Shops and public houses in Leman Street and Cable Street

Title

Reference

SC_PHL_01_392_82_246 / WNA33 (Collage 118807)

Date

Collection

London Metropolitan Archives: LCC Photograph Library

Description

Three-storey shops and pub at 133-143a Leman Street, and the Horns and Horseshoe pub in Cable Street, looking south. The street is cobbled and has tram lines running through it. On the left at 133 is E Blake’s newsagent's, advertising Wills’ cigarettes and Fry’s chocolates as well as newspapers and postcards. At 135 is S White’s grocery, advertising R White’s lemonade and ginger beer and Cadbury’s chocolate. The late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century house at 137 has a mansard floor and an ornate streetlight outside. It was Grade II listed in 1973, listing number 1065147. Number 139 is the early nineteenth-century Taylor Walker brewery’s Brown Bear pub, which was also Grade II listed in 1973, listing number 1065148. At 141 is an early eighteenth-century shop with the name Waverley over its window, Grade II listed in 1973, listing number 1241038, though its shop front has been altered. These three buildings are listed as a group. Number 143a and behind it in Mill Yard at 143 is a British Petroleum garage. On the other side of the railway viaduct, a pub with British Bar on its front wall is visible. There are two women outside the Brown Bear, a man walking under the viaduct and a man driving a cart under it. There is a loaded cart or carriage outside number 133, a lorry parked outside 141 and two cars going under the viaduct. Number 133 Leman Street today is the Bon Appetit Lebanese restaurant; 135 is Barron’s estate agency. The building at 137 has had a varied history: it was built c1825 as a carpenter’s shop for John Restall. In 1850-51 it became offices, including for the Midland Railway Company. Just before World War II it was a blouse and dress factory then became a restaurant c1950. In 1995 a basement wine bar was added by John Polycarpou. It was later refitted as a Bed & Breakfast plus restaurant run by Hersi and Ahmed Hassan and in 2005 refitted by Papa Architects Ltd as the Red Chilli Indian restaurant, which it is today, with flats above. Its facade is the same as in the photo except for the ground floor. The Brown Bear was built in the 1780s and has been renovated and refurbished several times since then. It is still a pub and gained fame because outside it is where, in a fist fight, George Cornell knocked Ronnie Kray unconscious. This led to a gangsters’ feud and a few years later Kray murdered Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel. Number 141 was built c1785 for brothers John and William Bridgeman, tallow merchants. They were succeeded c1823 by John Christian Schultz and Otto Uhlendorff, who continued the site’s use for tallow chandlery. The building later became a music shop, a coffee house, a post office, a tobacconist, the East restaurant, a mosque, and the Empress restaurant established in 1993. The pub at 10 Cable Street is the Horns (originally Horse) and Horseshoe, which opened before 1807 and closed in 1997. In 1949, it was the first pub in London to refuse to operate the colour bar. The building has been restored and in 2017 Moko Sellers opened it as a vegan events venue but that is now closed.