Greene Man

Last updated

Greene Man
The Greene Man Pub in Euston Road.jpg
Its inn sign and window box in 2019
Greene Man
Former names
  • Green Man (and Porters Bar)
  • Farthing Pie House
General information
Location383 Euston Road
Coordinates 51°31′25″N0°08′36″W / 51.5237°N 0.1432°W / 51.5237; -0.1432
Website
www.greeneking-pubs.co.uk

The Greene Man is a public house in London's Euston Road. It was formerly known as the Green Man (and Porters Bar) and before that, the Farthing Pie House or Pye House as mutton pies could be bought there for a farthing. When it was established in the 18th century, the area was rural and so the surroundings were farm fields and pleasure gardens. The place was then frequented by notable artists and writers including William Blake and Richard Wilson.

Contents

Farthing Pie House

There has been a tavern in this location for centuries. It was founded in 1708 as the Farthing Pie House or Pye House. [1] This was a common name for a place where a mutton pie could be bought for a farthing. [2]

It was mentioned by Henry Carey in his prelude to his popular song, "Sally in our Alley", which was written around 1716. [3] Carey explained the song's inspiration – a shoemaker's apprentice taking his sweetheart on a tour of London's sights which finished with "proceeding to the Farthing Pye-house, he gave her a Collation of Buns, Cheesecakes, Gammon of Bacon, Stuff’d-beef, and Bottled-ale;" [4] [5] Defoe's 1722 novel Colonel Jack also alludes to the tavern, when young Jack crosses London into a large field named after it. [6]

The most famous landlord in this period was Mr Price, who was known for his skill in making music by beating a salt-box with a rolling pin, accompanying musicians such as Carl Friedrich Abel, who played the violoncello. [7] [8]

The tavern appears on Rocque's map of 1746 on the corner of the Green Lane with the East-West track which was later to become the New Road. [9] The place then had a walled garden. Bilson's Farm is shown on the other side of the junction – a farm of 133 acres which later became part of Regent's Park. [10] There are no other buildings nearby as the area was not yet developed, the surroundings were still open fields, ponds and tracks. The area was described in the recollections of John Thomas Smith: [10]

I should have noticed Kendall’s farm which in 1746 belonged to a farmer of the name of Bilson, a pretty large one, where I have seen eight or ten immense hay-ricks all on a row; it stood on the site of the commencement of the present Osnaburg Street, nearly opposite the Green Man, originally called the Farthing Pie House.
...
It commanded views of the old Queen's Head and Artichoke, the old Jew’s Harp House, and the distant hills of Highgate, Hampstead, Primrose, and Harrow. I was then in my eighth year, and frequently played at trap-ball between the above-mentioned sombre elms.
...
when the sites of Portland Place, Devonshire Street, etc., were fields, the famous Tommy Lowe, then a singer at Mary-le-bone Gardens, raised a subscription, to enable an unfortunate man to run a small chariot, drawn by four muzzled mastiffs, from a pond near Portland Chapel, called Cockney Ladle, which supplied Mary-le-bone Bason with water, to the Farthing Pie House in order to accommodate children with a ride for a halfpenny.

Green Man

The radical MP John Wilkes campaigned there for election to the Middlesex constituency as the suffrage was limited to wealthy freeholders who could be found there. [8] At the end of the 18th century, it was frequented by William Blake as a young man. [11] In 1809, it was renamed the Green Man. [1] The Welsh painter Richard Wilson played skittles there. [8]

The pub is now owned by Greene King who changed the spelling of the sign to match their name, when they took over the Spirit Pub Company in 2015 and retired the Taylor Walker brewery brand. In 2019, the cheapest pie on the menu is Woodland Mushroom & Ale which costs £10.99. [12] As there were 960 farthings in a pound sterling, the nominal price of a pie has risen by a factor of over 10,000.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mince pie</span> Sweet pie with dried fruits and spices

