.jpg)
Dickens, Johnson and Pepys must have spent a great deal of
time inebriated, as every old London pub seems to claim them as a patron
(there’s a drinking game in there somewhere). The Jamaica Wine House is no
exception – Pepys is thought to have been a customer.
This fine sign is suspended above St Michael’s Alley, off
Cornhill in the City of London, making it marginally easier to find this tucked-away
drinking den. Now called the Jamaica Wine House (though better known for
selling beer), it’s also known as the Jam Pot, and was built on the site of the
Jamaica Coffee House, previously known as Pasque Rosee’s Head, or sometimes as
the Turk’s Head. Do keep up.
Pleasingly dark, creepy and wood-panelled, the current
building is Victorian, built in 1869 and Grade II listed. It is on the site of
the Jamaica Coffee House, built after the fire of London. The original coffee
house was opened before the fire, in 1652, by Pasque Rosee, who is variously
recorded as being Armenian, an Italian-born Greek or Turkish.
The first London coffee house
Rosee was a servant to Daniel Edwards, a merchant; they met
while working in the Ottoman Empire. When they came to London, Rosee’s coffee
was so liked by Daniel’s family and friends that Daniel helped Rosee to set up a
stall in a shed in the churchyard of St Michael’s, under a sign of Rosee’s head.
This is said to be the first coffee shop in England (a claim made in a Royal
Society report in 1699), though some say that glory belongs to a Jewish man
named Jacob, with a coffee shop in Oxford opened in 1650.
Keen to educate the London public in this new art of coffee
drinking, Rosee promoted the product with a handbill, claiming it had medicinal
properties that could help sore eyes, coughs, dropsy, gout and scurvy, and that
it would prevent miscarriages and drowsiness.
Hostile hostelries
The coffee was so popular that it angered local alehouse
keepers who saw Rosee’s business as a threat. They protested against him on the
grounds that he wasn’t a freeman of the City, sending a petition to the Lord
Mayor to stop Rosee trading. Sounds depressingly familiar, doesn’t it? These
immigrants come over here, they open historic coffee shops …. The challenge was
overcome by forming a business partnership with Daniel’s father-in-law’s
coachman, who was a freeman of the City. In 1656 they were able to move to a
building on the current site of the Jamaica Wine House, just 27 feet deep and
19 feet wide, at an annual rent of £4.
Latte legacy
Between 1674 and 1680, the coffee shop
became the Jamaica Coffee House, serving business people with interests in
Jamaica and the British West Indies. It seems that Rosee was later obliged to leave the country
as a result of an unexplained misdemeanour. His story lived on, and his
character and coffee were featured in plays and popular street poems, making
fun of his foreign accent and poor English (English was probably his third
language, after Greek and Turkish).
His legacy was a new type of business which spread all over the
country. London’s coffee houses were known as great meeting places to share
news, discuss business, debate politics, write and exchange ideas. And, of
course, they still thrive today. Drink to Pasque Rosee in the Jamaica Wine
House, and remember him next time you pop in to a café for coffee.
