A City pub near Fenchurch Street flying the most royal name in Britain – Windsor, the castle, the town, and the very name of the royal house itself
The Windsor near Fenchurch carries a 4.4 across eleven hundred reviews and flies about the most royal name in all of Britain – Windsor, the name of the castle, the town, and the ruling royal house itself. The Prat’s naming desk made its deepest bow.
Near Fenchurch Street, the City
This Windsor sits near Fenchurch Street, in the City of London on the north bank – a geographic stray in this south-bank survey, caught by the scrape’s wide reach. We flag the bank plainly, as ever.
The name of the royal house
“Windsor” is unique among royal pub names, because it is not the name of a single king or queen but of the entire royal house – the House of Windsor, the family name of the British monarchy itself since 1917. (The name was adopted, famously, during the First World War, when the royal family set aside their German family name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha for the reassuringly English “Windsor,” after the castle.) To fly the name Windsor is to fly the name of the monarchy in its most modern and complete form – not a portrait of one sovereign, but the dynasty entire.
The castle and the town
Behind the royal house stands Windsor Castle – the oldest and largest inhabited castle in the world, a royal residence for nearly a thousand years since William the Conqueror first raised it, and still a working home of the monarchy today. The town of Windsor grew up in its shadow, and the whole name is soaked in that deep royal history – the castle on its hill above the Thames, the ancient seat of kings and queens. A pub called the Windsor summons all of it: the castle, the town, the dynasty, a thousand years of monarchy in a single word.
The royal local
What the Prat enjoys is the familiar democratic irony. Windsor is the grandest of royal names – the castle, the dynasty, the monarchy entire – and here it flies over an ordinary City pub, open to all for the price of a pint. The name that belongs to kings and queens crowns a working local where everyone is welcome. The 4.4 across eleven hundred reviews is a solid score for a pub flying so grand and royal a name.
The Prat’s naming desk savours one further curiosity of the name. “Windsor” is, in a sense, a deliberately chosen brand – the royal family picked it, in 1917, precisely because it sounded solidly, reassuringly English at a moment when anything German was suspect. They reached for the name of the ancient castle to anchor the modern monarchy in a thousand years of English history. There is a small irony in a pub doing the very same thing – borrowing the castle’s name to lend itself a touch of deep-rooted, reassuring Englishness. King and publican alike, it seems, know the power of the name Windsor to summon the weight of the ages.
Verdict
A 4.4 across eleven hundred-plus reviews is a solid score, and the Windsor earns it on the grandest royal name in Britain. It flies Windsor – the castle, the town, and the very name of the royal house itself – a thousand years of monarchy summoned over a City pub near Fenchurch Street.
Go for the honest welcome and the deeply royal name, and raise a pint at the Windsor. The name belongs to the oldest inhabited castle on earth and the ruling house of Britain – and here it crowns, democratically, an ordinary local open to all.
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]
