Dirty Dick's

One Nathaniel Bentley was all set to marry a veritable beauty. He turned up at the church only to discover that his intended had dropped dead the night before. Desolate, he preserved the wedding feast that had been intended for the guests on the tables, spending his life in broken-hearted squalor, the cobwebs and dust gathering on the dining table as his wedding clothes turned to rags. Locally he became known as Dirty Dick and was something of a legend. His dead cats were allowed to dry and become mummified, unburied, and eventually Dirty Dick died too. That was the opportunity for the landlord of this pub, who bought the decaying contents of this strangely fascinating, nightmarish house and put them around the pub. Sadly they eventually fell to dust and were cleaned away. However, one Charles Dickens thought the macabre story worth reusing in Great Expectations, where Miss Havisham is the one who never gets to eat her wedding breakfast.

What more can I say than this entry from the Eccentric London Bradt Guide? Nothing. Except that Dirty Dick’s is one of those archetypal pubs of this part of London, that brings you back in time a century when you go through the doors and has a fascinating story to tell and good ale to sell.