Henekey's

Posted on 2003/08/31 22:52:23 (August 2003) by john.

Why the internet is so damn brilliant.

A few years ago (OK maybe only a couple, but the more time this sort of story has involved in it, the better it sounds) I was reading an old book at my mum's houuse called "The Cooking of the British Isles". It was a Time Life book, published around 1970, and rather quaint in it's style. Towards the end it was talking about British beer, and included a few pages about "typical" British pubs.

There was a big picture of the inside of a pub called Henekey's (part of this scanned in and on the right), and a brief description:

An air of formality lends serenity to Henekey's, a London pub half way between Fleet Street and Gray's Inn. Famous for its "long bar", Henekey's has allotted some of its space to booths for ladies and privacy-seekers, but most of the habituees do their quiet drinking standing up.

I'm not sure what it was about it, whether the picture or the curious description, but something was just captivating, and I decided I really wanted to go to this pub.

Whilst living in London, a couple of years ago now, I remember spending an afternoon with Rob wandering around the Fleet Street area, trying to find the place. We found some nice pubs along the way, but none were the one I was looking for. I think I may have tried the phonebook or directory enquiries at the time, but there didn't seem to be anything listed under Henekey's. I think I had the odd attempt at finding it on another couple of occasions, but basically gave up in the end.

Whilst having a clear out recently my Mum had put together a pile of books she thought I would want, included in them "The Cooking of the British Isles". So just now I leafed through it's pages again to find that picture. Thinking about this mystical pub once again, I set about making another attempt to find it. Amazingly Google let me down altogether. There seemed to be some mention of a wine bar called Henekey's, oddly enough in an article about punk, as well as some pub in Rotherham, but the location of both places was very different so I thought it couldn't be the same. Even Google Groups had nothing to offer. When I was just about on the point of giving up, I thought I'd give Alta Vista a go. Superbly it came up trumps, with a site called Aidan's Pub Crawls (which is, incidentally, rather good).

It turns out, as I'd suspected, the pub was no longer called Henekey's, but is now called "Cittie of Yorke", and what appeared to be the only thing on the entire internet connecting this pub to Henekey's was an aside written by the author of this page, that he apparently once knew a barman there in it's former incarnation, with it's famous "long bar". This being a current pub, it was then trivial to find the address - 22 High Holborn, London, which confirmed it as being the pub I was looking for - half way between Fleet Street and Gray's Inn.

I wonder if part of the problem of finding it might have been down to spelling. In writing this article I spelt it "Heneky's" by accident several times - it seems to me a more natural wayto write it. To check, I searched for this spelling instead, and found this page, which seems to suggest rather pleasingly that the pub dates back to 1695, and apparently features in Dickens' Barnaby Rudge. Even better than I'd originally thought.

Naturally I am planning to go and see it next time I'm in London. Without the internet I probably never would have found it.

Isn't the internet fantastic?

A few days later I actually visited the place - click here to find out how well it held up to expectations.

That's so true. I lost one of my favourite socks the other day, but Google was able to locate it for me almost instantly. By some bizarre coincidence, my sock is also mentioned in a certain Dickensian work - "The Mystery of Edwin Drood". In chapter fourteen, the phrase "... among them, a change of stout shoes and socks for walking" is a direct reference to my black socks bearing a likeness of Lara Croft. Coincidence, or something more sinister?

Posted by Jimmy at 2003/09/01 13:00:08.

The "I'm being mocked" LED indicator in my brain is flashing.

Posted by John at 2003/09/01 13:13:15.

I found an entire copy of the LOTR text in MS Word format on that Internet thing the other day. Marvellous. Only 800 pages to print. Hmm. Perhaps I should PDF it and have Steven Hawkins lull me to sleep?

Posted by tom at 2003/09/01 23:46:38.

Recently I discovered from searching the internet the title of the first ever porno that I watched.

The life and times of Desire Cousteux... or something like that... I haven't the time to check the spelling as my girlfriend is coming up the stair!!!

Posted by Boomer at 2003/09/03 20:19:26.

Henekey's was a small chain of public houses which existed up until the 1960s. There was the one you've discovered at 22 High Holborn; another in Bromley High Street but demolishec cruelly for town centre development; and one in Ramsgate High Street, where I spend my formative years. Sadly destroyed by fire after an adjoining carpet shop was set fire to. I believe the chain was later bought up by Whitbread.

Posted by Paul at 2004/03/23 19:36:25.

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