ultimately led the English to their finest hour. Had the Battle of Trafalgar been lost by the Royal Navy, Napoleon and his 120,000 troops based at Boulogne, northern France, would have been carried across the Channel to invade England in the very ships Collingwood and Nelson had destroyed at Trafalgar. While historians correctly emphasize the importance of Nelson’s role in the battle, it is clear the two men were partners.
Collingwood never retired from the navy, despite growing ill health and repeatedly requesting to be relieved of his command. The government of the day refused on the grounds that his country needed him, and so he passed away in service, dying of cancer on board his ship off Port Mahon on 7 March 1810. As a result he never made it back to Collingwood House at Morpeth near Newcastle, which must have saddened the admiral, who was never happiest than when walking his dog through his estate with a pocket full of acorns. These he would plant wherever he found a good site for a fine oak tree, so that the Royal Navy would never lack the wood to build warships for the defence of the realm. Fittingly, he is buried alongside Nelson in St Paul’s Cathedral.
The Admiral Duncan
CURMUDGEONLY SEADOG WHO THREW THE NAVAL RULE BOOK OUT OF THE PORTHOLE
The most famous of the many pubs in Britain going by this name can be found on Old Compton Street in Soho. The pub became notorious in 1999 as one of three locations around London in which a lunatic former member of the National Socialist Movement detonated a number of nail bombs. Three people lost their lives at the pub and many more were badly injured. The other Admiral Duncans around Britain have had a far more peaceful history, fortunately, although that is in direct contrast to the man they are named after.
Adam Duncan (1731–1804) was only fifteen years old when he joined the Royal Navy in 1746. His rise through the ranks was meteoric and he reached the rank of commander at the age of twenty-eight. But there he stuck as he was a difficult man and not popular with the admiralty. It took nearly forty years before Duncan finally arrived, in 1795, at the rank of commander-in-chief in the North Sea, with the responsibility of protecting Britain from the troublesome Dutch. Two years later, in the autumn of 1797, it was Admiral Duncan who prevented the Dutch fleet, at that time commanded by the French, from invading Ireland and establishing a new threat to Britain from the west. Tearing up the established rule book of naval warfare, Duncan ordered his fleet to sail directly at the Dutch lines, instead of the more conventional, and gentlemanly, approach from the side.
This celebrated encounter, known as the Battle of Camperdown, brought immediate fame for Duncan and he returned to London a national hero, was honoured everywhere he went and given the freedom of both London and his home town of Dundee, in Scotland. In Newcastle upon Tyne there is a pub called the Camperdown in memory of Duncan’s victory. Meanwhile, in the same year a much younger officer, one Horatio NELSON, had a similar job tackling the French and Spanish in the Mediterranean, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Cape Vincent (see also THE ADMIRAL COLLINGWOOD). It was to be another eight years before Britain’s most renowned naval hero dealt with the French and Spanish navies by copying Duncan’s tactics at Camperdown, sailing directly at the Franco-Spanish fleet and scattering their ships in all directions before winning one of the most famous battles in history, close to the coast of a small Spanish cape called Trafalgar.
The Admiral Vernon
THE HERO OF THE WAR OF JENKINS’ EAR
Edward Vernon (1684–1757) made his career, in the style of his hero Sir Francis Drake (see THE GOLDEN HIND), out of harassing the Spanish, and was present during the capture of Gibraltar (1704) and Barcelona (1705), as well as seeing action during the Battle of Malaga on 24 August 1704.
In 1728 tentative peace was made with Spain, but this didn’t last long and Vernon was once again despatched to sort out the Spanish. The renewal of hostilities was all down to one Robert Jenkins, a merchant seaman who claimed his ship had been boarded in the West Indies by the Spanish coastguard, who had tied him to the mast and cut off his ear with a sword, threatening to do the same to the King of England if he ever had the chance. In 1738 Jenkins presented his severed ear to Parliament and they in turn were provoked enough to declare a new war against Spain, sending Vernon, now promoted to vice admiral, to the West Indies with a small fleet to test the Spanish defences.
Vernon’s first act in what became known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear (1739–42) was to seize Portobelo, a silver-exporting port on the Spanish-held coast of Panama. His men occupied the port for three weeks, completely destroying its defensive positions before withdrawing. The Spanish economy had been dealt a severe blow from which it would take years to recover. News of Vernon’s actions was enthusiastically received in London. Places were named in celebration of the victory, including a farm in what is now Notting Hill and the country road running from it: Portobello Lane
. In 1740, at a society dinner in honour of the admiral, ‘Rule Britannia’ (see THE BRITANNIA) was performed for the first time, stirring up great national pride. Over time Portobello Lane became, of course, Portobello Road, one of the best-known London street names and the location of possibly the most famous street market in the world.
During the War of Jenkins’ Ear, a sailor called Lawrence Washington was fighting in an American regiment as part of Vernon’s fleet (America being still a British colony at that time). Washington received notice from his father that he was building a house for him overlooking the Potomac River at Alexandria, Virginia. The young sailor replied that his father should name the new house Mount Vernon in honour of the admiral. After Lawrence Washington’s death in 1752, the Mount Vernon estate passed over to his younger brother, George, who in 1789 became the first President of the United States of America, returning to Mount Vernon when he retired in 1797. Mount Vernon was designated by the American government a National Historic Landmark in 1960, as well as being listed in the American National Register of Historic Places. It stands today as a proud memorial to the first president and a reminder of one of England’s greatest naval commanders. But that isn’t Vernon’s only legacy.
By 1740 the admiral was a well-known figure, easily recognized by his trademark grogram or grosgrain coat (it was a coarse mixture of mohair and silk), earning himself the affectionate nickname ‘Old Grog’. During the War of Jenkins’ Ear, Vernon had ordered that all rum rations, issued to the sailors twice daily, be watered down, possibly in an attempt to prevent drunken ill-discipline. The rum was also to be laced with lime or lemon juice to prevent scurvy. It wasn’t long before the entire British navy followed suit. In response, in 1781, Thomas Trotter, a sailor on board the Berwick, wrote the following poem about Vernon and his Portobelo flagship:
