A Wetherspoon set in the grand old ledger house of the West India Docks, where the accounts of an empire’s trade were once kept
The Ledger Building carries a 4.2 across more than four thousand reviews and occupies one of the most historically resonant buildings in Canary Wharf: the former ledger house of the West India Docks, where the accounts of the whole vast dock trade were once kept. The Prat’s history desk loves a pub in a building that used to do something serious.
West India Quay
The Ledger Building stands on West India Quay, among the grand old dock structures on the north side of the docks, beneath the Canary Wharf towers. Properly Docklands, no disclaimer needed – and the building itself is the story.
Where the accounts were kept
The name is exact and literal. This was the ledger building of the West India Docks – the office where the clerks kept the great ledgers, the account books recording every cargo of sugar, rum, coffee and spice that passed through the docks from the Caribbean. In the age before computers, the ledger house was the beating administrative heart of the docks, the place where the wealth of a global trade was tallied, columned and totted up by ranks of accountants. It is a handsome, dignified building, and to drink in it is to drink in the very room where an empire’s trade was counted.
The docks beneath the Wharf
The West India Docks, opened in 1802, were the first of London’s great enclosed docks, and their construction transformed the Isle of Dogs from marsh into the trading engine of the empire. When the docks finally closed in the twentieth century and the trade moved downriver to deep-water container ports, the whole area fell derelict – until the 1980s, when Canary Wharf rose on the site to become Europe’s rival to the City. The Ledger Building is a survivor of the old dock age, a Georgian counting-house standing quietly among the glass towers of the new one.
The honest Wetherspoon
The Prat has a genuine respect for what the Wetherspoon chain does with buildings like this – taking grand, historic, often threatened structures and keeping them alive as accessible, affordable pubs, with the history preserved and explained on the walls. The Ledger Building is a fine example: a Georgian dock office saved and reopened as a proper, unpretentious pub where anyone can drink among the history for the price of a reasonable pint. The 4.2 across four thousand reviews is a solid score for exactly that democratic proposition.
Verdict
A 4.2 across four thousand-plus reviews is a solid score, and the Ledger Building earns it as a handsome, historic, affordable pub in a genuinely remarkable building – the old accounts house of the West India Docks, where the ledgers of an empire’s trade were kept. History, preserved and made accessible, for the price of a pint.
Go for the pint and the history together, and consider the clerks who once filled these rooms with the great ledgers of the docks. Beneath the glass towers of modern Canary Wharf, the old counting-house still keeps its accounts – now measured in pints rather than cargoes.
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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