Kew Gardens & The Pub Behind Mutiny on the Bounty

Planning a London vacation, Kew Gardens needs to be  on your itinerary. Don't miss the remarkable history waiting just across the road. 

In this episode, discover how an unassuming historic London pub - the Coach & Horses on Kew Green - connects to Thomas Gainsborough, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Joseph Banks, Captain Cook, and the extraordinary events that led to Mutiny on the Bounty. 

Stroll through one of London's most beautiful neighborhoods, uncover hidden gems, royal history, Georgian coaching inns, famous graves at St Anne's Church, and the surprising stories most visitors walk right past. 

Whether you're building a London itinerary, searching for hidden things to do in London, or looking for the best historic pubs near Kew Gardens, this episode will change the way you experience one of London's most iconic destinations.

Transcript

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Hey savvy listeners, this is Expat Andy, your host and producer of Publicity, your London Travel Toolkit, the most unique London travel show available. You're loving this show, right? So you might be shocked to know that the majority of your family, friends, neighbours, and colleagues have never heard of it. I know! Insert Gasp. Clutch your pearls, right? At this very moment, someone you know, like, maybe even love, is struggling to plan a London trip with no idea that this treasure vault of help is available to them free of charge. Do yourself and them a solid, share this show with your network. In doing so, you'll help travel and hospitality businesses across London, and you'll make yourself look cool in the process. Thank you and enjoy this episode. Oh, and of course, share it. In 1788, Thomas Gainsborough was dying, and he had a decision to make about where he wanted to be buried. Westminster Abbey would have taken him. He was the favourite painter of the royal family and one of the two most celebrated portrait painters in England, alongside his great rival Joshua Reynolds. He had spent his career at the top of British art, and he was not short of offers. He chose the churchyard of St. Anne's Church on Kew Green. The royal family had worshipped at St. Anne's. He wanted to be near them or near this green or near something about this particular corner of West London that mattered more to him than a cathedral. His pallbearers included Sir Joshua Reynolds, the man who had competed with him for fifty years, who had never quite beaten him for the affection of the people who mattered, and who now carried his coffin to its resting place. The Coach and Horses at 8Q Green Q TW93BH is just across the green from St. Anne's Church. It's been there since at least 1712. There is a National Archives inventory for the Coach and Horses on Q Green dated 1712. The amenities at the time included a Skittles Alley. Camera describes it as an 18th century landmark building with Victorian expansion and improvements. The bones are Georgian, the windows, the proportions, the corner position on the green, all of it speaks to a building that was put up in an era when coaching inns were essential infrastructure, when the road from London to Richmond ran through this green, and when stopping here for the night was not a lifestyle choice, but a practical necessity. Young's brewery has been associated with this pub since 1831. They leased it first, then they bought the freehold in 1898, nearly 200 years of the same brewery. A piece of common or unenclosed ground called Kew Green, lying within the township of Kew, containing about twenty acres. Today it's roughly thirty acres triangular owned by the Crown Estate, leased to the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. Cricket has been played on Kew Green since at least the seventeen thirties. In August 1732, Frederick Prince of Wales, son of George II, father of George III, attended a great cricket match here. In July 1737 he captured a Prince of Wales eleven against a Duke of Marlborough's eleven on this ground. Cricket on a village green with the Prince of Wales at the Creese, almost certainly watched from the direction of this pub. Frederick died in 1751. The story that has followed him through history is that a cricket ball killed him, hit in the chest during a match. The wound turned fatal. The truth is more mundane. It was a blood clot. The legend has outlasted the correction. His wife was Princess Augusta. After Frederick's death, Augusta turned her attention to the grounds at Kew. She had plans and a gardener to make it happen. In 1759, Princess Augusta, mother of George III, founded a nine acre botanic garden within the pleasure grounds at Kew. She employed William Alton to develop it. That nine acres became the Royal Botanic Gardens. The coach and horses had been on this green for at least forty-seven years when Augusta broke ground. The gardens grew. William Chambers designed the