The Grand Surrey Canal was a four-mile waterway that supplied Southwark with all manner of goods from 1800 until around the 1960s.
As a lively artery of commerce, it’s unsurprising that pubs sprung up along its banks, providing canal workers with much-needed grub and drink.
But they were more than just watering holes. These taverns also played a vital role in civil society, hosting inquests and, in some cases, becoming mortuaries for people who drowned in the water, writes The Peckham Society.
Not just for drinking
While the Grand Surrey Canal was vital to the economic health of Southwark, it always held a sinister reputation for claiming the lives of people who fell in.
When it was drained in the 1970s, a journalist wrote that the ‘stinking water… has to be dredged every time a child goes missing’.
Wary of London’s drowning problem, Physician William Hawes founded the Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned in 1774, today named the Royal Humane Society.
As well as offering cash payments to those who attempted to save people from drowning, the society would pay pubs one guinea – roughly £140 today – if they allowed a body to be treated on the premises.
Pubs and taverns were also long established as local meeting places. In addition to auctions, political and Vestry meetings they hosted inquests.
A committee was appointed in 1892 to investigate more suitable venues for coroners’ courts. As a result, the practice of holding inquests in public houses in London had ceased by 1901.
Taverns of the Grand Surrey Canal
Watermans Arms
The Watermans Arms at 41 Willowbrook Road, the junction of Willowbrook Road and Colegrove Road, closed in the 1920s and was later demolished. It hired out rowing boats. A dark narrow lane led down to the canal.
In 1876, a reward [from the Royal Humane Society] was given to Robert Henchley, landlord of the Waterman’s Arms, Hill-street, Peckham.
He had received Ellen Taylor to his house, successfully “restoring [her] to animation”. She had attempted suicide by jumping into the Surrey Canal and was dragged out by Henchley on November 18.
Surrey View Tavern
This tavern originally stood at 137 Commercial Way. In the 1930s the terrace of houses was rebuilt and the pub incorporated into no 135.
As the canal was so close, almost ‘in view’ to customers, there were many newspaper reports of incidents. It was the scene of Richard Farris’ attempted rescue of Eliza Arlott in 1878. The couple both drowned.
It was trading to at least the mid-1980s and hosted the Surrey View Dance and Social Club in the 1940s, later becoming a café, and is now a mini-supermarket.
The Globe Tavern
The Globe at 58 Peckham Hill Street was in business before 1818 when back garden backed onto the canal.
It closed in January 2003 and was converted to flats by 2005, but the façade and signage has been retained.
Kentish Drovers
This pub formerly stood on at no. 74 on the south side of Peckham High Street on the east side of Jones & Higgins. It was the centre of the annual August Peckham Fair, last held in 1826.
The final licensee, George Morgan, died in 1951 aged 84 after 20 years service. The pub was sold in 1952 and converted to a shop, showroom and two flats the following year.
However, the name continued when Wetherspoons opened another Kentish Drovers opposite on 24 May 2000.
This article first appeared in The Peckham Society, Issue 174, Autumn 2023.