The Grapes is a

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

public house situated directly on the north bank of the Thames in London's Limehouse area, with a veranda overlooking the water. To its landward side, the pub is found at number 76 in Narrow Street, flanked by former warehouses now converted to residential and other uses. The Grapes is owned in partnership by the actor Sir Ian McKellen, the theatre and film director Sean Mathias, and Evgeny Lebedev, publisher of the '' Evening Standard'' newspaper.

History

The current building dates from the 1720s and is on the site of a pub built in 1583. It was formerly a working-class tavern serving the dockers of the Limehouse Basin. In the 1930s it sold beer from the adjacent brewery owned by Taylor Walker. It survived the intense bombing of the area in World War II, and is just outside the Docklands commercial zone built in the 1980s.

Local area

Limehouse was settled early as a dry bank suitable for growing, easy building upon and import, export, chandlery and fishing—most of many times wider Poplar to the east was the low-lying fields of the Isle of Dogs used for the keeping of marsh sheep with the national markets in the City just west. To the west before the City were the similar small wharf and early built-up 'Tower Division of Middlesex hamlets' of Ratcliff, Shadwell, Wapping and

St Katherine by the Tower The Royal Foundation of St Katherine is a religious charity based in the East End of London. The Foundation traces its origins back to the medieval church and monastic hospital St Katharine's by the Tower (full name ''Royal Hospital and Collegiat ...

each with their own urban settlements; together with Limehouse covering no more than a square mile in total. By Queen Elizabeth I's time, Limehouse joined with its neighbours as a doorway to world trade in the City and to ships embarking across the British Empire; a contemporary Limehouse-based world explorer was Sir Humphrey Gilbert. From directly below The Grapes,

Sir Walter Raleigh Sir Walter Raleigh (; – 29 October 1618) was an English statesman, soldier, writer and explorer. One of the most notable figures of the Elizabethan era, he played a leading part in English colonisation of North America, suppressed rebellion ...

set sail on his third voyage to the New World. In 1661,

Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...

' diary records his trip to lime kilns at the jetty just along from The Grapes.

Artistic references

In 1820, the young Charles Dickens visited his godfather in Limehouse and knew the district well for 40 years. The Grapes appears, scarcely disguised, in the opening chapter of his novel ''

Our Mutual Friend ''Our Mutual Friend'', written in 1864–1865, is the last novel completed by Charles Dickens and is one of his most sophisticated works, combining savage satire with social analysis. It centres on, in the words of critic J. Hillis Miller, quo ...

'':

A tavern of dropsical appearance ... long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. It had outlasted many a sprucer public house, indeed the whole house impended over the water but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver, who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.

Other popular writers were drawn by huddled buildings, wharves and docks by the bustling river:

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

in '' The Picture of Dorian Gray'';

Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...

, who sent ''

Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by British author Arthur Conan Doyle. Referring to himself as a " consulting detective" in the stories, Holmes is known for his proficiency with observation, deduction, forensic science and ...

'' in search of opium provided by the local Chinese immigrants; and, more recently, Peter Ackroyd in ''Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem''. Narrow Street is also associated with distinguished painters. Francis Bacon lived and worked at No. 80, and Edward Wolfe at No. 96.

James McNeill Whistler James Abbott McNeill Whistler (; July 10, 1834July 17, 1903) was an American painter active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He eschewed sentimentality and moral allusion in painting and was a leading pr ...

painted a ''Nocturne of Limehouse''. On The Grapes' walls are an oil painting, ''Limehouse Barge Builders'', by the marine artist Napier Hemy; watercolours of Limehouse Reach by Louise Hardy; and ''Dickens at The Grapes'' by the New Zealand artist Nick Cuthell.

References

External links

Official website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grapes, The Pubs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets 1583 establishments in England Commercial buildings completed in 1720 Grade II listed buildings in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Limehouse Grade II listed pubs in London