Progress Report

We decided to shift our focus on the history and making of beer, how pub culture and beer shaped London and the role that Dickens Inn is playing within this context today. The history we are going to include goes something like this: the area takes its name from the former hospital St Katharine’s by the tower. During the redevelopment of the area in 1850 more than one thousand buildings were demolished to make way for the docks. Fortunately our building was not one of them. The Dickens Inn pub, which is the current owner of the building, claims that the building may date as back as the beginning of the 18th century. After the redevelopment the building was turned in to a brewery by the Goodwyn Skinner and Thornton and later Hoare & Company. During the Second World War, we know for a fact that the building was undamaged from German bombs. After the war in the 1970’s when the site was being redeveloped again, the building was set for demolition , but fortunately they discovered the interesting timber frame concealed inside the drab exterior skin of brick so the building was saved from demolition, only to be moved some 70 meters away to its current location today. imageimage

Our last week visit to Dickens Inn with Fiona came at both a fortunate and an unfortunate time because we went at a time when the market was open so the Dickens Inn was literally packed with people. It was hard to analyse the customer profile of the pub since it was not a regular day and the pub was packed with people that were there for the market.


As far we observed there were tourists from all over the world as well as local businessman, there were people from all ages and indeed the pub seemed to be appealing to a very wide demographic. Meanwhile we ate at the top level restaurant which is a grill restaurant and talked about how much the pubs in London were becoming more and more commercialized, losing their unique identities to appeal to a larger demographic of customers especially the young generation. Because the restaurant was at the top floor, we got a chance to view the original timber frame that had saved the building from demolition during the reconstruction of St Katherine’s docks. Downstairs we enjoyed a few pints and got a chance to talk to the staff, whom were mostly new and knew nothing about the history of the building.