A listing of London Public Houses, Taverns, Hotels and Inns; their landlords and staff, plus lodgers. They are now all in London, although originally classified as in Essex, or Middlesex, or Kent, or Surrey; in Victorian times.
If you can supply any good material to this site, please contact me - full acknowledgements AND links back to your site (if required) are added to the page. I am always interested in any good pictures, or personal genealogical details of a Public House.
I can highly recommend one company for census detail, I have been purchasing their products for some years. Ancestry is not cheap, but I am sure I have had my moneys worth from them. You can actually try it out for 24 days free, and cancel easily if you don't like the service!
There are many excellent sources of information already available on the internet, many are well indexed in the good search engines (try different search engines, they offer different and often useful results), but often overlooked unless you are looking for a specific search item. here are a few of the better sites, from which I will always ask as to whether I can use any of their excellent resources. If the answer is 'no', then the excellent resources remain hidden on their site only.
Here are a number of sites worth visiting, and why (in no particular order, but the higher they are, the better they are!)
1. Thanks to the site at victorianlondon.org which holds a fantastic array of London in Victorian Times material, OLD maps, links, interesting articles and can all be purchased on a CD. I bought a copy. I particularly like to use the 1901 Pocket Atlas of London - I have full permission, but purchase your own CD, they are only about £12, and brilliant value.
1a Essex Links & Essex Record Office SEAX database, which is an amazing search engine.
2. Keith Emmerson's Beer site which was/is highly useful in listing current Public Houses, their Real Ale Beers, ownership, current state, and lots of other interesting comments on a Public House including demolition dates! Also, try the Pigs Ear CAMRA site [cockney slang for beer, I hear]. I am getting a lot of useful data and pictures from the CAMRA guys, thank you.
2a. The London Gazette Online has an archive, which is absolutely amazing; I just do not have the time to peruse all of the great information - please let me know if you find something useful for the site, please.
2b. I get email from all sorts of old pub sites, this is one of the better ones, the Dead Pubs Society - I enjoyed visiting it.
2c. Ancestry is not cheap, but I am sure I have had my moneys worth from them. You can actually try it out for 24 days free, and cancel easily if you don't like the service!
3. The Essex Public House originally built by Ian Hunter, who sadly died. His site has been resurrected by his friends, and is updated on a daily basis. It is a genealogical piece of wizardry, plus lots of pictures, old and new. Parts of the Essex Pubs now in London are regularly updated on this site with permission of the owner. Actually, I run both sites, so this is not too much of a problem. This has now joined the London Public House site.
Also; The Olympics Zone area over the ages - maps and links to the area from past generations. This site is the reason I decided to do a London Pubs site, to cash in on the Olympics in 2012. Well, things have changed, and the Olympics will be successful with me or without me!
4. A brilliant site for viewing the early Trade Directories of much of England is at the University of Leicester digital library. The project has completed, but the array of information available to search and download is very impressive. The site can not always be guaranteed to respond, so be patient, it is a very busy site. The site covers the whole of England, and is amazing.
4a. Never ignore the Genuki site listings, they are sometimes hard to find your way about - but not the London Listing @ http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/genuki/LND/ - a brilliant & updated page. there are lots of similar links to here, and much other useful info too.
4b. Well, I have been working on a new site for the History of Stratford - it's new, but it will be as good as one of my better sites! This site is also known as Romford-hornchurch.co.uk ; and games for London . com - they are all the same site! The site includes the History of Stratford, West Ham, Canning Town, Silvertown, Romford, Hornchurch, Great Warley, Little Warley, Wennington & Rainham, plus more as I feel like adding them.
4c. Probably should be higher is the London Metropolitan Archives - brilliant place to visit or contact for information, and pictures for a nominal fee. I have only spent a day or two here, so far, but more to follow as time permits.
4d. This is not London, but Essex, the online database for the Essex Record Office; it is a marvellous record of much that is stored at the modern Record Office in Chelmsford, Essex. The staff are brilliant, and I have spent many happy hours here, although this internet search engine also has a lot to offer. Just login as guest.
4e. There is a new picture of the Blackwall Tunnel entrance, from about 1899. I was so impressed with this, that some new pages were considered. Why? The information is already available in good search engines, and then I found this site - Port Cities London - Brilliant.
5a There is a new brilliant site called Londonpublichouse.com - the webmaster spends absolutely hours adding new and interesting facts every day. All information is historical rather than boring details about how to find a current pub, with lists of the original licensees and staff, over the last 200 years. Worth checking back regularly. Other new sites that are building slowly are http://pubsinuk.com and http://ukpubhistory.com ; plus the latest is http://wheninlondon.co.uk plus the 'Make Poverty History site', I need to check these pages to remind myself how many sites need updating.
5b Ancestry is not cheap, but I am sure I have had my moneys worth from them. You can actually try it out for 24 days free, and cancel easily if you don't like the service!
As an aside, imagery in any web page make a complete transformation of any site. The Essex Pub site contains about 1500 images, plus a similar number of separate Public Houses, plus lots of personal family stories.
There are many good sites that allow personal use of a picture, these are worth searching for, and a greater list will be added as time permits. You can save them all onto your personal computer.
The Hackney Archives has a fantastic array of photographs that I cannot copy due to copyright, but do enjoy them; I often wander through the 43 pages of pictures in admiration. I hit a similar problem with the Brighton archives the other day. they like their pound of flesh, it is sad that these images are not available for sensible web administrators to use - never mind.
6. Maps - there are a great deal of useful maps available on the internet - see the Maps page for some of the best, MAPCO has to be the best site, but there are others, and they are all free. Take a look at their paid advertising occasionally, it helps to cover their costs, and costs you nothing.
7. I must add this Tower Hamlets History site, it is full of early and interesting reports (historical and contemporary), e.g. Bethnal green in 1872, and lots more too. Well done - well worth lots of repeat visits. The ELHS (East London History Society) is also on this site.
A good link from here, for pictures is Ken Finchs Bethnal Green Photo Archive - excellent.
8, The wayback machine - Wow, this is a useful site - it saves an OLD copy [sometimes] of a web site from 'way back',
9. Plus an excellent historical site on London Pubs and pretty much everything else is at the knowledge of London site
10 Ron Lankshear has some excellent links - worth a peruse.
11. A rather interesting site is of the 1883 Blacks Guide to England & Wales - I enjoy it enough to want to link to the site
13. Rootsweb index & HOW to get logged on to the necessary mailing lists
14. Essex1841.com , one of my first sites has moved to a new server, and now supports Ruby on Rails, thanks to Lunarpages - try the Essex 1861 search engine - it is basic, but I used it as a working example. [Search in google for all1861 if you forget this link]
15 Essex in 1841, 1851 & 1861 http://essex1841.com/Select1851.htm - the password is 'zedonk'. Enjoy.
mail to : kevan