A 4.3 pub named The Brougham, after the elegant horse-drawn carriage that was itself named after a great Lord Chancellor
The Brougham holds a 4.3 from a hundred and thirty-seven people, and carries an elegant and unusual name with a double history – “the Brougham,” after the smart, light, horse-drawn carriage of the Victorian age, which was itself named after a great man, Lord Brougham, one of the most brilliant and reforming figures of his era.
The carriage
A brougham (pronounced “broom” or “broe-am”) was a particular type of horse-drawn carriage – a light, closed, four-wheeled carriage, drawn by a single horse, with the driver seated outside in front and a snug, enclosed compartment for one or two passengers. Introduced in the 1830s, it was the smart, practical town carriage of the Victorian and Edwardian ages – elegant, manageable, and much favoured for getting about the city, a sort of Victorian equivalent of the well-appointed private car. The Prat’s transport desk notes its appeal as a name: the brougham evokes a whole vanished world of elegant horse-drawn travel, of coachmen and carriage lamps and the clip-clop of hooves on cobbles.
To name a pub “the Brougham” is to summon this elegant, nostalgic image of Victorian travel – the smart carriage drawing up outside, the passengers alighting for refreshment. It belongs, loosely, to the tradition of pubs named after coaches and travel, recalling the great age of the coaching inn, when the pub was a staging post for horse-drawn journeys. The Prat’s naming desk enjoys the elegant nostalgia of it: a pub named after a carriage, redolent of a more graceful age of getting about.
The Lord behind the carriage
But the carriage itself was named after a man, and a remarkable one: Henry Brougham, first Baron Brougham and Vaux, one of the most brilliant, energetic, and reforming figures of the early nineteenth century. Brougham was a lawyer, politician, and Lord Chancellor, a founder of the University of London, a champion of the abolition of slavery, of popular education, and of law reform, and the celebrated defender of Queen Caroline in her sensational trial. He was a whirlwind of intellect and reforming zeal, and the carriage was named in his honour, reputedly to his own design. The Prat’s history desk relishes the layered origin: the pub named after the carriage, the carriage named after the Lord – a great reformer, remembered at one remove, over a pub door.
There is a pleasing irony that Brougham, a serious statesman and reformer, should be best remembered by many not for his abolitionism or his educational reforms but for a type of carriage bearing his name – and now, at a further remove, for a pub. Such is the strange afterlife of fame. The Prat’s history desk notes the fitness for radical Islington: another reforming figure, like the Three Johns’ Wilkes, woven into the district’s pub names.
The small sample
At a hundred and thirty-seven reviews, this is a modest sample, past the very-small danger zone but short of full volume-proofing. A 4.3 from a hundred and thirty-seven people is a solid, reasonably trustworthy signal – a decent score on a fair sample, worth taking seriously while remembering it is not yet in the thousand-review class. The Prat’s statistics desk files it as “solid and reasonably reliable.”
The pub
A 4.3 across a hundred and thirty-seven people is a solid score on a fair sample. The reviews describe a good, characterful, welcoming pub doing an honest trade – a fine local under an elegant, historically layered name.
Verdict
A good, characterful pub named the Brougham, after the elegant Victorian carriage – which was itself named after Henry, Lord Brougham, one of the great reformers of his age – a doubly historical name for a doubly reforming district.
Go, have a pint at the Brougham, and enjoy the layered history – a pub named after a carriage named after a Lord, the elegant clip-clop of Victorian travel and the reforming zeal of a great statesman, folded into a single elegant name.
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]
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