I'm off for my Saturday stroll along the market to The Eagle, read the papers but first came across this:
As the old saying goes:
He who keeps one eye on the past is blind in one eye
But he who keeps no eye on the past is blind in both eyes.
The (provisional) End
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APPENDIX
Recommended pubs to visit
Both the pubs mentioned are historically interesting in different ways; but they are frequented mostly by office workers and
professionals for after-work drinking, so are not your average back-street local pub servicing local people. Those few local pubs of that type that have so far survived the ruinous gentrification and/or brewery theming processes are too rare and valuable to be casually exposed here. But if you want good ale, these two can provide for the thirsty explorer.
Ye Old Mitre is in Ely Court, which is a narrow alley that runs between Hatton Garden and Ely Place. It serves some fine real ales. It has been a tavern since 1546, though rebuilt in Georgian times. Originally built by the Bishop of Ely Palace for the use of his servants, the present building dates from the 18th century. (The pub’s name derives from the mitre headware worn by Bishops.) “The graceful sweep of Ely Place was built in 1773 on a very ancient and historic site. Ely House had been the London palace and estate of the Bishops of Ely. It became the Spanish Embassy in the 1620s; and when it was demolished the first building to go up in its place was almost certainly - if usual practice is anything to go by - the little mews pub which would first serve the builders as a canteen and would then become a modest place of refreshment for the servant population of the new houses.” (London by Pub - Pub Walks Around Historic London, Ted Bruning, 2001.)
Close by and well worth visiting is St Etheldreda’s Church in Ely Place; it dates from 1298, though the crypt is even older. It was the first church in London to hear a Catholic mass after the Reformation. “St Etheldreda (630-679) was a Saxon Abbess of Ely,daughter of Anna, King of East Angles. She is sometimes known as Audry… At the fair of St Audry in Ely cheap necklaces made of worthless glass beads used to be sold under the name tawdry laces, which gives us the adjective tawdry.”
“During the Middle Ages, the part of modern Cambridgeshire known as the Isle of Ely was subject to the authority of the Bishops of Ely. When the bishops established their London base in Holborn in the late 13th century, they secured the agreement of the Crown to treat their palace similarly. This, and its grounds, were thus exempt from the jurisdiction of both the king’s sheriff and the local Church hierarchy. In the 16th century, the bishops lost much of their property to the Hatton family. In 1772, they sold to the Crown what remained of their land, by then amounting to little more than the present Ely Place and adjoining Mitre Court. After these were built in 1773, their inhabitants claimed independence from the adjacent Liberty of Saffron Hill, as occupants of both Crown land and of what they alleged to be still part of the See of Ely (and thus part of what had now become Cambridgeshire). The licensing and opening hours of the Mitre tavern long remained under the control of the Cambridgeshire justices, and the (claimed) exemption of Ely Place residents from payment of the Liberty poor rate was ended only in 1835. In other respects Place and Court continued to enjoy a special status. The Ely Place Improvements Act of 1842 provided for its government by elected commissioners with powers to levy rates and see to the “paving, lighting, watching, cleaning and improving” of the area. This arrangement lasted until 1901, when most of the powers of the commissioners were transferred to Holborn Borough Council. But the Act is still on the statute book, the commissioners still meet, and Ely Place remains one of the last private roads in Inner London.” (Streets of Old Holborn, op. cit.)
The Jerusalem Tavern in Britton St is owned by the small St Peter’s Brewery of Suffolk and carries a full range of their very fine ales. They acquired the building in 1996 and named it after earlier Taverns that had existed nearby in the 14th and 18th
centuries. Built in the 1720s, originally as a residential house, it later became a watchmakers’ workshop. The shopfront was added in 1810. It was a café for many years until the Brewery made it a pub in 1996.
The décor is an attempt to recreate an 18th century tavern; it’s debatable whether this qualifies as an over-the-top Theme Pub or a working museum, but it’s more interesting than most and its saving grace is its superb beer selection.
CHEERS!
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Ps: The Jerusalem closed during the 1st lockdown a great favorite of ours.
sadly missed...
Pss: I met the Queens' Father Christmas in The Old Mitre, Billy he only works once a year for her,clever old Billy. tata...
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