Knave of Clubs

The building standing at the corner of Bethnal Green Road and Club Row has operated as a public house since eighteen eighty. For many decades, locals knew this spot by a different name, the Bird House. This nickname emerged because the nearby Club Row market was a bustling hub for the trade of songbirds, and dealers frequently conducted their business inside the pub itself. The name Knave of Clubs reflects the definition of a knave as a deceitful or tricky fellow, a fitting title for a venue that served as a notorious meeting place for East End rascals throughout the Victorian era. After closing in the nineteen nineties and serving as a French restaurant for a time, the building underwent an extensive restoration to return it to its original identity as a traditional public house. Recent renovations even revealed historical signage on the walls, helping the current operators restore the interior to match its nineteenth-century roots.