Warmongering Pubs

If I said I’d been away on holiday in New Zealand for three weeks,¹ that’d hardly make much difference, given that at best I seem to put up one post on here a month, for all my good intentions. So I’ll just get straight down to it. This post returns to the subject of pub names.

London, as the country’s capital, was once the capital of a vast Empire stretching around the globe. Maintaining an Empire requires a strong military, so it’s no surprise to see pubs which reflect that history. Of course there are many pubs named after admirals, generals and other figures known for their wartime heroics (not to mention the occasional prominent warship or important battle). There are plenty of Dukes of Wellington, several Nelsons, quite a few Churchills, the list goes on.

Signing Up

Before you can have armed forces, you need the forces, and ideally they’ll volunteer — indeed, there are quite a few pubs of this name, like The Volunteer (Marylebone NW1).

Then there are the many different branches of the armed forces to which volunteers might sign up. Given their long history and importance to the Empire, the Army and Navy are well represented (as in the Stoke Newington pub The Army and Navy, fig. 45), whereas the Marines and the more recent Royal Air Force (formed in 1918) don’t find their way into pub names too often.²

Figure 45. The Army and Navy (Stoke Newington N16).

Weaponry

Once you have your forces, they need to be armed. Weapons must be manufactured first, and many of those early industries were based in London, which once upon a time was the Empire’s manufacturing centre as well as its capital.³ Almost all industry has long since moved away, but it is remembered in pub names like The Gunmakers (Clerkenwell EC1, fig. 46), which recognises the work of Hiram Maxim, based in nearby Hatton Garden.⁴

Figure 46. The Gunmakers (Clerkenwell EC1).

Once the weaponry has been made, it’s ready to use, and there’s certainly no shortage of pubs named The Gun (this example in Blackwall E14, thumbnail below).

Military Roles

The enlistees then need to be assigned ranks and roles within their respective forces. There are few ranks to be found in pub names beyond Admiral — and there certainly aren’t any called The Private (or, for that matter, The Cannon Fodder)⁵ — but you can find a few usefully martial skillsets among pub names. The Marksman (Bethnal Green E2, fig. 47) is just one such,⁶ though another called The Gunners (Highbury N5) no doubt owes more to a certain nearby football club’s nickname.

Figure 47. The Marksman (Bethnal Green E2).

Emplacements

On the field of battle, you need to shelter your soldiers against the danger as best you can. I’ve already written about pubs named after castles, and it’s not surprising that the kind of close camaraderie that undoubtedly comes from these embattled emplacements lends itself easily to the public house. Then again, a pub like The Fort (formerly The Royal Fort, Bermondsey SE1, fig. 48), probably has more claim than many to a siege mentality.

Figure 48. The Fort (Bermondsey SE1).

Success

Finally, if one’s forces fight well, maybe they’ll achieve Victory (this example being in Bethnal Green E2, fig. 49). Quite a few of the pubs by that name, though, seem to have renamed or closed, and perhaps, given the predictions of gloom in the industry, that’s not entirely inappropriate. I certainly hope that’s not the case.

Figure 49. The Victory (Bethnal Green E2).

Footnotes:
[1] Yes, I had a nice time, thanks. I went to a few brewpubs (I’d recommend The Twisted Hop in Christchurch, particularly) and quaffed some nice ale, which they like to keep at a much colder temperature over there. Also tried an interesting seasonal from Mac’s called Brewjolais which uses very young hops, though I don’t personally understand all the technicalities. On the way home, we stopped off in Seattle, which also has plenty of fine microbreweries. However, this blog is dedicated to London pubs, so enough of that.
[2] Though The Dog and Bell (Deptford SE8) used to be called The Royal Marine.
[3] Not all manufacturing of explosives was turned to war, and if I find nowhere else to mention one of my local pubs and one of the more strikingly sui generis pub names in London, then I shall shoehorn it into a footnote here: The Pyrotechnists’ Arms (Nunhead SE15), named for a former local manufacturer of fireworks.
[4] The pub’s website gives information about the historical connections. Also, you’re probably aware of it, but the publican’s blog (Jeffrey’s Beer Blog) is one of my favourites, and I can heartily recommend it, even to those who don’t obsess about the gravity of real ale, or whatnot.
[5] As far as the photos I have, The Driver (Pentonville N1) used to be called The General Picton, and I daresay there are others I’ll uncover in time, but already I have The Admiral Duncan (Soho W1), The Admiral Hardy (Greenwich SE10), The Admiral Keppel (Hoxton N1, now closed), and The Lord High Admiral (Pimlico SW1).
[6] Incidentally, it appears to have been given a makeover in the last year, as befits its proximity to Columbia Road Market, perhaps.

