Shakespeare's Head Pub
Look up... just a little higher. Do you see him? There, in the first-floor window... William Shakespeare himself, gazing down at the crowds below with that unmistakable half-smile. Welcome to the Shakespeare's Head.
London · from the walk “Soho's Secret Side”
29 Great Marlborough Street, London W1F 7HZ
Look up... just a little higher. Do you see him? There, in the first-floor window... William Shakespeare himself, gazing down at the crowds below with that unmistakable half-smile. Welcome to the Shakespeare's Head.
Now, this pub has been standing on this corner since seventeen thirty-five, and the story goes like this. It was originally owned by Thomas and John Shakespeare, who were distant relatives of the poet. At least... that's what They claimed. William Shakespeare had no direct descendants and died a hundred and nineteen years before the pub was built, so the connection is, shall we say, creative. After all, the Shakespeare's Head is a fairly common pub name in London — others can be found in Holborn, the City, Kingsway, and Finsbury. But Thomas and John were clever marketers... and their story has only grown More convincing with each passing century.
Now look at that bust more carefully. Notice anything missing? He's only got one hand. The life-size bust appears to be gazing down at the busy street below, but a close examination will show one of the poet's hands is missing — this occurred during World War Two when a bomb dropped nearby. At least, that's what the pub's sign says. The bust was added around nineteen hundred, so it survived about forty years before the Blitz took its toll. Some skeptics think the hand simply... fell off. But why ruin a perfectly good war story?
And this street — Great Marlborough Street — has its own wild past. Joshua Brookes ran a private anatomy school and museum from his home on Great Marlborough Street, just steps from where you're standing. Brookes established his anatomical museum in the mid seventeen eighties, and it was said by visitors to rank second only to that of John Hunter in terms of scale. Brookes kept a menagerie of living animals in the grounds of his school — imagine the Smell wafting past pub-goers on a summer evening!
And just across the road? The Marlborough Street Magistrates Court sat at numbers nineteen to twenty-one Great Marlborough Street. In eighteen thirty-five, a young Charles Dickens worked there as a reporter for the Morning Chronicle, and in eighteen ninety-five, Oscar Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensberry for criminal libel. Fast forward to the swinging sixties and seventies... John Lennon's case regarding sexually explicit lithographs was thrown out on a technicality in nineteen seventy, and Keith Richards received a fine for possession of heroin, mandrax, marijuana, a Smith and Wesson revolver, And an antique shotgun. Rock and roll indeed. The court is now the venue for the Courthouse Hotel, and the former prison cells have been turned into cosy bar booths.
So here sits Shakespeare — one-handed, blue-faced, peering over Carnaby Street for nearly a century now. The greatest playwright who ever lived... keeping watch over a street of anatomy schools, rock-star criminals, and very good pints.