The Prospect of Whitby

There has been a pub on this stretch of the Thames since around 1520, making the Prospect of Whitby a serious claimant to the title of London’s oldest riverside pub, and it has gone by grimmer names in its time, including the Devil’s Tavern, earned from the smugglers, thieves and dockworkers who once drank here before the area was tamed and gentrified.

The building itself is the reason to visit ahead of anything on the menu: a genuinely old flagstone floor worn smooth by centuries of use, a rare pewter-topped bar that survives from an earlier age of pub fittings, ships’ masts and old timbers built directly into the structure, and a first-floor balcony and beer garden with proper views over the Thames towards Rotherhithe on the opposite bank. Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens, and painters Turner and Whistler are all said to have drunk here, which is the kind of claim nearly every ancient London pub makes about itself, though this one has rather more documented history behind it than most.

The food and drink are straightforward pub fare: fish and chips, pies, a solid range of cask ales served properly, done competently rather than ambitiously across the board. Nobody visits the Prospect of Whitby expecting a tasting menu, and the kitchen does not pretend otherwise. There is a small restaurant upstairs serving a slightly more considered menu for anyone wanting a proper sit-down meal rather than a pub lunch eaten standing at the bar.

It sits some distance from the nearest tube, with Wapping on the London Overground the closest station, which keeps it slightly quieter than central London’s more famous historic pubs, though river cruises and organised walking tours have made it a fixture on the tourist trail regardless of the awkward transport links.

The honest caveat: because it is so well known historically, it can fill with tour groups photographing the bar and the beams rather than locals settling in for a quiet pint, and the food, while perfectly fine, is not really the reason to make the trip out to Wapping in the first place.