The Swan is a delightful Riverside pub that has just been newly refurbished.
The Swan pub dates back too 1770 and was named after the ancient ceremony of Swan Upping which was performed on the Thames each July. The object was to count and divide the birds between the Crown and the companies of the Dyers and Vinters, each bird being taken up with a long pole and marked on its bill.
The American songwriter Jerome Kern married the daughter-Eva Leale of the licensee in 1910, were they then lived together upstairs for many years while the Swan was then a hotel and during that time he found inspiration to write some of his best known songs as Ol Man River, Smoke gets in your eyes, the hit musicals Showboat, Sally, Music in the air, and the films Swing Time and Covergirl plus a host of others. The story has it that Kern, while on a boating trip on the Thames with a friend, stopped at The Swan for a drink and fell in love with Eva at first sight as she helped her father behind the bar. Although they were very different sorts of people, the Kerns had a long and happy marriage until Kern’s death in 1945.
A copy of the marriage certificate is on display in the pub.
A tradition of couples coming together at The Swan seems to have become part of the fabric of the building itself, with many couples meeting, proposing and eventually celebrating their marriage all here at The Swan still to this day.
The first written mention of The Swan occurs in 1770, when it appears on the Walter Leigh Manorial maps when it was then just a small alehouse.
The outside cottage named now The Cygnet has gone through many transformations from being a boxing club to an Italian Restaurant, Private function room and now an outside bar.
The pub has been renowned for many years to be haunted, which up until Christmas I did not believe but I was greeted early one more when opening by a tall ghostly figure of a lady walking down the hallway and into the cellar, I have since seen her several times.
The Swan pub dates back too 1770 and was named after the ancient ceremony of Swan Upping which was performed on the Thames each July. The object was to count and divide the birds between the Crown and the companies of the Dyers and Vinters, each bird being taken up with a long pole and marked on its bill.
The American songwriter Jerome Kern married the daughter-Eva Leale of the licensee in 1910, were they then lived together upstairs for many years while the Swan was then a hotel and during that time he found inspiration to write some of his best known songs as Ol Man River, Smoke gets in your eyes, the hit musicals Showboat, Sally, Music in the air, and the films Swing Time and Covergirl plus a host of others. The story has it that Kern, while on a boating trip on the Thames with a friend, stopped at The Swan for a drink and fell in love with Eva at first sight as she helped her father behind the bar. Although they were very different sorts of people, the Kerns had a long and happy marriage until Kern’s death in 1945.
A copy of the marriage certificate is on display in the pub.
A tradition of couples coming together at The Swan seems to have become part of the fabric of the building itself, with many couples meeting, proposing and eventually celebrating their marriage all here at The Swan still to this day.
The first written mention of The Swan occurs in 1770, when it appears on the Walter Leigh Manorial maps when it was then just a small alehouse.
The outside cottage named now The Cygnet has gone through many transformations from being a boxing club to an Italian Restaurant, Private function room and now an outside bar.
The pub has been renowned for many years to be haunted, which up until Christmas I did not believe but I was greeted early one more when opening by a tall ghostly figure of a lady walking down the hallway and into the cellar, I have since seen her several times.