Mapping Pepys Pubs in 'Our Own' Parish

A Midnight Modern Conversation, William Hogarth, 1733

A quest to identify the pubs that Samuel Pepys knew and frequented in his 'own' parish of St Olave Hart Street.

In planning a route for our parish wassailing (on 12th December at 6pm, starting at The Ship, Hart Street), I was hoping to identify and then visit pubs and taverns that would have been frequented by Samuel Pepys, who lived near and worshipped at St Olave Hart Street, is buried there and referred to it in his diary as ‘our own church’. As it turned out (and perhaps not surprisingly!) most of the pubs that Pepys records in his diary have long since closed or moved location as the City has evolved – not least after the Great Fire. While we won’t be able to drink at one of ‘Pepys’ Pubs’ during our carol-singing and good-cheer-spreading extravaganza this Advent, in seeking to map their locations in the parish, I came across some amazing history and fantastic resources which may be of interest to others fascinated by the history of pubs in the City. I begin by providing an overview of these sources and very much hope one day to meet their authors and contributors in person to convey my thanks. Then I go on to provide an overview of some of historic pubs and taverns that graced the streets of the parish of St Olave Hart Street, including those with a Pepys connection!

Sources on City of London Pub History

Phil Gyford rose to fame during the Covid-lockdown as the creator of PepysDiary.Com. His daily post of entries from the diary became a focus for contemporary commentary on life during the lockdown. His website includes a helpful list of all the taverns mentioned by Pepys and a map of their location (where this is known). Visitors to his site share intelligence and research to help locate and delimit the location of pubs and taverns (which is easier said than done, as many of the hostelries Pepys mentions had similar or identical names - and recording their exact location was not a particular priority for him). Often ‘tokens’ are used to help triangulate a likely position for the ‘missing’ pubs, using geographical references in the same diary entry. Tokens were produced by pubs due to the short supply of official small change. You would receive a ‘token’ instead of change at each pub, which could be spent when you visited again. The website ‘Mr Pepys’ Small Change’ provides an online catalogue of many of these ‘tokens’, including detailed histories of some of the pubs and taverns that issued them and biographical information about their owners, from which we can see how pubs with the same name moved around the City to new locations.

The DeadPubs website run by Kevan Wilding has a whole section of fascinating information on the pubs and taverns in Pepys Diary and his PubWiki site breaks down pubs by parish in the City of London! Kevan has said that his site contains details of 98% of the current and ‘dead’ pubs in London. A smart young chap named Jimmy McKintosh writes and posts as ‘LondonDeadPubs’ bringing this past and present to the Insta and TikTok generation.

Ewan Munro spent many years producing his ‘Pubology’ website. His task was to record the location of every pub (current and historic) in the City. While Kevan Wilding’s site provides lots of wonderful photographs, addresses and historical information about the occupants or licensees of each pub, Ewan Munro’s site offers a map, helping to pinpoint their exact location at a glance. His map of Pubs in EC3 (the postal district which includes ‘our’ parish) is at this link and provides a colour coded display of current (as at 2021) and former bars, pubs and taverns.

Finally, no survey of resources on City of London Pubs would be complete without a reference to Timothy M. Richards and James Stevens Curl’s 1973 book ‘City of London Pubs – A Practical and Historical Guide’ which sought to record every pub and bar in the Square Mile at that time with both an often witty contemporary assessment and historical commentary. The book is divided into ten chapters offering ‘manageable walks’ – but with over a dozen pubs in each chapter I am not sure I would find it manageable to have a drink in each, as the authors seem to have done! The pubs in our parish are split over two walks – Chapter 8 (Billingsgate and Leadenhall) and Chapter 9 (Aldgate and the Tower). Professor Curl’s website is a fascinating mine of all sorts of other information!

It has been wonderful to dip a toe into the fascinating world of pub history in the City. The passion with which these books and websites have been compiled is evident to all who read them – one can only imagine the hours and hours of painstaking research which has led to their creation.


Pepys Parish Pub History - Pubs in Pepys 'Own' Parish

A brief account of some of the historic pubs that have graced the streets of St Olave Hart Street – Pepys’ ‘own’ Parish – over the years. First, the pubs of Pepys time in his 'own' parish: 

The Three Tuns, Crutched Friars (possibly opposite St Olave Hart Street near the location of the present day ‘Windsor’)
Pepys referred to St Olave Hart Street as ‘our own church’. Perhaps he thought of The Three Tuns as his ‘own’ pub for a time? It was certainly his local between 1666 and 1669. Mentioned seven times in the diary (along with two other pubs of the same name). According to one contributor to pepysdiary.com, the 1667 and 1669 St Olave’s Ascension Day Parish Dinner was held here as part of ‘Beating the Bounds’.