Great Pagoda in 1762. Capability Brown created the Rhododendron Dell in 1773. And then Joseph Banks arrived. Banks had sailed with Captain Cook on HMS Endeavour from 1768 to 1771, visiting Brazil, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Australia. He returned with hundreds of botanical specimens and immediate fame. He became Kew's first unofficial director and spent the following decades turning Q into something the world had never seen, a center for the systematic study and acquisition of every plant on Earth. He did this partly by sending people to get them. Some of those journeys were entirely routine. One became the most famous mutiny in history. In 1788, HMS Bounty set sail for Tahiti, with two Q gardeners on board. Their mission was to collect 1,000 breadfruit plants and transport them to the West Indies, where it was hoped the fruit would provide cheap food for the enslaved population on British plantations. The voyage was arranged by Joseph Banks. The crew mutinied en route to Jamaica, but the breadfruit never arrived. The mutiny on the bounty has been the subject of three major Hollywood films, countless books, and an enduring argument about whether Captain Bly was a monster or a martyr. What tends to get lost in the story is where it started. In the gardens across the road from this pub. Joseph Banks commissioned the voyage from his position as Kew's first unofficial director. The two gardeners on the bounty, Nelson and Brown, were trained here. The breadfruit plants were destined to be culture before going to the West Indies. The whole extraordinary calamitous venture was organized by men who walked this green. Let's return to the churchyard. Gainsborough was not the only remarkable person buried in St. Anne's. William Alton, the first official gardener of Kew, the man Princess Augusta employed to build the original nine-acre garden, he's buried here. So is Johann Zophany, the German-born painter who became one of the leading neoclassical artists in England. Sir William Jackson Hooker, 1785 to 1865, he became the first official director of Kew Gardens in 1841, when the gardens were transferred from the Crown to the government and opened to the public. Since 1851, 49 Q Green has been the official residence of the Director of Kew Gardens. The first two inhabitants and two of the most influential directors were Sir William Hooker and his son Sir Joseph Hooker. At 49 Q Green, a short walk from this pub, Sir William Hooker grew Kew from 11 acres to 75 acres of botanic garden and 270 acres of arboretum. He founded the Kew Herbarium. He's buried in St. Anne's churchyard. His son, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, 1817 to 1911, succeeded him as director. Joseph Hooker was one of the great botanical explorers of the nineteenth century, a friend and champion of Charles Darwin, and one of the first scientists to support and promote the theory of evolution. He also lived at 49 Q Green. He also worked the gardens across the road. When he died at the age of ninety four, it was proposed he be buried at Westminster Abbey alongside Darwin. He declined. He chose here. The churchyard of St. Anne's Q Green contains the founder of British landscape painting, the first two directors of Q Gardens, and the first gardener who made Q what it is. All of them at some point in their lives walked past this pub. Walk into the coaching horses now and find a Georgian coaching inn with real ailes, predominantly youngs, with guest beers rotating through. A main bar, a dining room, and a room they called the library. Thirty-one boutique hotel bedrooms above, botanically themed in a nod to the gardens across the road. A garden terrace, open fires. The kind of pub that a Georgian traveller on the road from London to Richmond would have recognized immediately, even if the details had changed. Young's has been here since 1831. The gardens have been across the road since 1759. They became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2003. The pub was already 291 years old. Kew Green is the same green where a Prince of Wales played cricket, and his wife's obsession with plants eventually became one of the most important botanical collections on Earth. The Elizabeth Gate of the Gardens is a one-minute walk. Thomas Gainsborough is 50 meters across the green. The hookers are beside him. The man who sent the bounty to Tahiti organized the mission from this neighborhood. If you live, work or travel in London, or if you own, manage or work in a London pub, if you work as a London tour guide or at a London attraction, and you'd like to be a guest contributor to our main podcast, Publicity, your London Travel Toolkit, email me expatandy at publicithepodcast.com. Love our content? Love London and its pubs? The best thing you can do is share the love. Literally, share this episode with your network. Your share is the butterfly ripple effect across the globe for a small business in London.