It is hard to contemplate, but only a little over 200 years ago Greenwich was a fishing village, and, in season, one of the catches yielded up by the River Thames was whitebait. Nowadays the River Thames is not quite so prolific, but the Trafalgar Tavern is still the place in London to go and east a whitebait dinner. In the 19th century senior Liberals and Tories would annually board rival barges and sail down the Thames for such a dinner.
At the Trafalgar these dinners would have taken place in what is now the Lord Nelson Room, which offers a view of the broad sweep of the Thames as it embraces the Isle of Dog. To the powerful leaders of the world’s largest empire — from whose far-flung corners raw materials of all sorts came and to where the finished goods were sent — the number of ships passing beneath the Trafalgar’s bay windows must have been a truly gratifying sight. The view from the Trafalgar today is still impressive, albeit quite different.
The Trafalgar was built in 1837 by Joseph Kay, a founder member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and surveyor of Greenwich Hospital, on the site of a tavern called The George. It ceased being a pub in 1915, when it became a club named the Royal Alfred Aged Merchant Seamen’s Institute. Fortunately, in 1965 it reverted to being the Trafalgar once more. Given that even today great and historic pubs and their interiors are not being retained, the Trafalgar’s story must count as one of the most remarkable restorations in London’s history.
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