St Giles, London Beggars Bush c.1660

A disreputable inn known as The Beggars Bush or The Beggar in the Bush is reputed to have operated until the reign of Charles II during which the name was changed to Hare and Hounds.  Although the old name was replaced it was remembered. The history of this pub seems to have been confused with another in Southwark, south of the Thames. It may be the inn was referred to in the ballad London’s Ordinarie. It was indirectly, through a book, the source of the name of the pub in Ubud, Bali, and (possibly) through that a restaurant in Manchester.

The fullest account is in Edward Walford Old and New London, , which says:

“During the improvements which were effected about the year 1844–5, when the greater part of the “Rookery,” or the “Holy Land,” was swept away, one at least of the houses which disappeared had a history of its own. This was a public-house called the “Hare and Hounds.” It stood nearly in the centre of what is now New Oxford Street, and, says Mr. Jacob Larwood, in his “History of Sign-boards,” “it was one of those places associated with ‘the good old customs of our ancestors.'” “The ‘Hare and Hounds,'” writes Mr. Richardson in his “Recollections of the Last Half Century,” “was to be reached by those going from the West-end towards the City, by going up a turning on the left hand, nearly opposite St. Giles’s Churchyard. The entrance to this turning or lane was obstructed or defended by posts with cross bars, which being passed, the lane itself was entered. It extended some twenty or thirty yards towards the north, through two rows of the most filthy, dilapidated, and execrable buildings that could be imagined; and at the top or end of it stood the citadel, of which ‘Stunning Joe’ was the corpulent castellan. I need not say that it required some determination and some address to gain this strange place of rendezvous. Those who had the honour of an introduction to the great man were considered safe, wherever his authority extended, and in this locality it was certainly very extensive. He occasionally condescended to act as a pilot through the navigation of the alley to persons of aristocratic or wealthy pretensions, whom curiosity, or some other motive best known to themselves, led to his abode. Those who were not under his safe-conduct frequently found it very unsafe to wander in the intricacies of this region. In the salon of this temple of low debauchery were assembled groups of all ‘unutterable things,’ all that class distinguished in those days, and, I believe, in these, by the generic term ‘cadgers.’
‘Hail cadgers, who, in rags array’d,
Disport and play fantastic pranks,
Each Wednesday night in full parade,
Within the domicile of Banks’.’

“A ‘lady’ presided over the revels, collected largess in a platter, and at intervals amused the company with specimens of her vocal talent. Dancing was ‘kept up till a late hour,’ with more vigour than elegance, and many Terpsichorean passages, which partook rather of the animation of the ‘Nautch’ than the dignity of the minuet, increased the interest of the performance. It may be supposed that those who assembled were not the sort of people who would have patronised Father Mathew, had he visited St. Giles’s in those times. There was, indeed, an almost incessant complaint of drought, which seemed to be increased by the very remedies applied for its cure; and had it not been for the despotic authority with which the dispenser of the good things of the establishment exercised his rule, his liberality in the dispensation would certainly have led to very vigorous developments of the reprobation of man and of woman also. In the lower tier, or cellars, or crypt, of the edifice, beds or berths were provided for the company, who, packed in bins, after the ‘fitful fever’ of the evening, slept well.” This notorious house was a favourite resort of Londoners in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was known by the sign of the “Beggars’ Bush” previous to the reign of Charles II., when the name became altered to the “Hare and Hounds,” in consequence of a hare having been hunted and caught on the premises, where it was afterwards cooked and eaten.”

The same unlikely tale is told of the pub in Southwark. The source for his description appears to be Larwood, J. & Hotten, J.C., The history of signboards from earliest times to the present day (2nd ed., London, 1866, p.163) which is manifestly unreliable (see London’s Ordinarie).

Alfred Sydney Lewis, writing from the library of the Constitutional Club in 1907 gives an account that seems to be taken from Walford, saying it had been near the centre of what is now New Oxford Street, and was reached by a turning nearly opposite St. Giles’s Churchyard. (Notes and Queries, 10 s. VII 1907, p.271).

Henry Mayhew in a record of a visit to The Rookery of St. Giles c.1860 quoted from a Mr. Hunt, inspector of the lodging-houses, that the Hare and Hounds public-house, formerly the Beggar in the Bush was in Buckeridge Street, which is shown on Greenwood’s map of London. This is consistent with Walford. Sir Walter  Besant and G.E. Mitton, Holborn and Bloomsbury, (London, Blacks, 1903, p.9) also give this address, and the licensee in 1844 being one Joe Banks, describing it as being the most notorious amongst the various houses of entertainment in the rookery, and a resort of all classes.

OS Grid

TQ310810

Sources

Edward Walford Bloomsbury’, Old and New London: Volume 4 (1878), pp. 480-489.

Thanks

John Pile

Posted: March 19th, 2011 | Filed under: Places | Tags: London, Londons Ordinary, Manchester, Southwark, Ubud, pubs | No Comments »