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Description
‘The Mayflower’ pub in Rotherhithe commemorates the supposed mooring of the ship nearby before it travelled to Southampton in 1620 to pick up the Pilgrims. The captain of the voyage in 1620, Christopher Jones, also lived in the neighbourhood and is buried a stone’s throw away in St Mary’s Church (where there is also a statue of Jones).
Originally, the pub was called the Spread Eagle and Crown; when it was built in the 1780s (on the site of an even older sixteenth-century pub), there was no commemorative tradition around the Pilgrim Fathers in Britain. From the late nineteenth century onwards there were waves of Mayflower mania which led to the renaming of existing places and buildings – especially in places, like Rotherhithe, that had a concrete link to the story. In 1957, when the story of the Mayflower II (a replica that retraced the original voyage) was capturing headlines across the world, the owners of this ‘historic’ pub probably saw an opportunity to cash in on a sense of Pilgrim Father’s heritage.
Originally, the pub was called the Spread Eagle and Crown; when it was built in the 1780s (on the site of an even older sixteenth-century pub), there was no commemorative tradition around the Pilgrim Fathers in Britain. From the late nineteenth century onwards there were waves of Mayflower mania which led to the renaming of existing places and buildings – especially in places, like Rotherhithe, that had a concrete link to the story. In 1957, when the story of the Mayflower II (a replica that retraced the original voyage) was capturing headlines across the world, the owners of this ‘historic’ pub probably saw an opportunity to cash in on a sense of Pilgrim Father’s heritage.