The Prospect of Whitby (Devils Tavern)

The Prospect of Whitby is a historic public house on the banks of the Thames at Wapping in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It lays claim to being the site of the oldest riverside tavern in London.

Situated on a narrow, creaking strip of riverside in Wapping, The Prospect of Whitby is a pub that refuses simply to be a pub. It comes alive instead as a living fragment of London’s past, where ghosts swirl as reliably as the tide beneath the Thames-facing windows. Visiting it is like stepping through a crack in time, into smoke-hazed centuries of sailors’ songs, whispered deals, and maritime dread.

A name—and a mystery

The Prospect of Whitby roots reach back to around 1520, when it was known as The Pelican. Over time it earned a darker nickname: the “Devil’s Tavern,” thanks to its association with smugglers, pirates and river-thieves who favoured its shadowy corners.

What remains of that early era is subtle but telling: a rough-hewn stone floor, hundreds of years old, still underfoot. And though the building has been rebuilt several times, it keeps enough of its soul to make the provenance more than marketing.

The modern name derives from a coal ship — a Tyne collier called the “Prospect of Whitby” — which once moored outside, unloading sea-coal brought from Newcastle. 

Of pirates, painters—and a noose

Once, the pub overlooked a darker Thames: across the water lies the former site of Execution Dock, where pirates and sea-rovers met their end. Eyewitness accounts — or rather, the chilling notoriety of the place — recall how condemned men were hung at low tide and left until three tides had washed over them.

Legend says the infamous “Hanging Judge” George Jeffreys, presider of the brutal Bloody Assizes, was a regular, dining here while watching the corpses swing. Nowadays a replica noose and gallows remain as grim souvenir — a reminder that for centuries, the Thames wasn’t only a route for trade but for justice by rope and tide.

But the tavern wasn’t only for rogues and condemned men. It later attracted more genteel company: celebrated artists such as J. M. W. Turner and James Abbott McNeill Whistler sketched the Thames views from here.  Writers and social observers, from Charles Dickens to fabled diarists once thought to include Samuel Pepys, are said to have graced its pewter-topped bar and flagged floor.  A pub with a noose and some poetry — now that’s London for you.

Rebuilt, revived — still rumbling with the river

The fires of time have not spared the Prospect. A blaze in the late 17th or early 18th century (accounts vary) destroyed much of the original fabric. What stands now includes 18th-century wood-panelling and a 19th-century frontage — but enough of the old soul remains.

A major refurbishment in the mid-20th century expanded the bar’s footprint while preserving its rugged charm. Today, beneath low timber beams and in the flicker of candle-style lights, you’ll hear laughter and clinking glasses — but also the distant echo of trading ships, timber creaking on the docks, and the hush of tidewater against old hulls.

A riverside sanctuary for modern Londoners

Today, the Prospect is part of a more modern world — run by a brewery chain, offering vegan-friendly menus as happily as pies and cask ale, and welcoming families or day-drinking travellers. But even as the world changes, the pub remains a touchstone to London’s watery soul.

There’s a terrace, a beer-garden, riverside windows and views across a brackish Thames that’s lost most of its wooden lighters but not its ghost-stories. On a summer’s evening, with a pint in hand, one can almost hear the clang of rigging and the low words of sailors heading upriver.

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In a city constantly remade, the Prospect of Whitby endures — not as a museum, but as a tavern with living breath. It connects the ghost-stories of piracy, the grim rituals of Execution Dock, the hush of Turneresque Thames light and the laughter of modern drinkers. It’s a threshold between centuries, a slice of London that still leers back at you.

If you come for a pint, you get ale. If you stay — pay attention. You might taste history. And maybe, just maybe, feel the ghost of a mariner looking out at the ever-flowing Thames, still steering for home.

Location: The Prospect of Whitby, 57 Wapping Wall, London E1W 3SH