A mince pie is a sweet pie of English origin filled with mincemeat, being a mixture of fruit, spices and suet. The pies are traditionally served during the Christmas season in much of the English-speaking world. Its ingredients are traceable to the 13th century, when returning European crusaders brought with them Middle Eastern recipes containing meats, fruits, and spices; these contained the Christian symbolism of representing the gifts delivered to Jesus by the Biblical Magi. Mince pies, at Christmas time, were traditionally shaped in an oblong shape, to resemble a manger and were often topped with a depiction of the Christ Child.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dulwich</span> Human settlement in England

Dulwich is an area in south London, England. The settlement is mostly in the London Borough of Southwark, with parts in the London Borough of Lambeth, and consists of Dulwich Village, East Dulwich, West Dulwich, and the Southwark half of Herne Hill. Dulwich lies in a valley between the neighbouring districts of Camberwell, Crystal Palace, Denmark Hill, Forest Hill, Peckham, Sydenham Hill, and Tulse Hill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lee, London</span> Human settlement in England

Lee, also known as Lee Green, is an area of South East London, England, straddling the border of the London Borough of Lewisham and the Royal Borough of Greenwich. It is located northwest of Eltham and southeast of Lewisham. It was in Kent before becoming part of the County of London in 1889, and then Greater London in 1965.

Moorgate was one of the City of London, England's northern gates in its defensive wall, the last to be built. The gate took its name from the Moorfields, an area of marshy land that lay immediately north of the wall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kit-Cat Club</span> London gentlemans club

The Kit-Cat Club was an early 18th-century English club in London with strong political and literary associations. Members of the club were committed Whigs. They met at the Trumpet tavern in London and at Water Oakley in the Berkshire countryside.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Rocque</span> Surveyor and cartographer (c. 1704–1762)

John Rocque was a French-born British surveyor and cartographer, best known for his detailed map of London published in 1746.

A tenterground, tenter ground or teneter-field was an area used for drying newly manufactured cloth after fulling. The wet cloth was hooked onto frames called "tenters" and stretched taut using "tenter hooks", so that the cloth would dry flat and square.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Exchange Alley</span> Alleyway in London, England

Exchange Alley or Change Alley is a narrow alleyway connecting shops and coffeehouses in an old neighbourhood of the City of London. It served as a convenient shortcut from the Royal Exchange on Cornhill to the Post Office on Lombard Street and remains as one of a number of alleys linking the two streets. Shops once located in Exchange Alley included ship chandlers, makers of navigation instruments such as telescopes, and goldsmiths from Lombardy in Italy.

During this period Harringay emerged from the mist of prehistory as a thickly forested area of southern England. By 1750 most of the forest had been cleared for agriculture, although settlement was still sparse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Great Titchfield Street</span>

Great Titchfield Street is a street in the West End of London. It runs north from Oxford Street to Greenwell Street, just short of the busy A501 Marylebone Road and Euston Road. It lies within the informally designated London area of Fitzrovia. In administrative terms it is in the City of Westminster. It lies within their designated East Marylebone Conservation Area in the former Metropolitan Borough of St Marylebone.

The Fortune of War was a pub in Smithfield, London, on the junction of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane. The location, originally known as 'Pie Corner', is where a statue of the Golden Boy of Pye Corner marks the place where the Great Fire of London stopped. The statue was initially built in the front of the pub.

Old York Road, originally York Road, with reference to New York, is a roadway that was built during the 18th century to connect Philadelphia with New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pi Alley</span>

Pi Alley in Boston, Massachusetts is located off Washington Street, near the Old City Hall on School Street. The origin of the short street's name remains in question. It may be named after the pied type which newspaper composing rooms dumped into the alley in the past, or after the local restaurants that sold coffee and a piece of pie for a nickel. It is also known as Williams Court, Savage's Court, Peck's Arch, and Webster's Arch.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bolsover Street</span> Street in City of Westminster, United Kingdom

Bolsover Street is in the Parish of St Marylebone in London's West End. In administrative terms it lies within the City of Westminster's West End Ward and is partly in the Harley Street Conservation Area whilst also sitting on the edges of the Regents Park and East Marylebone Conservation Areas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dog and Duck, St George's Fields</span> 17th century London tavern

