Frontage well worth a visit to see a pub that has not suffered too much at the hands of the brewers. Many original features. The site of the Baptists Head is behind the White Bear in St Johns Lane. Across the road to the right can still be seen the sign in relief of the Cross Keys pub. Food is fairly priced and filling. Per their website the pub was built in 1899 and has always been a pub and a last stop for convicts on their way to be hung at Smithfield.
Historic Interest
Grade II listing:- Public house. Dated 1899 in gable. Red brick and stone, five storeys over basement, four-window range. Ground-floor frontage of stone now painted: two broad basket-arched openings with free-standing column to centre and pilasters to sides; column and pilasters with elaborate foliage cpaitals supporting scrolled consoles, the outer ones with entablature and pediments flanking the fascia and dentil cornice; wooden pub front set back with shallow central bow window having panelled dado and original glazing bars, original double doors to either side; elaborate decorative wrought iron grilles fill the top of the arched openings with 'WHITE BEAR' lettered in them; side walls covered with embossed and glazed tiles, of which some are missing on right-hand wall. Upper windows segmental-arched with decorative keystones and springers, panels of cut and moulded brick between the windows to first, second and third floors, decorative brick aprons throughout and pilasters flanking the whole elevation, panelled at fourth-floor level; shaped coped gable with tympanum of cut and moulded brick with the date 1899; spike finial. INTERIOR: has original bar front, some partitioning with engraved and faceted glass, structural Coninthian column and a stretch of embossed and glassed tilework, now painted.
White Bear, London