We moved to the Hop Pole around 1959/60.

This was my favourite pub. Tiny but very beautiful. I loved the shiny green exterior tiles and the smell of oil-polished wooden floors. Best of all, I loved my room at the very top of the building. It had an attic window with a wide windowsill where I would sit up there on cushions for ages watching all the comings and goings on the street below. 

This was my parents’ first pub where they were tenants. They leased the building from Truman’s and paid rent. This enabled them to run their business, albeit tied to this brewery. They were their own bosses and could run the pub as they wished. The more beer you sold, though, the higher the rent. It went on a barrelage. The brewery carried out main repairs and decoration, but you could choose your own designs and make improvements at your own cost if you so wished. The landlords would have to approve anything structural.

Dad was a brilliant innovator and soon set to on The Hop Pole. He restored it as much as he could. Repairing woodwork, repainting and making new signs. All his signwriting skills came into play. I still have a book of gold leaf that he would use to smarten up the writing on the beer boards and toilet signs. He kept the designs Victorian and in keeping with the pub.

I remember the round black wrought iron tables with highly polished wooden tabletops. These tables had fancy iron bases, filigree in design, with Medusa-like faces on the corners. The pub didn’t have a very fancy interior, but it was cosy and well-loved by its patrons. Families once again.

I was about 12 when we moved here, already at Dalston Grammar School in Stoke Newington. My brother was in his first year at Dame Alice Owens in Islington. The London County Council (LCC) had agreed for us to stay at these schools despite moving. We could stay as long as our parents didn’t move out of London. Even when we went south of the Thames, we had continuity with our education. We also received bus passes. Mind you, it meant early mornings and late evenings for us. Especially when we lived in Bermondsey. Tower Bridge was very much operational as the London Docks hadn’t closed then. So, more often than not, on our way to and from school, we had to sit in traffic waiting for the bridge to lower and allow us to cross the Thames. We were rarely late arriving at school but often very late getting home. To ensure we arrived on time, we would get off the 78 bus in the mornings if the traffic had stopped for the bridge and start walking, jumping on the 78 further up the road, so I guess we gained time that way. I would then take a bus from Shoreditch Church to Dalston, and Stephen would take a bus to Islington. Coming home, we didn’t bother with the walk; we just sat on the bus and waited. Often, the pub would be open, and we would walk through the bar to the door of our flat. We did meet some of the ‘early doors’ customers, who would sometimes buy us an orange juice and crisps. 

Sally, our housekeeper, would have our dinner ready on the table. She was lovely, always waiting for us to come in before leaving. The kitchen was behind the bar, so we could hear all the chatter and clatter that went on in there. We couldn’t distinguish the conversations but it was nice to have that background noise. 

The Hop Pole had a small scullery off the kitchen with a deep butler sink. Sally also did our washing there in a twin tub; since she wasn’t very tall, she would upend the machine out the back door to empty it! This feat never failed to impress me. Mum tried to stop her but gave up. Sally said it was quicker than letting the pump empty it and it swilled the backyard at the same time. I guess it was a good idea as our dog used the yard as his toilet. There was only a cooker, a boiler and a couple of cupboards in the kitchen. Table and chairs by the boiler. The doors on the front of the boiler opened up, making it the cosiest place in the winter. The boiler heated the water and had to be kept going day and night. It was a devil to relight. It was very chilly upstairs, no central heating in those days and apart from Sundays, no fire. Just those small electric bar heaters. Each room did have an old black fireplace and occasionally, when it was really cold, we would have a fire lit in our bedrooms. 

I’ve no idea of the cost to purchase our first leasehold pub. I know my paternal grandparents helped with the deposit. So, I’m assuming it was maybe similar to a deposit on a house. My Grandparents sold their house and came to live with us. Grandad needed care. They lived the rest of their lives with us moving from pub to pub. Dad always made sure that they had two rooms of their own. With Mum and Dad so busy, it was great that we always had our Grandparents around.