Pubs Named After Castles

There are quite a lot of pubs incorporating the name “Castle”, either that on its own or appended to the name of a place.¹ One presumes the popularity of the name — the idea of the “castle” — comes from it being a fortress against the outside world, the province of lords and kings, an unreconstructed masculine space exerting authority over the world, not to mention a scene of carousing. I’m guessing at this, of course.

Perhaps this is also the reason there don’t seem to be quite so many really nice pubs by that name any more. In fact, a lot of my examples seem to be closed or renamed, though admittedly there are still a lot of pubs by that name I haven’t collected photographs of, which may disprove that perceived trend. A representative example of this may be The Castle (Camberwell SE5, now closed, fig. 31), where the name is an almost desperate bid by an estate pub to latch onto some grandeur in a egregiously run-down part of town. Its sign is a particularly fine example of wishful thinking.

Figure 31. The Castle (Camberwell SE5), now closed.

Implied Castles

My conceptual imagining of the meaning behind the “castle” extends to places named after a local street or area, the pub thus becoming the metaphoric castle ruling over that area, the modern equivalent of that mediaeval stronghold. So we have The Holloway Castle (now The Castle Bar, just off Holloway Road, Lower Holloway, N7), The Alwyne Castle (now The Alwyne, near Alwyne Square, Canonbury N1), or The Dover Castle (on Great Dover Street, Borough, SE1) — the latter also doubling as a real castle popular in pub names.

Actual Castles

Where a specific castle is mentioned, there may be a more complicated origin. For example, The Dublin Castle (Camden Town NW1, fig. 32) may at first glance suggest the nationality of an earlier wave of immigrants to the area, surviving in several other Irish pubs nearby and throughout North-West London. However, a more interesting history lies behind it, as it was built during a period of intense railway construction — Camden Town lies just behind the major London termini of Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross, where their many lines intersect and run through tunnels to the North — and the construction workers (navvies), sourced from all over the United Kingdom, were prone to factionalism. Hence the Dublin Castle served the Irish workers, while other pubs were built in other parts of the area (but not too close by) for the rest of the navvies. Thus there’s The Edinboro Castle (Camden Town NW1) for the Scots, as well as a Windsor Castle for the English and a Pembroke Castle for the Welsh.

Figure 32. The Dublin Castle (Camden Town NW1), undoubtedly to be encountered again in a later entry on music pubs.

References to royal castles, however, can suggest royalist sympathies amongst the drinkers, though these are perhaps not so strong now as in the past. There are plenty of Windsor Castles and even a (former) Balmoral Castle (now Kennedy’s, Lower Holloway N7).

A rarer case is The Baynard Castle (now the Cos Bar, Blackfriars EC4), which refers to an actual historic castle, Baynard’s Castle, which was sited in that area and which still lends its name to the local council Ward.²

But quite why such castles as Eastnor Castle (Somers Town NW1)³ or Thornbury Castle (Marylebone W1) are referenced in the names of pubs is a bit less obvious. One can only assume the original publican came from those respective parts of the country (Herefordshire and Gloucestershire in the examples given).

One Last Castle

History again informs the naming of Jack Straw’s Castle (Hampstead NW3, fig. 33), a former pub dominating the north-western corner of Hampstead Heath. Jack Straw was a fourteenth-century leader of the Peasant’s Revolt who was reputed to have fomented rebel sentiment by addressing groups on the local Heath.⁵ You won’t see much of that kind of behaviour in modern Hampstead, but then again nor are you likely to be able to take a drink in the pub that bears his name. Like many of the pictured examples, the modern “castle” is no longer a pub, but residential accommodation. The metaphorical has become literal: a man’s home is still his local pub.

Figure 33. Jack Straw’s Castle (Hampstead NW3).

Footnotes
[1] This is quite apart from places called “The Elephant and Castle”, which I have no intention of discussing, nor of getting into the various possible etymologies of that name, most of them largely apocryphal. There’s certainly no persuasive evidence of the popular ‘Infanta y Castilla’ corruption.
[2] See the Wikipedia entry. It was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, 1666.
[3] See Wikipedia entry. It’s not even a real castle, but a 19th century impostor. For the Thornbury Castle, here’s a Wikipedia entry as well. You can see where I do a lot of my research, but I do have books as well.
[4] See Wikipedia entry, an attractive looking place, unlike the pub off Marylebone Road, a thoroughfare rarely described as particularly beautiful or pristine.
[5] See Wikipedia entry.