The interior, on the other hand, had seen better days. When Barry found the Pensioner two years ago, he fell in love with the still-lovely tiled exterior of the Grade II-listed building, a marking that identifies the structure’s historical and architectural significance. And in 1827, James Hammack of Mile End built the Greenwich Pensioner public house. In 1807, the East India Dock Company cleared the land that would later house the Pensioner, razing a terrace of brickmakers’ cottages and laying out streets named after the company’s directors: Wells, Woolmore and Cotton.Īfter All Saints Church was built in 1823, the land west of Bazely Street – named for a British admiral who captured an American warship during the War of Independence – was auctioned off by the vestry. These days, it feels like they’re keeping company with the ghosts of the present, too. For now, however, the Pensioner’s wooden chairs and plush red benches are empty, and it’s hard to imagine a time when they’ll be full once again with drinkers sitting elbow to elbow, leaning in close to chat over the din of the pub.īarry says he can feel the ghosts of the past at the Pensioner. Three months after the shutdown, the government appears to be moving toward reopening the country’s pubs as the summer beckons and coronavirus infections fall. Barry gets his meat from a butcher in Bethnal Green, some of his beer from a brewery in Tottenham Hale and his vodka and gin from the East London Liquor Company. The Pensioner is part of a network of small businesses that rely on one another. The impact of its closure rippled out through the community the pub sustained. “You’re drinking it in, the atmosphere, and that’s part of what makes the perfect pub.” “It feels old, it feels London, it’s not been touched by time,” he said. “The pub is there to stave off the chilblains of loneliness for a lot of people,” said Alistair von Lion, 39, a London pub reviewer and fan of the Pensioner, whose sign bears a painting of a peg-legged Royal Navy pensioner from two centuries ago. When the coronavirus pandemic struck, many Brits tweeted that they wanted to “go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over.” That’s a line from the cult comedy “Shaun Of the Dead,” in which the eponymous hero survives a zombie invasion by sheltering in a London pub called the Winchester Tavern. Harry Potter entered Diagon Alley, London’s wizardry emporium, through another fictional pub called the Leaky Cauldron. “EastEnders,” a long-running BBC soap opera, revolves around a watering hole called the Queen Vic. Pubs – and London pubs in particular – loom large in British popular culture. Under lockdown, the regulars are reduced to virtual pub nights with friends on Zoom and solitary pints behind the locked doors of self-isolation, barred from places so central to British social life, the word pub is an abbreviation of their original name: “public houses.” Where local Member of Parliament Apsana Begum and her campaigners could sometimes be spotted at a table by the window. Where wayward businesspeople walked the 20 minutes from the steel-and-glass skyscrapers of the Canary Wharf financial district. He left behind the kind of place where old-school East Enders stopped round at 4 o’clock for their daily pint. After the announcement, owner Tadgh Barry shut the Pensioner’s narrow wooden doors and walked away from the pub that he had brought back to life two years ago. On March 20, Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the closure of Britain’s pubs and restaurants to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has now killed more than 50,000 people in the United Kingdom. Now the Pensioner faces yet another existential threat. The working-class Poplar neighbourhood, which long ago buzzed with workers from the nearby shipping docks on the Thames, once was home to more than 340 pubs. It has also survived another kind of blight: a decades-long decline in the industry that has killed thousands of British pubs. Since then, the pub in London’s East End has survived two world wars, including bombings that flattened the houses next to it, four cholera epidemics and the devastating Spanish flu pandemic of a century ago. Pub landlord Tadgh Barry stands outside The Greenwich Pensioner pub, which was closed to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), London, Britain, May 21, 2020.
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