Exterior of The Grapes public house.

Repro ID: H5435

Description: This beautiful old Limehouse tavern, with stunning views of the river, is described in Charles Dicken's book 'Our Mutual Friend'. In the novel the pub is known as the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters Tavern and is kept by Miss Abbey Potterson. Dicken's decribed the tavern thus: 'In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all'.

Creator: Cleve Severin

Date: 2003

Credit line: National Maritime Museum, London