That’s something you can have some sympathy with, especially if you
ever come seeking out a discreet sherbet in this quaint old corner of
Cambridgeshire that’s tucked away in the heart of the City of London.
When
you pass the security barrier and guardpost into Ely Place from
Charterhouse Street, there’s no longer a top-hat and frock-coated
beadle on guard to point out that you’re technically no longer in
London. There’s also no longer a sign to hint at the whereabouts of the
Mitre Tavern. Personally, I wandered on until I came across the
medieval St Etheldreda’s church further down Ely Place, stopped to
squint at the model palace in the undercroft, and passed on, publess,
to the end of the cul-de-sac. In search of an alley of some
description, I let myself through a gate and found myself unexpectedly
in the backyard of the Bleeding Heart Tavern in Bleeding Heart Yard.
Four or five left turns later, I came across the other end of the
elusive alley on Hatton Garden. If I mention it’s between numbers 8 and
9, it might save you some valuable drinking time.
Feature continues
Some
way down Mitre Place, the black brick alley widens out a yard or two,
opens up to the sky, and reveals a tiny pub with a frontage of oak and
opaque leaded windows. The date on the sign says 1547, but this version
of the Mitre was actually built around 1772, soon after the demolition
of the nearbyPalace of the Bishops of Ely – the origin of all the
geographical and historical anomalies in these parts.
Built
in 1291, St Etheldreda’s Church – aka Ely Chapel – is the oldest
Catholic church in England and the only surviving part of Ely Palace.
With 58 acres of orchards, vineyards and strawberry fields, plus
fountains, ponds and terraced lawns stretching down towards the Thames,
the Palace was the London residence of a long line of Ely Bishops, and
a seat of great power. The Bishop of Ely and his strawberries feature
in Shakespeare’s ‘Richard III’, while Ely Palace itself provides the
setting for John of Gaunt’s ‘This scepter’d isle’ speech in ‘Richard
II’. In 1531, a five-day feast was attended by Henry VIII and Catherine
of Aragon, the Lord Mayor of London, sundry foreign ambassadors, barons
and aldermen: between them, they tucked away ‘24 great beefs, the
carcase of an ox, 100 fat muttons, 91 pigs, 34 porks, 37 dozen pigeons,
340 larks’ and the King’s contribution of 13 dozen swans.
The
original Mitre Tavern was built for servants at the Palace 11 years
into the reign of Elizabeth I. In 1576 she commandeered a gatehouse and
a goodly portion of the Palace grounds for her court favourite Sir
Christopher Hatton, and regularly came visiting. After stints as a
prison and a Civil War hospital, the Palace reverted to the Crown in
Georgian times and was demolished – although the rebuilt pub had built
into its front wall a stone mitre from a palace gatepost and a cherry
tree, which once marked the boundary separating the ground gifted to
Hatton and the Bishop’s remaining diocese.
The tree is still
here, preserved in the corner of the cosy panelled front bar – in fact,
according to John, it was throwing out leafy branches and blossom up
until the end of last century, when structural subsidence led to the
decapitation of the tree once used as a maypole by Good Queen Bess.
John Wright first found his way to the Mitre Tavern back in 1953, but
it wasn’t until the ’70s that he got a job here pulling pints. In those
days the pub closed at 10pm along with the gates of Ely Place, and the
drinks licence was still issued in Cambridgeshire rather than London,
and that’s about all that’s changed since: certainly not the
stained-glass mitre or the toy-size furniture in the crooked little
front bar, nor the settles, skylight and ‘Ye Closet’ micro-snug in the
back. The Mitre still only opens one weekend per year, but now it
corresponds with the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia (August 5,
6) rather than St Etheldreda’s annual charity Strawberry Fayre on June
25.
Ely Place remains quite literally a law unto itself, and long
may it continue to do so. ‘Many times we’ve had robbers run in here
from Hatton Garden,’ Wright recalls fondly. ‘They know the City police
don’t have the right to follow them. It’s still the same today: the
police just have to seal all the exits and ring the Cambridgeshire
force, then wait around ‘till they jump in their cars and get down
here’.
