Duncan Walker
Where did Samuel Pepys have a drink in Brentford?
It is 350 years ago since Samuel Pepys started his famous diary on 11 July 1660. See the BBC News article “Who was the man behind the diaries, Samuel Pepys?” which has a pointer to the diary online.
In the following entry from the diary, Pepys mentions visiting an inn in Brentford and we wondered which one that would be.
Pepys diary entry for 20th August 1665:
…… “I did presently eat a bit off the spit about 10 o'clock, and so took horse for Stanes, and thence to Brainford to Mr. Povy's, the weather being very pleasant to ride in. Mr. Povy not being at home I lost my labour, only eat and drank there with his lady, and told my bad newes, and hear the plague is round about them there. So away to Brainford; and there at the inn that goes down to the water- side, I 'light and paid off my post-horses, and so slipped on my shoes, and laid my things by, the tide not serving, and to church, where a dull sermon, and many Londoners. After church to my inn, and eat and drank, and so about seven o'clock by water, and got between nine and ten to Queenhive, very dark. And I could not get my waterman to go elsewhere for fear of the plague.”
Gillian Clegg in her book ‘Brentford Past’, believes the inn mentioned by Pepys would be The Grapes, at the Brentford ferry on Ferry Lane, (which later, became The Bunch of Grapes and then The Ferry Hotel).
I suppose the church, Pepys said he went to, would be St Lawrence’s Church and the entrance to our estate.
It took him 2-3 hours by boat from Brentford to Queenhithe (Southark Bridge). I don't know whether that's a good rowing pace?
Nigel Moore disagreed with Gillian. He said, “The Ferry Quays site of that Inn was in effect the opposite side of town from St Lawrences. Bear in mind that Pepys arrived that first time from the west, St Lawrences would have been the first (& most ancient and important) ecclesiastical establishment, while the first inns would have been the 3 Pigeons on his left and the Boar's Head on his right, with the Magpie figuring in there close by. Boar's Head yard was the single most important and certainly largest of the access ways to the river from the High St then. It seems logical that that would have been Pepys' stopping off and departure point, Workhouse Dock (as it came to be known some 50 years later), being a major wharf at the time.”
Brentford certainly was a hub in those days, from horse and carriage to river transport, together with its fine orchards and many inns, it attracted many. Wonderful!