The Widow's Son

About The Widow's Son

A Grade II-listed Bow pub built in 1848 on the site of a widow's cottage, famous for its Widow's Son Bun Ceremony, in which a Royal Navy sailor adds a fresh hot cross bun to a net above the bar every Good Friday.

The Widow's Son takes its name from a cottage that stood on this Devons Road site, home to a widow whose sailor son wrote to say he would be home for Easter. She began baking him a hot cross bun every Good Friday he failed to return, and when the pub was built on the site in 1848 the tradition was folded into it: a net now hangs above the bar, and each Good Friday a sailor from the Royal Navy adds a fresh bun to the growing, decades-old collection in the Widow's Son Bun Ceremony, one of the more distinctive surviving folk customs kept alive by a working London pub. The building holds Grade II listed status and sits in Bromley-by-Bow, a short walk from the Bow Locks and the Limehouse Cut, functioning as a straightforward community local for the surrounding streets for the rest of the year, its unusual annual ceremony aside.