Home > London > EC1 > Crown & Woolpack Crown & Woolpack

Picture source: T C

The Crown & Woolpack was situated at 394-396 St John Street. In commercial usage at bar level.

During the spring of 1991 i ran away from home with a boy a couple of years older than myself. I met him on the Hereford bound platform at oxford train station, i was studying Chemistry and Biology at the local college of FE. Long story short, there was a rough patch. When i was first introduced to the Crown and Woolpack it was an old squat. And not a very nice one. The smell that met me at the lounge door was unforgettable due mostly to the two pups that rarely got taken out and had the run of the place. An old lady lived in the kitchen. The swing door was blocked and the glass in the port hole window was missing so she would look through it into the lounge bar area. There naturally was no electricity. We took up residence in the lounge in front of the kitchen door, with the bar as our headboard as it was the only room left that was still habitable. Upstairs on the first floor was one usable toilet. A grand old victorian chain pull type, the tiles on the floor were gone. The bare concrete floor was always a puddle due the leaking cistern. On this floor there were also two very spacious and grand pool halls with the old green streaked linoleum. They were empty but for the structures built by their occupants. The front hall looked down onto St.John and Owen Street and a couple of travellers with a well cared for dog lived there on their enviable DIY Loft bed. The other looked out back. A Goth that liked to jam very loudly for a long time with the punks that lived in the basement, with their neglected pups, on a stage i always presumed he'd built himself, lived there. His dog was the pup's mother... There was also an old Scottish man that lived down in the damp stinking basement... He was very sad and mecicated himselfe with alcohol. The pub was quite derelict. Only the carpet in the lounge had been spared. But it was always so dark other than when the street entrance was open for a moment, it was hard to tell what state it was in, there was alot of debris, we never strayed in too far in to investigate. Because the main bar door was blocked and only received mail, all the pub's squatters entered via the lounge, so we had no privacy at all untill we found a big green Carlsberg shade umbrella and used that as a screen. The stairs that lead upstairs from the first floor had been stripped of carpet, only the bare boards were left. I was curious to go up, but the skillful way in which the pups had deposited a "mine" on every individual wooden board was enough to both discourage and fascinate me. As much as i wanted the chance of a better bedroom i wasn't game to tiptoe through the field. It's also curious how one can become so desensitised to some of the worst smells... I'll dispense with our general day to day beyond the pub door. Sleep was hard to achieve, but we discovered a cheap and effective way to knock ouselves out, with a joint accompanied by a tiny golden can of carlsberg special brew. There was an eviction notice while we were there, but we lived very peripherally to the general in pub goings on. It was a dry, relatively warm and safe place to sleep for us. We didn't hang out there untill it was time to sleep again. And sometimes I'd insist on a shop doorway if the weather wasn't too harsh for what we had for clothes, rather than go back to the smell and the noise. The old lady would pass us bread rolls and other stale, but still tastey bready treats, from some bakery that kindly gave her a bin bag full almost daily. She would look down through her port hole in the mornings as we emerged from our comatozed states and say "hello my loves, would you like a bread roll?" Days after the eviction notice the water was turned off. The toilet couldnt be flushed and filled up fast. I got food poisoning from skip food, on account of the warmer weather, coincidentally and i have actually blocked the memory of that horror day. The one abiding mental picture i have left doesn't deserve describing. I had to go back to Oxford to attempt to take my exams, very unwell, (passed by the skin of my teeth) and choosing the Cotswolds over the Crown and Woolpack pub, and the heartless streets of London, i headed for the woods and never looked back... I'm really glad it wasn't demolished. And that it's been restored/refurbished. I love all the old places. I grew up in the west end, before my family left for Berkshire, in a terrace on Blandford street. London was my cradle till that point, but it's a cruel place for the troubled, the lonely and the down and out.

Penelope (October 2020)

In the early 90’s I lived at the Crown & Woolpack with my partner and our gorgeous Alsatian Collie cross dog Noah. I had been squatting in London for several years and although the Crown & Woolpack was an impressive building it was in a very sorry state and exactly as described by Penelope. The only omission that others may not have been unaware of is that we were all sharing our residence with a ghost! Poor bloody ghost! We were living on the first floor at the front of the building in an enormous high ceilinged room that stretched the entire length of the Pub. The door from the street that we were using opened directly in front of the staircase that lead to the first floor. On one occasion when entering the building my partner saw a pair of woman’s legs dressed in Victorian style disappearing up the stairs, the rest of the apportion was obscured by the ceiling in the entrance. There were only two inhabitable rooms on the first floor one of which was ours and we could find no sign of any one upstairs at all, I searched the entire upstairs all floors. I had built a mezzanine platform in our room as it was so massive and we had our mattress up their and some old pub seating, it was a fairly well lit room as it had the big windows, but on several occasions our dog who was the most friendly dog to all humans and animals and who had NEVER bared his teeth at anything, he would stand rigid staring into the room slowly raising his hackles with a low growl welling up from within as he tracked something across the room and on one occasion the full works with teeth bared and everything, I had to go and rescue him and calm him down from whatever he was seeing. This behaviour was never repeated anywhere throughout the rest of his life. While squatting in empty derelict buildings I have experienced a couple of paranormal events and I do believe that buildings absorb and hold on to some of the goings on that once took place there in years gone by. I am so pleased that Penelope escaped the harshness of what London can be as did we, sadly I know that this is not true for some of the other residents of the Crown & Woolpack at that time.

Simon Hedley (April 2023)

Wow - reading the two stories of the squatters took me back there! I also squatted the pub (it was very derelict) around 89/90. A few of us went to Daevid Allen and Here and Now concert in Holloway. On the way we were persuaded by a pal to squat in London - so off he went to find somewhere while the rest of us went to the gig. After it finished we walked back along Upper street and met him at Angel - where he took us to the pub! "This is it" he told us! We had to go in the back, up some stairs and into the first floor. No electricity, so using lighters went to the front room - the big long one described by the other people. The first night we just literally crashed there - having lit a fire in the fireplace. Next morning after very little sleep, some stayed, to 'protect' the squat and the others that were going to stay went back to Medway to get their stuff. (I can't remember if went on the first trip). Five of us moved in initially, but very quickly it became three, then just two of us. We met some local squatters who showed us the ropes! I enjoyed the local clubs (Slimelight and Wraith) but it was hard work in a run down pub with no power or water. The added issue of 'Pat' - the strange guy that lived in the shed type thing in the overgrown back yard was hard to deal with at times. He did kindly decorate all the boards covering the ground floor windows though, with weird patterns and strange phrases. A few months of that, and we moved to a pub opposite the old gin factory down the road. That was much nicer, not long empty (A gay pub for a while before closing I think) with power etc. Unfortunately there were a lot of unwanted attempts to get us out by unofficial means! I didn't stay long before running away to squat in a big house in Gillingham. So glad the C&W didn't get demolished - it was a life experience I wouldn't recommend, but will never regret. Hard times, but free (ish)

Justin Morgan (January 2024)

Do you have any anecdotes, historical information, updates or photos of this pub? Become a contributor by submitting them here. Like this site? Follow us on Make email contact with other ex-customers and landlords of this pub by adding your details to this page.