Pirates, Hanging Judges and Dockers: A Wapping Pub Crawl

Wapping is on the Windrush line of the London Overground. The station sits in the original shaft of Brunel's Thames Tunnel of 1843, the first tunnel ever built under a navigable river. Look at the deep, round walls as you climb the stairs.

Turn right out of the station and walk west along cobbled Wapping High Street, between tall converted warehouses still crossed by iron walkways. You'll pass the Captain Kidd and the Marine Police on the way; you'll be back. The first pub is about seven minutes' walk away.

18th century. "A notable specimen of a waterman's tavern."

A long, narrow, dark-panelled bar running back towards the river. There has been an alehouse here since the 15th century, known in turn as the Red Cow and Ramsgate Old Town before it became the Town of Ramsgate. The name comes from the fishermen of Ramsgate in Kent, who landed their catch at the stairs next door rather than pay the river taxes at Billingsgate. CAMRA lists its interior as being of special national historic interest.

In 1688 the hated 'Hanging Judge' Jeffreys tried to flee the country disguised as a sailor and was recognised and caught in the pub on this site.

On the way out, walk down the narrow passage beside the pub to Wapping Old Stairs, one of the few surviving watermen's stairs. It's one of the candidates for the site of Execution Dock.

19th century. Named after the seventeenth-century pirate William Kidd, who was executed at the nearby Execution Dock.

The building is a 19th-century riverside warehouse, once used for coffee. It was derelict until Samuel Smith's brewery turned it into a pub at the end of the 1980s. Inside it's all dark timber, beams and three floors, laid out to feel like the hold of a ship. There's a big riverside garden, and the prices are kind (it serves Samuel Smith's own beers only). Next door is the headquarters of the Marine Police, descendants of the river police founded in Wapping in 1798.

Kidd was a Scottish privateer, hired to hunt pirates, who was found guilty of piracy and murder. He was hanged at Execution Dock on 23 May 1701. The rope broke on the first attempt, so he was hanged twice, and his body was then left in an iron cage downriver at Tilbury as a warning to others. King Henry's Stairs, just along the street and once called Execution Dock Stairs, is another claimed site for the gallows.

16th century. It lays claim to being the site of the oldest riverside tavern, dating from around 1520.

It was first called the Pelican, then, thanks to its smugglers, thieves and river pirates, the Devil's Tavern. After a fire in the 18th century it was rebuilt and renamed after The Prospect, a Whitby collier (coal ship) that used to moor alongside. The 400-year-old stone-flagged floor survives from the oldest building. The long bar has a rare pewter top, and the regulars over the years are said to have included Samuel Pepys, Turner and Dickens.

Out on the riverside terrace, a replica gallows and noose hangs over the foreshore. It's said to commemorate Judge Jeffreys, a regular who lived nearby.

Execution Dock

For more than 400 years, pirates, smugglers and mutineers sentenced by the Admiralty courts were hanged here at the low-water mark. They were hanged with a short rope, so they died slowly, and their bodies were left until three tides had washed over them. The last hangings were in 1830. Where exactly the gallows stood is still argued over: the Town of Ramsgate, the Captain Kidd and the Prospect all lay claim to it.

18th century. The current building dates from the 1720s and is on the site of a pub built in 1583. It was formerly a working-class tavern serving the dockers of the Limehouse Basin.

Getting there (about 20 minutes): carry on east along Wapping Wall and cross the bridge over the entrance to Shadwell Basin. Then follow the Thames Path signs along the river through King Edward Memorial Park and on to Narrow Street. You'll pass the lock where barges once entered Limehouse Basin; The Grapes is a little further along on the right.

It's a narrow, panelled pub with a tiny terrace hanging over the water. Charles Dickens knew Limehouse from boyhood, and the riverside tavern at the start of Our Mutual Friend is widely taken to be this one. Sir Ian McKellen, who lives nearby, is one of the leaseholders. In the river below the terrace stands Antony Gormley's iron figure Another Time. There is real ale downstairs and a dining room upstairs; book if you want to eat.

Getting home: Limehouse station (DLR and c2c) is about 10 minutes' walk north.