Author: Anne Ewbank / Source: Atlas Obscura
The blue-painted pub in Bromley, London, has been there for a while. Since 1848, some sources say. The Widow’s Son used to be a house, the story goes, where a widow lived with her son. When the son wanted to join the navy, the grieving mother told him that she would wait for him.
Every year on Good Friday, she promised, she’d make a fresh hot cross bun.Unfortunately, her son never got his hot cross bun: he was lost at sea. Still, the mother made a hot cross bun every year and set it aside for him. She didn’t throw out the old buns, so they piled up higher and higher. When the widow died, a pub went up on the site of her house. But, curiously, sailors started appearing every Good Friday to hang a bun above the bar.
Soon, there was quite a collection. In 1921, Leopold Wagner, author of A New Book about London: A Quaint and Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore, counted 84 buns in a net above the bar. That was enough to date the custom back to 1837—and perhaps to the widow herself.
It’s unclear whether the legend is true. But hanging hot cross buns has a long history in the United Kingdom. In ancient times, worshippers ate sweet buns marked…
The post How This London Pub Got Its Buns Back appeared first on FeedBox.