I received an email from a young designer who had found my drawings
on Flickr and was enquiring about the possibility of using some of them
in the redesign of a menu for a London pub. Now as it happens, this pub
is one of my favourite London pubs, so I was immediately hooked. The
pub is The Town of Ramsgate, situated down in Wapping. When I was a boy
this was a dodgy area that suburban folk like me would rarely visit.
Back then it was warehouses, docks and ill-lit streets, with stone
setts, and no easy transport links. Now it’s very upmarket apartments in
converted warehouses and there’s a refurbished station for the newly
refurbished London Overground.
The Town of Ramsgate dates back to
at least the mid-sixteenth century. It is a riverside pub, right next to
the Old Wapping Steps, an ancient access to the river itself, and the
foreshore. It’s an area of interesting history. These steps were the
site of execution for those found guilty of piracy, whose bodies were
hung on the gibbet until they had been covered by three tides. Captain
Kidd is reputed to have been one of these unfortunates. The pub itself
was the place where the London mob found and caught the notorious
‘Hanging’ Judge Jefferies who was trying to arrange a boat to flee his
own trial.
If you’re visiting London, I’d recommend a visit, just a little walk east of Tower Bridge.
I met the designer at the pub, and had time for a quick drawing from the steps across the river to Rotherhithe:
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| Rotherhithe from the top of Wapping Old Steps |
The encounter has made me look back at the drawings I did around Wapping a few years ago, that may now be used in the new pub menu design. Here are some:
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| Wapping High Street – Gun Wharves. These old warehouses are now apartments backing on to the river |
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| Wapping church |
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| The passage from the High Street, down the side of the Town of Ramsgate, to Wapping Old Steps and the River |
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| Wapping Old Steps |
