This entry discusses two pubs in Wapping, both called the Turk's Head.
The Turk's Head in Wapping High Street is said to be the pub where condemned men, on their way to Execution Dock, were given their last drink. Pubology gives this pub two addresses in Wapping High Street: 30 and 326 (perhaps the street got renumbered) and says it was demolished in 1940. City of London has a photo of it there in 1930. In the book “Back to the Local” in the “Obituary” section, the author Maurice Gorham says “it is pleasant to recall one pub that went out in a blaze of glory: the Turk’s Head at Wapping, near Execution Stairs, where the final advent of closing time was the occasion of the noisiest broadcast the BBC ever put out”.
East London History used to say that the pub moved to the Green Bank site following WW2 bomb damage but, 2017, Colin Price contacted us via Facebook to say that's incorrect, and we can no longer find that on that website. So we hunted around and found this 1896 map which shows a pub on the Green Bank site. It would be good to know that the name was the Turks' Head but we have no evidence that it was not. So it seems likely that there were two Turk's Heads in Wapping for many years.
The Green Bank building closed as a pub in the 1970s. Now, 2013, a cafe.
