The big London restaurant opening of the autumn has been The Devonshire in Denman Street, Soho, close to Piccadilly Circus. There was a run on bookings as soon as the reviews appeared. Giles Coren in the Times wrote: ‘What a place. What. A. Place.’ Jimi Famurewa’s review in the Evening Standard appeared under the headline: ‘Nothing beats a good pub – and this is as good as it gets’. Because – as well as being an exciting new restaurant – The Devonshire is also very much a pub.
What must foreign visitors make of all this confusing disconnection between pub name and location?
There’s been a pub on the site since 1793. It was called The Devonshire Arms for the best part of two centuries until it finally closed in 2008 and became a Jamie’s Italian before that chain went bust and it was left vacant. It was painstakingly restored into a pub once more this year and reopened as the now plain, Arms-less, Devonshire earlier this month.
I went a couple of weeks ago and found that it was a very pleasing room and that the Guinness was, as Coren observed, well-poured. But what I found curious about The Devonshire didn’t strike me until a few days later, after I’d also been for drinks in The Sussex Arms (in Kent) and the Dorset Arms (in Sussex). And that was how it’s the most high-profile example yet of the geographically confusing pub name.
Other examples that spring to mind are The Cornish Arms which, unlike The Devonshire, is actually in, er, Devon: in Tavistock, to be precise. We had a rather good lunch there last spring. And there are other Devonshires in London too: an Arms in Kensington, Chiswick and Camden, the latter a goth venue once frequented by Shane MacGowan, and a Duke Of in Balham. There are three Devonshire Armses in Derbyshire too, in Baslow, Beeley and Pilsley, clustered around Chatsworth. There’s also one in Somerset and a couple actually in Devon.
And, as well as the fantastic Dorset Arms I visited in Withyham, near Ashdown Forest, there are other Dorsets in Sussex: in Lewes, Brighton and East Grinstead. But there doesn’t appear to be one in Dorset. And there also are a couple of Abergavenny Arms in Sussex, at Frant and Rodmell, but none in Wales. Similarly, there’s a Newcastle Arms in Nottingham but no Nottingham Arms in Newcastle – though there is one in Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire.
Sussex also boasts a rather fine Norfolk Arms in Arundel. Unusually this example does seem to have once had an opposite number but The Sussex Arms in Norwich disappeared in the 1870s. The Sussex which I visited in Tunbridge Wells used to be in Sussex until, reputedly, a boundary change a couple of hundred years ago landed it in Kent, where it remains. There’s an Essex Arms in Watford. There’s a Rutland Arms in Hammersmith. There are Northumberland Armses in Tottenham Court Road, Kings Cross and Brentford. For decades there was also one in Tottenham but this has lately become The Bill Nicholson in a nod to an inexplicably popular local football team.
Then you get into the names of towns and their notable features. In London, for example, you have The Prospect of Whitby in Wapping, The Warrington Arms in Maida Vale, The Cittie of Yorke in Holborn, and any number of Dover Castles. While those of us with Fleet Street connections will all know Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese. I once saw a well-known journalist urinate from an upstairs window there, as if we were in an episode from Chaucer. And Chaucer himself is associated with London’s oldest pub, The George in London Bridge, as his Canterbury pilgrims set off from just next door. But I digress.
What must foreign visitors make of all this confusing disconnection between pub name and location? In fact, never mind foreign visitors, there’s enough confusion here for natives too. What’s behind it all? I spoke to the feted co-patron of London’s newest–- or possibly oldest, depending on how you assess it – Devonshire, Oisin Rogers. He told me:
The Devonshire name is connected to the titled family which historically owned much of the land around Piccadilly, including a stately home near the Ritz. We were aware that in bringing a pub back to life when so many are disappearing, we were bucking the trend – which was exciting. And as part of that we were clear as soon as we got the building that we wanted to re-use the pub’s traditional name, to restore not just the building but its identity… A good publican isn’t an owner at all but a custodian. And I hope The Devonshire will still be here long after we’re not.
The Devonshire title belonged to the Cavendish family who also received tribute by that name at a pub in Stockwell. Similarly those Dorset and Abergavenny pubs in Sussex are linked to titled local landowners: The Dukedom of Dorset hasn’t existed since 1843 so the pubs it gave its name to have long outlasted it. But the Sackville family who held it – of Vita Sackville-West and Knole Park fame – remain separately titled: the 11th Earl De La Warre is the owner of the Dorset Arms in Withyham, and lives on the Buckhurst Park estate next door. But I’m not sure how often this nominal landlord does a turn behind the bar.
The Abergavenny family, aka The Nevills, has its seat in Eridge Park in Sussex – hence a Nevill Crest and Gun nearby as well as those twin Abergavenny Armses. The Northumberland pubs in London are linked to the Duke whose seat is Syon House, close to that Brentford pub. And so it goes.
The category of pub names is one of the more esoteric and arcane fields of British life. In Under The Volcano, Malcolm Lowry sums up this syndrome as his hero tries to get served for the first time while underage in what he calls ‘a tavern with some queer name’. Lowry was referring here to a pub called The Case is Altered of which there are several nationally – the one in Pinner is on my radar. Depending on whom you believe, the queer name either comes from an ancient legal phrase used in a play by Ben Johnson or is a corruption of Casa Alta, or ‘house on the hill’, a battle position used by English soldiers during the Iberian campaign of the Napoleonic wars. Or possibly both are wrong. Unpicking pubs is something to do over a pint. I don’t doubt that I’ve got some of this wrong. But that will be an excuse for more unpicking – and further pints.
What’s in a name? / Britain’s curious pub naming conventions
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29.11.2023
The big London restaurant opening of the autumn has been The Devonshire in Denman Street, Soho, close to Piccadilly Circus. There was a run on bookings as soon as the reviews appeared. Giles Coren in the Times wrote: ‘What a place. What. A. Place.’ Jimi Famurewa’s review in the Evening Standard appeared under the headline: ‘Nothing beats a good pub – and this is as good as it gets’. Because – as well as being an exciting new restaurant – The Devonshire is also very much a pub.
What must foreign visitors make of all this confusing disconnection between pub name and location?
There’s been a pub on the site since 1793. It was called The Devonshire Arms for the best part of two centuries until it finally closed in 2008 and became a Jamie’s Italian before that chain went bust and it was left vacant. It was painstakingly restored into a pub once more this year and reopened as the now plain, Arms-less, Devonshire earlier this month.
I went a couple of weeks ago and found that it was a very pleasing room and that the Guinness was, as Coren observed, well-poured. But what I found curious about The Devonshire didn’t strike me until a few days later, after I’d also been for drinks in The Sussex Arms (in Kent) and the Dorset Arms (in Sussex). And that was how it’s the most high-profile example yet of the geographically confusing pub name.
Other examples that spring to mind are The Cornish Arms which, unlike The Devonshire, is actually in, er, Devon: in Tavistock, to be precise. We had a rather good lunch there last spring. And there are........
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