The Old Queen's Head, Victorian on the outside and Tudor inside.
The popular North London watering hole on Essex Road appears to be like many other 19th century pubs from the outside. Inside, however, there is remarkable early 17th century stone fireplace, with sculpted classical scenes, surmounted by equally remarkable carved wooden panelling.
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The chimneypiece in The Old Queen's Head was created some time in the early 1600s for the original pub on the site. Simply called the Queen's Head and probably built in the 16th century, it had projecting floors and some elaborate ornamentation on its street front.
The old pub was taken down and rebuilt in around 1830 with a flat-fronted facade much plainer than its predecessor. However, the old fireplace was transferred to the new building. The decorative ground floor frontage on Essex Road dates from around 1900.
The pub's main room on the ground floor has an impressively decorated moulded plaster ceiling, but it is the fireplace surround that is most stunning.
Either side of the fireplace are carved stone figures, decorated with festoons. Above the fireplace is a sculpted stone relief, with scenes from classical mythology, and carved oak panels.
According to an 1835 book, Walks Through Islington, by Thomas Cromwell, this relief illustrates Danae and Actaeon, together with partially damaged depictions of Venus, Bacchus and Plenty.
He wrote this quite soon after the pub had been rebuilt, so it is likely to be reliable in its broad physical description.
However, it seems that Cromwell confused Danae, the mother of Perseus in Greek mythology, with Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt.
In Roman mythology, Actaeon was a hunter who inadvertently saw Diana bathing naked in a spring. In her embarrassment she splashed him with water, transforming him into a deer. He then fled, but was caught and killed by his own hounds, who did not recognise him. This is the story that appears to be portrayed in the stone panels above the fireplace.
The fireplace in the pub today matches an engraving published in 1819, while the old pub was still standing. This image was by architectural draughtsman Augustus Charles Pugin (whose son Augustus Welby Pugin later became a leading figure in the Gothic Revival movement).
As far as I know, it is the only interior view of the original Queen's Head made before it was rebuilt, although others subsequently copied it. The Victorian artist CH Matthews painted a water colour based on it some years later.
I only discovered the AC Pugin engraving recently, at the Our Islington exhibition currently on display at the Islington Museum on St John Street, and was excited to see how closely the fireplace in the image corresponds to what is in the pub today.
According to Cromwell's Walks Through Islington, the ceiling of the previous pub was decorated with dolphins, cherubs, acorns and other items, bordered with fruit and foliage and with a Roman-style face in profile near the centre. This description also corresponds to the AC Pugin illustration published in 1819.
Two sources indicate that, in addition to the fireplace, the plaster ceiling was also reinstalled in the new building in around 1830.
The first is Walter Thornberry's 1878 book Old London, which says that the oak parlour of the old building was transferred to the new one. This implies that both the fireplace and the ceiling were preserved. The second is Historic England's Official List Entry, which says that The Old Queen's Head has an early 17th century ceiling of modelled plasterwork.
However, it is not so easy to recognise in today's pub the ceiling details described in Walks Through Islington and drawn by AC Pugin, although the style is certainly the same. Perhaps some elements are from the original building, while others were made in a similar style?
The exact date of the fireplace and ceiling details is not known, but sources variously refer to the early 17th century and to the Elizabethan period (which ended in 1603).
The style of the fireplace carvings - both stone and wood - certainly has much in common with other such items of that time.
Up the road, also in Islington, the Tudor Canonbury Tower has wooden panelling and stone details around two fireplaces with similarities to The Old Queen's Head's fireplace.
The carved panels there date from c.1600 and were made for Sir John Spencer, a wealthy cloth merchant, Lord Mayor of London and courtier to Queen Elizabeth I, at a time when Islington was a rural village outside London (see also Would Elizabeth I recognise Islington today?).
Architectural features of this nature were a display of wealth and would have impressed visitors to the Canonbury Tower, which was part of Sir John's private home. It is perhaps a little surprising, then, to find work of this nature in a public building such as the Queen's Head, which was an inn. However, it may once have been a private house.
According to folklore, the Queen's Head belonged to the Elizabethan statesman, writer, explorer and soldier Sir Walter Raleigh. The story goes that the inn's sign, and therefore its name, were a reference to the monarch in whose reign he received licences to keep taverns and sell wines (but this would also have applied to anyone licensed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I).
There are is also a story that Lord Burghley, William Cecil (1520-1598), adviser to Elizabeth, lived here. He served the Queen as Secretary of State and Lord High Treasurer.
Another legend holds that the building was the summer residence of Elizabeth I's favourite, the Earl of Essex, and visited by the Queen herself.
None of these stories has any real evidence to back them, but neither can they be disproved.
Whatever the origins, the beautifully carved stone and wood around the fireplace in The Old Queen's Head are exceptional, especially for a London pub. If folklore is to be believed, it could even be possible that the Old Queen herself (Elizabeth I) enjoyed a drink before this fireplace!
You would expect to find such features in a stately home, perhaps managed by the National Trust, not in a north London boozer.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
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What I would like to know is how on earth you managed to take a photo of the room with no people in it - it’s always packed!