The Dog and Duck was a tavern built upon St George's Fields in London in the 17th century. It was named after the sport of duck-baiting, that took place in adjacent wetland. In the 18th century its gardens were used as a spa but, by the 1770s, with spas no longer fashionable, it declined into a rowdy location for concerts. The magistrates refused to renew its licence, despite protracted legal disputes, and it closed in 1799. The building was then used as a School for the Indigent Blind and demolished in 1812, when the new Bethlem Hospital was built upon the site. That building is now used by the Imperial War Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Rocque's Map of London, Westminster, and Southwark, 1746</span> Outstanding 18th-century map of London

John Rocque's Map of London, Westminster, and Southwark, 1746 can refer to two different maps. The better known of these has the full name A plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark: it is a map of Georgian London to a scale of 26 inches to a mile, surveyed by John Rocque, engraved by John Pine, and published in 1746. It consists of 24 sheets and measures 3.84 m × 2.01 m. Taking nearly ten years to survey, engrave and publish, it has been described as "a magnificent example of cartography ... one of the greatest and most handsome plans of any city".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Upper Flask</span>

The Upper Flask was a tavern near the top of Hampstead hill in the 18th century which sold flasks of water from the spa at Hampstead Wells. It was located in Heath Street. It was the summer meeting place of the great literary and political figures of the Kit-Kat Club such as Walpole. The tavern business ceased in the 1750s and the grand house subsequently became the private residence of ladies and gentlemen such as Lady Charlotte Rich, George Steevens and Thomas Sheppard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Queen's Head Tavern</span> Former pub on Fleet Street in London, England

The Queen's Head Tavern was located on Fleet Street to the east of the Temple Bar in London. It was already established in 1682 when it is mentioned in the diary of Narcissus Luttrell: "The 2nd, in the morning early, a fire broke out in the back part of the Queen's Head Tavern, by Temple Bar".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trump Street</span> Street in the City of London

Trump Street is a street in the City of London that was originally known as Trumpadere Street, probably after the trumpet or horn makers who once worked there or in the adjacent Trump Alley. It was built after the Great Fire of London (1666) but completely destroyed by bombing during the Second World War and has since been entirely rebuilt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Angel Street, London</span> Street in the City of London

Angel Street, formerly known as Angel Alley, Angel Court, and Angell Street, is a street in the City of London that runs between King Edward Street in the west and St Martin's Le Grand in the east. Although dating back to at least 1542, no original buildings now remain due to the effects of the Great Fire of London, the London Blitz, and redevelopment.

References

  1. 1 2 About Green Man, Greene King
  2. Henry B. Wheatley (2011), "Farthing Pie House", London Past and Present , vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, p. 33, ISBN   9781108028073
  3. Norman Gillespie (May 1984), "The Origins and Early History of 'Sally in Our Alley'", The Review of English Studies, 35 (138), Oxford University Press: 203–208, JSTOR   516164
  4. Henry Carey (19 March 2023), The Ballad of Sally in our Alley, Poetry Foundation
  5. Ralph Louis Woods (1961), Famous Poems and the Little-known Stories Behind Them, Hawthorn Books, p. 31
  6. Cynthia Wall (1998), The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London, Cambridge University Press, p. 110, ISBN   9780521630139
  7. John Timbs (1868), "Salt-box", Curiosities of London, Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, p. 17
  8. 1 2 3 John Thomas Smith (1829), "Wilson", Nollekens and His Times, vol. 2, Colburn, p. 342
  9. Philip Temple; Colin Thom; Andrew Saint, "ch. 24 Bolsover Street to Cleveland Street" (PDF), Survey of London, vol. 51–52 South-East Marylebone, ISBN   9780300221978
  10. 1 2 John Thomas Smith (1905), Wilfred Whitten (ed.), A Book for a Rainy Day or Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766–1833, Methuen & Co., pp. 24, 47–48
  11. Samuel Foster Damon (1988), "Green Man", A Blake Dictionary, UPNE, p. 168, ISBN   9780874514360
  12. Traditional Pies, Greene King, retrieved 14 October 2019
  13. View of the Farthing Pie House, on the corner of the New Road and Portland Place, British Museum
  14. Edward Walford (1878), "Oxford Street and its northern tributaries: Part 1 of 2", Old and New London, vol. 4, London, pp. 406–441{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)