BOLEYN TAVERN

BOLEYN TAVERN - A LITERARY LONDON PUB

On?Friday?(22nd November), before attending a Rebecca Varley-Winter’s?writing session, as part of the?Newham Festival of Stories, I popped into the Boleyn Tavern. A pub run by Remarkable Pubs.

The Taven is named after the Boleyn family and West Ham's former ground, the Boleyn Ground. Anne Boleyn, second wife to Henry VIII, is featured on the pub sign - many Anne Boleyn books are available.

It is an impressive Grade II listed Victorian pub, built in 1899–1900, with the entrance consoles bearing a 1900 date. Inside, there are marble and tiled floors; wooden screens divide up the seven bars; there is acid-etched and cut glass; dinning takes place in an old billiards room under an attractive stained-glass skylight. On my visit, at 3 PM, there was a wake in progress in the dining area.

I ordered a lime and soda (￡3), from a bar counter, with stuffed birds in glass boxes above, then sat on a leather chair by a warming fire.

Mahatma Gandhi visited the Boleyn Tavern in 1931. Arup K. Chatterjee writes in Indians in London (2021): Gandhi, who enjoyed immense popularity with the East Enders, is said to have enjoyed cream soda at the tavern over discussions on football and politics with local Londoners. Mahatma Gandhi wrote extensively including these literary works.

Still on politics, John Tully’s book Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labor Movement (2014): The National?Union?of Gasworkers and General Labourers (NUG&GL) was early on an exception to the rule in an age when many trade unions refused membership to women. The decision to admit them [women] was made at a 5,000-strong meeting of men held near the?Boleyn Tavern?in Upton Park in mid-October 1889.

This You Tube video set in the pub has Barbara Nadel chatting to Quercus?Books about her novel A Private Business (2012). The Boleyn is the Nadel family and her protagonist’s (PI Lee Arnold) pub.

Don Brown’s book Storming the Black Ice (2014): Their journey began five years ago at Boleyn Tavern?Pub in central London. From the moment the lad's father tapped her on the shoulder and asked to buy her a drink, electricity would sizzle late into the night. She should have declined his offer.

The Tavern is associated with West Ham Football Club and there are loads of literary references:

• Pete May’s book Massive: The Miracle of Prague (2024):? We move on to the?Boleyn Tavern?near West Ham's ground. All the cars on Green Street are sounding their horns. Inside the packed Boleyn, everyone is singing 'Bubbles'. An Arsenal scarf is lit with a cigarette lighter and burned in the centre of the?front bar.
• Julian Dicks's book Hammer Time: Me, West Ham, and a Passion for the Shirt (2023): The?Boleyn Tavern?can't pull the pints quick enough as the thirsty patrons knock them back, many with whisky chasers.
• Danny Lewis’s book Boleyn's Farewell (2021): Having come out of the Boleyn Tavern, Dan Lawless was one of those who were in the thick of it.
• Michael Carrick’s Between the Lines (2018): West Ham fans swarmed everywhere, outside the Boleyn Tavern, on the Bobby Moore statue and I even saw one standing on top of a police van. 'Have you seen this bloke?!' Giggsy shouted. I rushed down and couldn't believe what I saw. One fella, I kid you not, kept running up to the bus, off his nut, eyes gone, screaming right in the window, ‘Come on then, come on then’, which we thought funny at first.
• Lee Sturley’s book?The Secret Train Robber (2016): The?Boleyn Tavern, on its imposing corner site, became the home of West Ham FC supporters from the day they laid the first brick.
• Harry Redknapp’s book It Shouldn’t Happen to a Manager (2016):? Big Jim was up there with the greatest players in West Ham’s history. The story was that he would go in the Boleyn Tavern?on the way to the game and have a couple of pints with the fans. Then, after the game, he would be back there as well.
• Tony O'Neill’s book The Men in Black (2005): Well, we piled into their main pub, the?Boleyn Tavern, before the game and did them. After the game, we decided to walk to West Ham train station looking for it, a good fifty or sixty of us. None of them turn out. Their hearts have been broken, they have been done at the pub and they don’t want to know Man United anymore. Then two big lumps with the Cockney bounce, proper big stocky guys, walk towards us. I’m at the back, they walk through and bosh, I have hit one. He has not gone down but starts fighting with me.
• The pub is also name checked in Ben Sharratt and Kirk Blows’s book Bring Me the Head of Trevor Brooking (2011) and in Steve Tongue’s?Turf Wars (2016).

The Tavern has a West Ham F.C. display of photographs and football memorabilia in the corridor to the toilets. Bobby Moore's statue is across the road.

Boleyn Tavern, 1 Barking Road, East Ham, E6 1PW

Wikipedia Boleyn Tavern

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