Hat & Feathers – The Oldest Building on Clerkenwell Road

The Hat & Feathers pub at the corner of Clerkenwell Road and Goswell Road in London is an 1860 Victorian building that predates Clerkenwell Road itself. Designed for publican James Leask by music-hall architect William Finch Hill, it features ornate Corinthian pilasters and Ionic columns. Alongside the 1855 Museum Tavern, it is one of only two surviving pub designs by the famous theatre architecture firm Finch Hill and Paraire.

London · from the walk “Clerkenwell Uncovered: From the World's First Tube to London's Radical Heart” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Hat and Feathers, 2 Clerkenwell Road, London EC1M 5PP

Who designed the Hat & Feathers pub on Clerkenwell Road?

Look up at this extraordinary building on the corner. This is the Hat and Feathers... and it is a survivor.......... There has been a pub on this spot at the junction with Goswell Road since the seventeen eighties. But what you see today dates from eighteen sixty. The present building, replacing an old tavern of the same name, was erected in eighteen sixty for the publican, James Leask.......... Now here is what makes this place truly unusual. The Hat and Feathers and three nearby houses predate the creation of Clerkenwell Road... if only by a few years. You see, Clerkenwell Road was constructed by the Metropolitan Board of Works between eighteen seventy-four and eighteen seventy-eight, as part of an intended cross-capital arterial road linking the West End and East End. That road Sliced right through the old neighborhood. Clerkenwell Road smashed through from one side of historic Saint John's Square to the other. But this pub? It was already here... standing on what was then called Goswell Street. Its address was one hundred and sixty-four Goswell Street in eighteen fifty-six and earlier. The road changed around it.......... And who designed such an extravagant facade for a corner pub? Leask's architect was William Finch Hill of the pub and music-hall specialists Finch Hill and Paraire. These were Not ordinary architects. Between eighteen fifty-six and eighteen seventy, Hill and Paraire designed many of London's most famous music halls and theatres... including Weston's Music Hall, the Islington Philharmonic, the Oxford Music Hall, and the Britannia Theatre in Hoxton. That Britannia Theatre seated nearly Four Thousand people, and Charles Dickens himself was a regular visitor!......... So look again at this facade with fresh eyes. Its festive combination of two-storey Corinthian pilasters supporting statues and one-storey Ionic columns supporting urns... this is music-hall Showmanship applied to a pub! The same architects who built theatres to dazzle the working classes of East London brought that same theatrical flair right here.......... As the architectural historian Mark Girouard noted, the survival rate of Hill and Paraire's pubs has been almost as high as that of their music halls... which is to say, almost none survived. Only the Museum Tavern of eighteen fifty-five, opposite the British Museum, and This pub remain.......... And there is one more quiet detail worth knowing. Before Clerkenwell Road existed, the stretch of road from Goswell Street to Saint John Street was called Wilderness Row... a name borrowed from the old grounds of the Charterhouse nearby. Many of the buildings along Wilderness Row were connected to the clock and watch trades, well established here by the early nineteenth century. So this pub once served the watchmakers and craftsmen of a vanished street, in a neighborhood that was already ancient when Victoria sat on the throne.

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