Jack Straw's Castle

Jack Straw's Castle in Hampstead, London, is a historic Grade II listed building located 130 metres above sea level that once served as London's highest pub. Named after a 1381 Peasants' Revolt leader, the site first became a coaching inn in 1713, hosting Karl Marx and Charles Dickens. Destroyed by a Blitz land mine, the current Georgian-Gothic structure was rebuilt between 1962 and 1964 before its conversion into flats in 2002.

London · from the walk “Hampstead Uncovered: Village Secrets & Heath Legends” · audio ~4 min · Generated

Jack Straw's Castle, North End Way, Hampstead, London NW3 7ES

Who was Jack Straw's Castle on Hampstead Heath named after?

Look up at this striking white building with its turrets and battlements. It looks like something from a fairy tale... but its story begins with blood, rebellion, and a man whose very existence is still debated more than six centuries later.......... This site is named after the rebel leader Jack Straw, who led the Peasants' Revolt in thirteen eighty-one, and who is said to have taken refuge here until he was caught and executed. But here's the mystery... some historians argue the name was in fact a pseudonym for Wat Tyler, or one of the other peasant leaders. One legend says Straw addressed groups of rebels right here on Hampstead Heath from a hay wagon, which became known as "Jack Straw's Castle." Whether he was a real man or a ghost of history, even Geoffrey Chaucer mentioned him in The Canterbury Tales... so Someone by that name left a mark.......... The earliest record of a pub on this spot is as a coaching inn in seventeen thirteen. It was used by people travelling from London to water their horses at nearby Whitestone Pond. And what a guest list it attracted! Charles Dickens was known to visit, describing it as a place where he could get "a red-hot chop for dinner, and a glass of good wine." William Makepeace Thackeray and Wilkie Collins also visited. But it wasn't just novelists. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, living nearby in Hampstead during the eighteen fifties, frequented the pub during their outings, often visiting with family for snacks and refreshment. Imagine... the father of communism, drinking in a pub named after a medieval rebel. Some stories write themselves.......... And then there's fiction. The pub is mentioned in Bram Stoker's Dracula, where Professor Van Helsing and Doctor Jack Seward stop to dine before heading out into the dark Hampstead night to hunt a vampire. It was also the final residence of the music hall singer Alec Hurley, who died here in nineteen thirteen.......... Now... the building you see today is Not the original. The old pub was destroyed by a land mine during the Blitz of World War Two. The present building, constructed between nineteen sixty-two and nineteen sixty-four, was designed by architect Raymond Erith in what he called a Georgian-Gothic style. Hampstead Council was appalled, calling the design "quite inappropriate to this charming and outstanding site." And yet here it stands, Grade Two listed, outlasting all its critics.......... At one hundred and thirty metres above sea level, this was the Highest pub in London. It served as a pub until two thousand and two, when it was converted into a flat complex. The pints are gone. The chops are gone. But six hundred years of stories... those remain, soaked into the very ground beneath your feet.

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