A 4.3 gastropub named after the Dukes of Norfolk, the premier dukes of England, who have quietly outranked the aristocracy for centuries
The Norfolk Arms holds a 4.3 from eight hundred and fifty-eight people, is a gastropub known for its tapas, and is named after one of the grandest titles in the entire English aristocracy: the Dukes of Norfolk.
The premier dukes
Most people, encountering yet another aristocratic pub name, assume one duke is much like another. But the Dukes of Norfolk are not just any dukes. They are the premier dukes of England – the highest-ranking dukes in the realm below the royal family, first in precedence among the entire peerage.
And they hold a second, extraordinary office: the Dukes of Norfolk are the hereditary Earl Marshals of England. This means that for centuries, one particular family has been responsible, by birthright, for organising the great state ceremonies of the nation – coronations, state funerals, the ceremonial opening of Parliament. When a monarch is crowned or buried, a Duke of Norfolk is, by ancient hereditary right, running the show.
The Catholic dukes
There is a further remarkable fact. The Dukes of Norfolk, the premier peers of a firmly Protestant nation, have remained, throughout the centuries, staunchly Roman Catholic. Through all the periods when English Catholics were persecuted, excluded from public life, and treated with deep suspicion, the Howards – the family that holds the dukedom – kept their faith.
So the highest-ranking noble family in Protestant England, the family entrusted with organising the coronation of Protestant monarchs, was itself Catholic – a contradiction the establishment tolerated because the family’s rank and antiquity were simply too great to set aside. The Prat’s history desk regards this as a very English arrangement: a rule rigidly enforced against everyone except the person too grand to enforce it against.
The gastropub and the tapas
The pub itself, whatever the grandeur of its name, is a Bloomsbury gastropub known particularly for its tapas – the Spanish small-plates format that has, as we noted in the last survey, thoroughly colonised the British pub and restaurant. A tapas gastropub named after the premier Catholic dukes of Protestant England is a characteristically London collision of the grand and the everyday.
The bar
A 4.3 across eight hundred and fifty-eight people is a solid, real-sample score. The reviews describe good food, particularly the tapas, and a comfortable room doing an honest gastropub trade near the university.
Verdict
A good tapas gastropub named after the premier dukes of England, the hereditary organisers of coronations who stayed Catholic through centuries of Protestant rule because they were simply too grand to touch.
Arundel
The seat of the Dukes of Norfolk is Arundel Castle in Sussex, a vast medieval fortress that the family has held for centuries and that still dominates the town below it. It is one of the great continuously-inhabited castles of England, and it is a useful reminder that behind the pleasant pub name stands a family of genuinely staggering antiquity, wealth, and power – not a faded title but a living dynasty still occupying its castle and still, when a monarch dies, stepping forward to run the funeral.
A Bloomsbury tapas pub is a long way from Arundel Castle, but the name quietly connects the two, as English pub names so often connect the everyday drinker to a grandeur they will never otherwise touch.
Verdict
A good tapas gastropub named after the premier dukes of England, the hereditary organisers of coronations who stayed Catholic through centuries of Protestant rule because they were simply too grand to touch.
Go, have the tapas, and raise a glass to the Dukes of Norfolk, who outrank almost everyone, run the coronations, and kept the old faith while nobody quite dared to stop them.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
Someone’s going to send this to their MP and the MP will recognize themselves and do nothing about it whatsoever.