Brockley Jack - Brockley Road, London, UK
N 51° 27.205 W 000° 02.301
30U E 705765 N 5704409
This pub, The Brockley Jack, is located on the west side of Brockley Road. The Brockley Jack is an unusual public house in that it has a studio theatre attached to its northern side - The Brockley Jack Theatre.
Waymark Code: WMFYZP
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 12/20/2012
Views: 2
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."