3-101-125 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Queen's Head Inn Yard, c1881. Galleried pub in Southwark, South London. John Harvard, the founder of Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, owned the building for a short time in the seventeenth century. A plaque recording this, is to be found on the facade facing Borough High Street (now John Harvard House). In the nineteenth century, as inns lost business to the railroads, many became depots for the railway companies and simple public houses. In the case of the Queen's Head, although part of the galleries had been let out to a hop merchant, the inn continued in business until 1895. Thereafter, it too, became a railway depot. "We have seen that this Inn is mentioned by Stow. It does not appear in Mr Rendle's map, where however we find, occupying apparently the same site, the "Crowned" or "Crossed Keys," a sign derived from St Peter's Keys. It seems probable, that the old sign perhaps growing out of favour with the progress of the reformed religion, the Inn was re-christened after the Virgin Queen [ie Elizabeth I]". Description by Alfred Marks.