One of London’s oldest pubs – a 450-year-old Limehouse riverside tavern immortalised by Dickens, and now owned by Sir Ian McKellen
The Grapes in Limehouse holds thirty-seven hundred and eighty-six reviews and a 4.6 – a strong score on a truly enormous sample – and it is one of the oldest, most historic and most characterful pubs in all of London: a 450-year-old riverside tavern immortalised by Dickens, associated with Raleigh and Pepys, and now owned by none other than Sir Ian McKellen.
One of London’s oldest pubs
The Grapes is a genuine and venerable survivor – one of the oldest pubs in London. A pub has stood on this spot, at 76 Narrow Street in Limehouse, since 1583 (when it was known as “The Bunch of Grapes”), and the current building dates from the 1720s – a narrow, characterful, historic tavern, wonderfully preserved, standing right on the edge of the Thames with wooden steps down to the water and a small terrace overlooking the river. For centuries it was a working-class tavern serving the dockers of the Limehouse Basin, in the heart of the great maritime and dockland world of the river. It is a traditional Victorian long bar, all wooden panelling and warm burgundy walls hung with oil paintings, cosy and characterful and steeped in history. Remarkably, it survived the intense bombing of the Blitz, which flattened much of the surrounding area – a genuine survivor, standing for four and a half centuries by the river.
Raleigh, Pepys, and the doorway to the world
The Grapes stands in Limehouse, which was, in the great age of sail, the very doorway to world trade – the district of docks, shipyards, customs houses and lime kilns from which the ships of England set out across the world. The pub’s history is bound up with this great maritime past. It is said that Sir Walter Raleigh, the great Elizabethan explorer, set sail from a spot just below the Grapes on one of his voyages to the New World – a genuine thrill of Elizabethan adventure. The great diarist Samuel Pepys recorded a visit to the lime kilns at the jetty just along from the pub in 1661. The Grapes has stood witness to this whole great history of the river – the age of exploration, the great docks, the doorway to world trade – for four and a half centuries.
Dickens and the writers
The Grapes’s greatest literary fame comes from Charles Dickens. The young Dickens knew Limehouse well (his godfather lived there, and he visited from 1820), and he immortalised the Grapes in the opening chapter of his great novel “Our Mutual Friend,” describing it, scarcely disguised, as “a tavern of dropsical appearance… long settled down into a state of hale infirmity,” which “had outlasted many a sprucer public house.” (Dickens is said to have danced on the tables in what is now the “Dickens Snug,” and the pub keeps a complete set of his novels on its shelves in tribute.) Nor was Dickens alone – Limehouse and its riverside drew a whole galaxy of great writers: Oscar Wilde evoked the district’s opium dens in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and Arthur Conan Doyle sent Sherlock Holmes in search of opium in the Limehouse of his Sherlock Holmes stories. The Grapes sits at the heart of this rich literary landscape – the historic riverside tavern immortalised by Dickens and evoked by Wilde and Conan Doyle.
Gandalf’s own pub
And the Grapes has a wonderful modern twist to its long history – for it is now owned, in partnership, by the great actor Sir Ian McKellen (along with the director Sean Mathias and the publisher Evgeny Lebedev). Sir Ian – beloved the world over as Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings” and Magneto in “X-Men,” and one of the greatest stage actors of his generation – fell in love with the historic pub and became its landlord, and he is known to take a genuine, hands-on interest in it, even running the pub quiz on occasion. In a lovely touch, a tiny statue of Gandalf sits in a corner of the pub – a knowing nod to its famous owner. It is a wonderful modern chapter in the pub’s long story – one of London’s oldest and most literary pubs, immortalised by Dickens, now presided over by Gandalf himself.
Between its four and a half centuries of history, its associations with Raleigh and Pepys, its immortalisation by Dickens, its survival of the Blitz, its beautiful riverside setting, and its ownership by Sir Ian McKellen, the Grapes is one of the richest, most historic and most characterful pubs in all of London – and its strong score across nearly four thousand reviews shows how much it is still loved. The Prat’s history desk salutes it without reservation – a genuine treasure of literary and maritime London, where Dickens danced on the tables and Gandalf now keeps the bar. Raise a glass by the river, and drink in four and a half centuries of history.
The pub
A strong, hugely popular, and gloriously historic riverside pub doing a good 4.6 across nearly four thousand reviews – one of London’s oldest pubs, immortalised by Dickens in “Our Mutual Friend,” and now owned by Sir Ian McKellen.
Verdict
Strong, hugely popular, and gloriously historic – the Grapes, a 450-year-old Limehouse riverside tavern, Dickens’s own haunt, and now Gandalf’s own pub.
Go to the Grapes in Limehouse, have a pint by the river, and drink in the extraordinary history – one of London’s oldest pubs, where Raleigh set sail and Dickens danced on the tables, now owned by Sir Ian McKellen, with a tiny Gandalf keeping watch in the corner.
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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