please empty your brain below
Fascinating stuff.

My money is on a pop-up 'bun-bar', offering a range of artisan buns from around the world, served with a choice of 27 different spreads, and sundry toasting options. £4.50 per bun.

BTW, DG, are you planning on visiting Jonathan Meades' upcoming 'Ape Forgets Medication' exhibition in April? Are you a Meades man?

Burntweenie | Homepage | 25.03.16 - 7:11 a.m. | #

Social cleansing, coming to an area near you - no doubt the cash poor locals get stuffed into corners somewhere.

| 25.03.16 - 7:57 a.m. | #

I cycle past the pub quite often on my way home to catch a train from Stratford. But I didn't know that there was a DLR station here, thought that the nearest was Langdon Park!

Half a physicist | 25.03.16 - 8:29 a.m. | #

Who will help the Widow's Son?

https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100121112003AALkyLr

Julian Bond | Homepage | 25.03.16 - 8:51 a.m. | #

I started to work locally in '97, and at the end of doing the school paperwork in the holidays, popped into The Widow's Son for a welcome and deserved drink. There was no other customer in the pub at about 2 pm, and only fizzy beer. I was made to feel very unwelcome, and left as quickly as my pint could be downed; I've never been back, though I continued to work within walking distance for ten years. The pub has no real beer, I guess because it gets insufficient trade to make it viable. Despite all that it apparently has going for it, I doubt it is hugely popular, save as the repository of this, regular, Good Friday story ...... otherwise it would have been protected by its local community as a 'community asset'. Devons Road station is just a minute from the pub.

Brian | 25.03.16 - 9:15 a.m. | #

@half a physicist
Looking at Google Street View, the DLR station entrance can be seen from the road junction outside the pub (where I assume you would turn left towards Stratford), but in older StreetView shots (before 2013) it was concealed by a tree!

timbo | 25.03.16 - 9:26 a.m. | #

Is it time for DG to give us a tour of every pub in Tower Hamlets, or all those fronting the cycle superhighway? That should push the monthly Becks count up a notch.

Waterhouse | 25.03.16 - 9:46 a.m. | #

I'm far more likely to do a series on closed pubs than open ones.

diamond geezer | Homepage | 25.03.16 - 9:49 a.m. | #

Looks like the bun ceremony has been moved

https://twitter.com/pigsearcamra/status/712615662091419648

Darryl | Homepage | 25.03.16 - 9:52 a.m. | #

The 'locals', as @Brian discovered, have for decades done themselves a disservice by being so offensive to 'newcomers'(i.e. not in the 'locals club') - as I too discovered. Consequently, one's sympathy is a bit thin.

B | 25.03.16 - 9:56 a.m. | #

Good post, DG. The way in which landlords can be treated by pubcos interested only in development is a disgrace. There was a great long read piece in the Guardian a few months ago about the situation in Camden Town.

Charles | Homepage | 25.03.16 - 10:05 a.m. | #

Anyone passing by who could hang a HXB on the empty bracket where the pub sign should be?

timbo | 25.03.16 - 10:26 a.m. | #

I thought something odd was going on when I passed this pub a few days ago and noticed it looked far tidier and more welcoming than it ever did when it was open for business. The scruffy cars parked down the side have gone and the new window blinds are a great improvement. With all the new build in the area you'd have thought the previous landlord could have made a go of it but there was clearly a problem, as others have observed. Good to see it's not going to disappear.

ActonMan | 25.03.16 - 12:54 p.m. | #

@ B

Perhaps, and it just a theory, the "locals" knew what was/is heading their way...having seen what has happened in other parts of London and in other cities both here and around the world. The "rich/well off/YUPPIES/hipsters call them what you will...start buying up cheap properties...doing them-up, renting them out, buying more doing them-up selling them. House prices go up, rents go up...old businesses go down, old jobs disappear.

Where I live my "ol pubs" have disappeared...the ones where I use to go as young person. The "corner shop" has gone too. My old school is now luxury apartments. The place I first worked at has now been converted to (you guessed it) luxury flats! The second place I worked at has also gone, as has the third! The roads now all require "resident permits" to park... which for poorer people mean paying in 5years more than their car is worth!

I look out of a bed-sit, which I can ill-afford, at homes that are valued at £1million+ but it o.k... because we live in a progressive society where anyone who gets a good education, works hard and "does the right thing" will get on...right? Well if only that was the case. But feel free to pop down for a cup-t ...most of those "original" locals are gone now so you can go to one of those fancy coffee shops/bistros/cafes/wine bars that now have spread across the "high street". There are one or two of the "ol pubs" left too...but better hurry before they close. Yours truely, a non-offensive, original, local

Working Class Hero | 25.03.16 - 4:39 p.m. | #

@WCH - well said! Well said indeed

Frank F | 25.03.16 - 9:18 p.m. | #

Yup, WCH, things change but what I was referring to was the number of occasions I tried to use local businesses and was almost universally badly treated...then, of course, I have far worse things to recall about other patrons of these establishments. East End rudeness seemed to know no bounds in my experience.

B | 26.03.16 - 8:29 a.m. | #

Sorry - the time I'm talking about was 1997, when Poplar was not even a gleam in an estate agent's eye. I am from Walthamstow, the target for much gentrification itself now, and I have the (WCH)accent to match. I was dressed in my very ordinary scruffy way, and spoke in as friendly a way as I could; I was treated as though I had the plague. Had a welcome been forthcoming, when term started I'd have led half a dozen fellow teachers back regularly. It wasn't.

Brian | 26.03.16 - 9:29 a.m. | #

I went there about 4 years ago after work. Used to go to a random part of London some Fridays after work. One of the customers was smoking, and I desisted until the barmaid lit up.
So for me connection is the bun story, but primarily the last pub I smoked in UK.
Then went to Old Duke of Cambridge nearby which is great, but no smoking allowed!

scrumpy | 26.03.16 - 9:04 p.m. | #

At least it is being offered free of tie.

In addition, the picture of the area's future should mean that the side of the pub can be used for outside seating, and look a lot more pleasant (well, in mythical blue-sunny-skies-developer-propaganda pictures anyway).

Also sounds like it was a bit of an 'estate pub' before, despite the heritage. Underused, unwelcoming. And hopefully 557 houses can provide a market in time.

Odd that they haven't applied to add a couple of stories vertically, whilst keeping the look. They should be able to get that past the grade II listing.

Sykobee | 29.03.16 - 1:31 p.m. | #

Bun day poster for good Friday in the window of the 'new' bar... Noticed it driving by today.

Steve e3 | 08.04.17 - 10:43 p.m. | #











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