Strange, the things you remember. Sally, our housekeeper, had the kitchen as her domain. She kept it spick and span using soap for nearly everything and did the washing up with Daz. Daz was a soap powder like Surf, used for laundry. This Daz powder was blue and she and my Nana kept some of it in a tall jar by the sink with a long pickle spoon in it insisting that it was the best thing to use for the washing up. One spoon of it would be used in the sink to do the crockery and cutlery, but everything had to be rinsed as the powder clung onto everything and without a hot rinse we would have been foaming at the mouth when we drank our tea etc. At this time, ITV hadn’t been long on the tv and along with it came advertisements. Nana had seen an advert for ‘Squeezy’

‘ ??It’s easy with Squeezy the Washing Up Wizard, so easy with Squeezy to get dishes clean.’??’ 

That was Squeezy’s jingle. My Nan sang all the jingles to the adverts but this one really made an impression on her. Our Grandad was sent over the road to the grocers to buy some.  It was a hit with Sally and the jar of Daz was no more.  Thank goodness, as when it was our turn to wash up it really burnt your hands. I still have that pickle spoon.

The bars had open fires and would be lit in the afternoons. Several of our regulars would stay and linger over their pint in the winter.

The toilet in our flat was on the small landing between the sitting room and Dad’s tiny windowless office. It smelt of Jeyes fluid most of the time!

I was about 12/13 when we lived there in 1958/9. I got to know most of the customers. They were all ‘regulars’ and, like The Standard, families. It was unusual to have strangers use the pub. Everyone knew everyone. The Hop Pole was more friendly, and I don’t remember feeling so away from things there. Mum and Dad didn’t seem so worried about us so much, and we had much more freedom there. I had made some good friends at Dalston County, and often one or other of them would come and stay at the weekends. They loved being in the pub. We would sit on the stairs and listen to Dad playing all the old songs on a Saturday night and sing along with the customers until we were shooed upstairs. I still have these friends, and we share many memories of life in a pub.

Harry was still our barman, and he would stop over at weekends in the sitting room. My grandparents had two rooms on the middle floor. I had my own room, and my brothers shared. It was in this pub that I woke everyone up on weekday mornings. Since Stephen and I had to leave early to get to school, I had the alarm clock as Mum and Dad didn’t rise early, and we were old enough to see to ourselves. I would go down to the kitchen and put our old kettle on top of the boiler before running upstairs to wake my brothers and dash into the bathroom. Then I would make tea for everyone. I had a big wooden tray and went around the bedrooms, waking everyone up with tea in bed. I would spend a few minutes with my Grandparents and collect our dinner money out of the till on the dressing table in Mum and Dad’s room. 

We often came home later than most schoolchildren due to the buses and would walk through the bar to our flat. The pub would be open and have a few customers already. Always the same ones, sitting in the same chairs whilst drinking the same beer. We gave the tables and chairs names for each patron. They weren’t used to seeing children in smart school uniforms as this was a poor area similar to Hoxton, and not many children went to grammar school. 

Before becoming publicans our family loved the outdoors, and we would often go on outings to parks or the sea. The Hop Pole, apart from the small yard, had no outdoor space. The yard was full of crates and bins and had no room for much else. However, my amazing father wasn’t going to let this defeat him. Outside my bedroom was a fire escape. A few steps led up to a large window that opened inwards on hinges, and in case of fire, you could climb out onto a narrow parapet and await rescue. An iron railing guarded you against falling. As you came out onto this parapet, the steep roof of the pub was on the left. Dad decided that he could extend the parapet along the roof and make it wide enough for a couple of deckchairs. This he did. It was precarious, to say the least, but in the summer, we would crawl out onto this platform, set up the chairs and sunbathe. Mind you, we were usually grubby when we came in, as the soot from the houses and factories chimneys would often settle on us. My friends thought it hilarious. It was also dangerous, but we survived.

You can see the fire escape and railings in old photos of The Hop Pole. More modern photos, taken when the pub had become flats, show that more rooms had been built into the roof, so the fire escape is no longer there. For me, it just added to the magic of my bedroom up in the attic. I felt I had my own little place, my own castle. On hot summer evenings, my friends and I would sit out on the parapet outside the fire escape and dream of our lives to come. 

It was a very happy pub; I do remember that. Small and cosy. I felt safe and loved. Mum & Dad were happy there and life was good.

I have since revisited the site and was left upset to see that, at various points, it had become offices and a squat. Some small, unkempt houses have been built alongside the pub. But amazingly, literally over the road, you could find swish gated properties. I was pleased to see on a recent visit that the pub’s exterior has returned to its former glory and the conversion to flats appeared sympathetic.