The Fox & Anchor

Why is it significant?

The Grade II listed Fox and Anchor Pub in London, located at 115 Charterhouse Street, features an 1898 Art Nouveau façade designed by Harrods Meat Hall ceramicist William James Neatby. Built for Smithfield Market butchers, it remains one of only two London pubs retaining an early license, opening at seven in the morning from Monday to Friday. The exterior displays green Carrara ware tiles, while the restored interior retains three historic wooden snugs.

Key Facts

What to look for?

• Architect Latham Withall designed the Fox and Anchor Pub, built in 1898 by W. H. Lassells and Company.
• Ceramicist William James Neatby designed the green exterior Carrara ware tiles for the Fox and Anchor Pub façade.
• In 1914, the Defence of the Realm Act restricted British pub hours while exempting market pubs like the Fox and Anchor.
• The Fox and Anchor Pub is one of two London venues retaining an early license to open at seven.

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Who designed the ceramic façade of the Fox and Anchor Pub in London?

Take a look at this building... really look at it. Those swirling green and white tiles, those peacocks facing each other on the frieze, the griffins jutting out above the windows. This is the Fox and Anchor, a Grade Two listed public house at one hundred and fifteen charter-house Street. It was designed by architect Laythum Withall and built in eighteen ninety-eight by W. H. Lassells and Company. But here's what makes this façade truly special. The architectural ceramics were designed by William James Neatby, the chief designer at Doulton and Company... the same man who created the famous Meat Hall ceiling inside Harrods in Knights-bridge. Neatby preferred to use Carrara ware tiles for exteriors, but a notable exception where he used it in an interior was that very Meat Hall at Harrods. So look up at those green faience tiles and know... the same hands that decorated one of London's most luxurious department stores also adorned this humble pub for butchers. And why was there a pub here at all? Smithfield was almost a city within a city, and one with its own hours. To give customers time to buy and prepare their meat for sale the same day, the market opened at night. Workers finished their shifts in the early morning. Many headed to "early houses," pubs which opened early for workers. At the start of the twentieth century, all pubs were permitted to open at six in the morning, but this ended with the Defence of the Realm Act of nineteen fourteen. The first major effort to restrict opening hours came during World War One. Keeping workers off the sauce was better for the war effort, the government determined, plus it saved grain. But an exception was made for market pubs, which were seen as key to market trading... buyers and sellers would negotiate deals in the pub, and then drink to seal it. The men who drank here at dawn had extraordinary titles. You might be a puller-back, a pitcher, a shunter, a shopman... or a bummaree. The bummarees pulled the barrows and trays of meat for the traders in the market. All porters were licensed by the City of London Corporation and issued with an identifying arm badge, which they wore with their traditional blue overalls and white caps. It was a tight-knit community, full of tradition, with generations of the same families working in the same place. Until nineteen ninety-six, the market was heavily unionised and there were strict job divisions. A humper could not do the work of a puller-back. If anyone dared cross those lines, the whistle blew and all work stopped. Today, just two pubs in London still use their early licenses... the Market Porter by Borough Market, and this very pub, the Fox and Anchor. It opens at seven in the morning, Monday to Friday. Step inside and you'll find black and white prints of erstwhile butchers as a nod to its roots... and if you look carefully at the back, three tiny snugs or booths, each slightly different, created by remodelling the back of the pub... including what used to be the gents. One more thing. This pretty Art Nouveau pub sits on the edge of a Black Death plague pit. Smithfield's history stretches back over eight hundred years... a place of livestock markets, public executions, and even the site where rebel Wat Tyler met King Richard the Second in thirteen eighty-one. Layer upon layer of London, right beneath your feet.