A Docklands pub flying a name that gazes upward – the observatory, where the watchers of the heavens once mapped the stars and set the world’s time
The Observatory carries a strong 4.6 across more than nine hundred reviews and flies a name that lifts the eyes upward – the observatory, the place from which the heavens are watched and mapped. In the Docklands, in the shadow of Greenwich across the river, the name carries a particular resonance, and the Prat’s naming desk was glad to look up.
Docklands, near Greenwich
The Observatory sits in the Docklands, near the great bend of the river that faces Greenwich – appearing in this survey squarely within the eastern estate. We place it plainly.
The watchers of the sky
An observatory is a place built for looking up – a station for astronomers to watch and map the stars, the planets and the movements of the heavens. It is one of the noblest of human enterprises, the patient, centuries-long effort to understand the cosmos by careful observation. To name a pub the Observatory is to reach for that upward gaze, that sense of wonder at the night sky – a lovely, expansive thing for a drinking house to invoke. There is something fitting, too, in a pub as a place of watching: the regular on his stool, observing the human comedy pass by, is his own kind of astronomer.
Greenwich across the water
The name carries extra weight in the Docklands, because just across the river stands the Royal Observatory, Greenwich – one of the most important observatories in all of history. It was from Greenwich that the astronomers mapped the stars for navigation, and it is through Greenwich that the Prime Meridian runs – the line of zero longitude from which the whole world measures its position east and west, and from which Greenwich Mean Time set the clocks of the globe. A Docklands pub called the Observatory drinks within sight of the very place that gave the world its time and its map. The Prat finds that a splendid thing to raise a glass to.
Time, mapped and measured
The Prat’s favourite thought is the Greenwich connection to time itself. The observers at Greenwich did not just map space; they mastered time, establishing the standard by which the whole world sets its clocks. There is a gentle irony in a pub – a place where time so famously slips away, where an hour vanishes into good company – being named for the institution that pinned time down with such precision. At the Observatory, you may lose track of the very thing that Greenwich, across the water, defined for all the world. The 4.6 across nine hundred reviews suggests it is a pleasant place to lose it.
Verdict
A 4.6 across nine hundred-plus reviews is a strong score, and the Observatory earns it as a well-liked Docklands local with a name that gazes upward. It invokes the watchers of the sky, and drinks within sight of Greenwich – the great observatory that gave the world its map and its time.
Go for a pint under the name of the star-watchers, and consider Greenwich across the water, where the meridian runs and the world’s time is set. At the Observatory you may happily lose the very hours that Greenwich so precisely measured.
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]
