History
The Admiral Duncan has been trading since at least 1832. In June of that year, Dennis Collins, a wooden-legged, Irish ex-sailor living there was charged with High Treason for throwing stones at King William IV at Ascot Racecourse. Collins was convicted and sentenced to be Hanged, drawn and quartered, as the medieval punishment for high treason was then still in effect. However, his sentence was quickly commuted to life imprisonment. and he was subsequently transported to Australia. In December 1881 a customer received eight years penal servitude for various offences in connection with his ejection from the Admiral Duncan publichouse by keeper William Gordon.
It was once in the ownership of the Scottish & Newcastle Brewery but was bought in 2004 by the Tattershall Castle Group, now known as TCG Acquisitions.
The exterior of the bar was repainted in a black and pink motif in late 2006. In late 2005, Westminster City Council decreed that the Admiral Duncan and all other LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) bars and businesses that operated in its jurisdiction, including those in Soho and Covent Garden, remove their pride flags claiming that such flags constituted advertising which was forbidden in its planning laws. Businesses would be required to apply for permits to be allowed to fly flags but those businesses that did apply for permission found their applications turned down for spurious reasons. Following media allegations of homophobia in the Council, the I Love Soho campaign and intense pressure from the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, the Council rescinded its directive and Pride Flags were once again permitted to be flown.
Read more about this topic: Admiral Duncan Pub
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“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)