History
The lane, and the pub on it
Nobody knows how old this pub is. The lane it stands on is another matter.
1067
The name enters the written record as Strætforda: the ford on the Roman road. The road came out of Aldgate heading for Colchester, and somewhere north of the High Street it met the Lea and had to get across. The place is named after getting to the other side.
1135
Cistercian monks raise Stratford Langthorne Abbey on the marsh. It becomes one of the richest houses in England: 1,500 acres here and twenty manors across Essex. Henry VIII pulls it down in 1538, and the neighbours cart the stone away to build with. It never left. It's still here, in garden walls and foundations, holding up buildings that have no idea what they're made of.
1839
A station opens on the Eastern Counties Railway and the village stops being one. Within a generation Stratford is a junction, and a junction means thousands of men arriving with a thirst.
1847
The locomotive works open just up the road. Before closing in 1991 they turn out 1,682 engines, 5,500 carriages and 33,000 wagons, with 2,500 people through the gates at their height. For 150 years this is a place that makes enormous things out of iron, then goes for a pint.
1895
Downriver at Thames Ironworks, the last great shipbuilder on the Thames, a foreman called Dave Taylor and the owner Arnold Hills get a works team together. Thames Ironworks FC. The hammers that end up crossed on the badge are riveting hammers — the tools those men swung all day to beat iron plates onto hulls.
1900
The club is reborn as West Ham United, taking the name of the parish it played in. The same name already on this lane, and on it for centuries before anyone kicked a ball. The hammers went further than the team: they're in the old Borough of West Ham's arms, and in Newham's today. Round here they belong to everybody.
2016
After 112 years at the Boleyn Ground the club moves to the London Stadium and comes back into Stratford, a mile from a pub that had been standing on West Ham Lane the whole time.
1985
The oldest photograph anyone has of this pub was taken in 1985. There's another from 1987. It is not a picture of a new building.
Le Pub
For a spell it traded under another name. It didn't take. The Queen's Head came back, the way these things do.
2023
Over £100,000 goes into the place: furniture, fittings, carpets, lighting, six new screens, and a new sign outside with Queen Elizabeth II on it. The idea, as it was put then, was that the pub should look like what it is.
The hammers on the badge are riveting hammers —
the tools shipbuilders used to fix iron plates onto hulls.
They are in Newham's coat of arms too.
They belong to the borough as much as the team.
“The changes to the pub reflect the kind of venue this is,
and the East End itself.”
One more thing
Fill in the gaps
Somebody drinking in here knows more about this place than the internet does. If that's you, the bar would like a word.