Kevan Wilding notes Pepys’ reference to a ‘great hubbub’ between the Fielding brothers who fell out at the Three Tuns’ Tavern door on 9th May 1667 (one of whom was killed in the brawl) although neither Wilding’s ‘PubWiki’ site nor the Pubology website list The Three Tuns or provide a likely location. For this we turn to Mr Pepys’ Small Change that provides extensive biographical information about John Kent, the proprietor of The Three Tuns, which before the Great Fire was located in Gracechurch Street. With his second wife Elizabeth, John Kent had purchased a site in Crutched Friars (perhaps opposite the church, near the site of the present day ‘Windsor’) within a month of the fire. This would have been no mean feat at the time, property prices in the parish having been significantly inflated given that it was one of the few parts of the city to escape the flames. John Kent was a vintner and it is thought he remained active in the area for some time, becoming a senior member of St Olave’s congregation, although it is hard to determine from the historic record if he remained the landlord of the Three Tuns after Pepys’ references to him cease in the late 1660s. The Parish has a historic association with the Wine and Spirit Trade – which we hope to revive – and John Kent seems to have played a part in that story. He died in December 1689 and while he lived a great deal of his life in the parish of St Olave Hart Street, he was buried in All Hallows Lombard Street, the parish where he married his first wife, where his children were baptised and where he established the first ‘Three Tuns’ before the Great Fire.

The Ship, Billiter Lane, off Fenchurch Street
Mentioned several times by Pepys in 1667 when he records his attraction towards the daughter of the landlord (her age at that time is not clear). Contributors to pepysdiary.com state Pepys refers to John Morris as the landlord in 1669.

The Elephant, 119 Fenchurch Street
While not listed amongst the taverns named by Pepys in his diary, Ewan Munro dates The Elephant from 1666 to a location on Fenchurch Street. John Timbs in ‘Club Life of London Volume II (1866)’ suggests the pub was built long before and escaped the Great Fire. Richards & Curl state that one reason for this is that it was one of the few stone buildings in the area. When they visited the last iteration of the pub on this site in 1973, it had already been rebuilt in 1826 and again in 1941. The site forms part of an urban block which became home to the Ironmongers’ Hall (until it was damaged by a German bomb in 1917 – yes there were aerial bombardments of London in WWI as well as WWII), then became the headquarters of Cory Group (whose war memorial hangs in St Olave Hart Street at which an annual service of Remembrance is held). The pub was demolished when the site became 120 Fenchurch Street - a large skyscraper with a publicly accessible roof garden on top and an alleyway named ‘Hogarth Court’ running through the middle. The name a reference to the painter, William Hogarth who, according to Timbs, Richards & Curl (although disputed by others), lodged at The Elephant for several years getting into debt – which he repaid by painting ‘Modern Midnight Conversation’ as a caricature of the parochial authorities with whom he took umbrage when the Elephant’s dining rooms were moved to the Kings Head, across the road. According to Richards & Curl, the Elephant became a sort of gallery of Hogarth’s work with reproductions of ‘The Hudson’s Bay Company Partners going to Dinner’, ‘Harlow Bush Fair’, ‘Gin Lane’ and ‘Beer Street’ gracing the walls at one time.


The Kings Head (known as The Queen’s Head in 1558 and The London Tavern from 1876, merged into a single pub with the ‘American Stores’ in the 1890s), 53-55 Fenchurch Street (and previously Star Lane and 5 Mark Lane)
Kevan Wilding lists ten ‘King’s Head’ pubs mentioned by Pepys but does not locate any of them to Mark Lane/Fenchurch Street. Ewan Munro locates the Kings Head opposite The Elephant. Richards & Curl explain that Queen Elizabeth I dined here on boiled pork and pease-pudding on her release from the Tower in 1558 after having given thanks at All Hallows Staining. At that time, they explain, the Inn was located off Star Alley (now part of the 50 Fenchurch site being redeveloped for The Clothworkers’ Company). Richards & Curl explain that the metal dish used by Elizabeth used to be exhibited behind the bar. I wonder what happened to it? St Olave Hart Street today boasts a wonderful post-war window depicting Elizabeth I, representing All Hallows Staining, now part of our modern day ‘united parish’.

Pepys Parish Pub History - Pubs just outside Pepys 'Own' Parish

The Mitre (known in the diary as Rawlingsons), Fenchurch Street
Just outside of the parish, in what was the parish of St Dionis Backchurch the tavern possibly located under or near what is now the ‘Walkie Talkie’. The Mitre was one of the ‘political taverns’ of the Civil War, destroyed in the Great Fire but soon rebuilt.

The Dolphin, Tower Street
Just outside the parish, opposite or near what is now The Hung Drawn and Quartered, there are over forty references to The Dolphin in Pepys Diaries. It is thought to have been one of the larger taverns in the area.

Image : A Midnight Modern Conversation by William Hogarth, 1733, The Metropolitan Museum of Art