Star of the East

About Star of the East

A Grade II-listed Victorian corner pub on Commercial Road in Poplar, an imposing survivor from the street's 19th-century development as a dockworkers' thoroughfare.

The Star of the East occupies a large, confidently detailed Victorian corner building on Commercial Road as it runs into Poplar, holding Grade II listed status as a reminder of the scale and ambition of pub building along this once-thriving dockworkers' route between Limehouse and the East and West India Docks. Its imposing exterior, with decorative brickwork and generous window bays, reflects an era when Commercial Road pubs competed for the custom of thousands of dockers, sailors and warehouse workers passing along it daily. In more recent years the pub has operated with a strong live music and events programme, using its large interior to host bands and club nights alongside more conventional pub trade, helping it survive in a stretch of Commercial Road that has lost most of its other historic pubs to closure or conversion. It remains one of the most visually striking Victorian pub buildings left standing in Poplar.