Brockley Jack - Brockley Road, London, UK - Pictorial Pub Signs on Waymarking.com

The pub sign depicts a highwayman on a horse that would indicate the source of the pub's name but the following does more to dispell than confirm that.

The BBC Radio 4 website [visit link] tells us:

"A listener recalls a story from his school days in the 1930s which linked the Brockley Jack public house in South London with the activities of a highwayman known as 'Brockley Jack'. Making History consulted Gillian Spraggs, author of Outlaws and Highwaymen, the Cult of the Robber in England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Pimlico, 2001).

According to Gillian Spraggs, the inn certainly existed by 1810, when it was called the Brockley Castle. At that time Brockley was a very small, isolated hamlet. Much of the country round about was wooded. It is not far from Blackheath and Shooters Hill, both places that were notorious for robberies for several centuries, so there were highway robbers operating in the area. Brockley became 'suburbanised' in the 1850s, and by 1883 the area had become fairly well built up. By the end of the 19th century the name of the pub had changed to the Brockley Jack and was an old, rambling inn that flourished on the custom of visitors who came to drink there because of its picturesque building. In order to cater better to the hordes of customers, in 1898 the owner rebuilt the inn as a handsome but fairly run-of-the-mill Victorian public house. With the 'romantic' old building gone, his custom fell off - a cautionary tale.

The sign in the tree just says 'The Brockley Jack', and the painting is said to date from 1885.

One of the first written references to the Brockley Jack Inn is in The History of the Borough of Lewisham, by Leland L. Duncan, published in 1908. Duncan says of it: "...once an old-world, wayside, wooden hostelry, which is said to have been frequented by Dick Turpin and other highwaymen".

The first reference to 'Brockley Jack, highwayman' that Gillian can find is in 1963, in The English Inn by Denzil Batchelor. This just says of the inn: "named after a highwayman".

Since Duncan, in 1908, knew nothing of 'Brockley Jack' the highwayman, Gillian Spraggs argues that he was probably invented some time between then and 1963, as an embroidery on the story that the inn was used by highwaymen and as a way of attracting custom to it."