A historic riverside pub named for the dock-opening cannon – where Nelson met Lady Hamilton in secret, and smugglers watched for the Revenue Men
The Gun in Docklands holds twenty-seven hundred and sixty reviews and a 4.5 – a strong score on an enormous sample – and it is one of the most genuinely historic and romantic pubs in this whole survey: a Grade II-listed riverside tavern where Lord Nelson secretly met Lady Emma Hamilton, where smugglers watched for the Revenue Men, and which takes its name from a dockland cannon.
The riverside tavern
The Gun stands on a quiet curve of the Thames at Coldharbour, on the Isle of Dogs, looking across the river to the O2 dome on the Greenwich Peninsula. There has been a public house on this site for over two hundred and fifty years – it traded under various names (the King and Queen in 1722, the Rose and Crown in 1725, the curious “Ramsgate Pink” in 1745) before taking its current name, The Gun, in 1771. It is a genuinely old, historic, characterful riverside pub – a Grade II-listed building of real age and atmosphere, with cosy wooden rooms, open fires, and a riverside terrace with wonderful views. Today a flagship Fuller’s gastropub, it is renowned as one of the best riverside pubs in London, and its strong score across an enormous sample reflects its genuine and lasting appeal.
The dockland cannon
The pub took its current name, “The Gun,” from a specific and celebratory event: the cannon that was fired here to mark the opening of the West India Import Docks in 1802. This was a great moment in the history of London’s docks – the opening of the vast new docks that would make this stretch of the Thames one of the busiest and most important ports in the world, at the heart of Britain’s global trade and empire. The celebratory cannon-fire gave the pub its name – “The Gun” – rooting it in the great age of the London docks, when this was the beating heart of world trade. The area, indeed, had a long association with cannon and the navy – nearby iron foundries once cast the guns for the Royal Navy’s ships of the line – so the name carries a doubled resonance of guns, ships and the sea.
Nelson and Lady Hamilton
The Gun’s most romantic claim to fame is its association with the greatest of all British naval heroes, Lord Horatio Nelson. In the late eighteenth century, Nelson acquired a property just up the road (still known as “Nelson’s House”), and he regularly visited the West India Docks to inspect the guns, right up until his glorious death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. And it was here, at The Gun, that Nelson would – rather saucily – secretly meet his mistress, the famous and beautiful Lady Emma Hamilton, in an upstairs room, for their assignations. That room is now called “The River Room,” and it retains, its admirers say, a genuine atmosphere of romance and history. The affair between the one-armed, one-eyed naval hero and the glamorous, scandalous Lady Hamilton was one of the great romantic scandals of the age, and The Gun was one of its secret settings – a genuine thrill of history in the very fabric of the pub.
The smugglers and the Revenue Men
The Gun has a further, more roguish history – for it was long a haunt of smugglers. In the great age of smuggling, when heavy taxes made the illicit landing of contraband hugely profitable, riverside pubs like The Gun were natural centres of the trade – places to land, hide and distribute smuggled goods. The Gun is said to have had a hidden tunnel for moving contraband, and – most wonderfully – a spy-hole in its secret circular staircase, through which the smugglers could watch for the approach of “the Revenue Men,” the customs officers who hunted them. This spy-hole, it is said, survives to this day – a genuine relic of the pub’s smuggling past. It is exactly the kind of rich, romantic, roguish history that makes an old riverside pub so atmospheric – the secret tunnel, the spy-hole, the watch for the Revenue Men.
Between the dockland cannon, the naval hero and his scandalous mistress, and the smugglers watching for the Revenue Men, The Gun has as rich and romantic a history as any pub in this survey. The Prat’s history desk salutes it warmly – a genuine treasure of riverside London, where history is, as one writer put it, not just a plaque on the wall but in the very floorboards.
The pub
A strong, hugely popular riverside gastropub doing a good 4.5 across an enormous sample, richly named “The Gun” for the 1802 dock-opening cannon – the historic tavern where Nelson met Lady Hamilton, and smugglers watched for the Revenue Men.
Verdict
Strong, hugely popular, and gloriously historic – The Gun, the riverside tavern of Nelson and Lady Hamilton, of the dockland cannon and the smugglers’ spy-hole, one of London’s finest riverside pubs.
Have a pint on the terrace of The Gun, looking across to the O2, and drink in the history of the name – the dock-opening cannon, Nelson’s secret meetings with Lady Hamilton in the River Room, and the smugglers watching through the spy-hole for the Revenue Men.
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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