Ceremony of the Widow’s Buns Celebrated in East End Pub

The Widow's Son Public House, 75 Devons Road, Bow, London, UK. 3rd April, 2015. The East End ceremony of the Widow’s Buns is celebrated in Bow, as it has been each Good Friday since time immemorial. Each year on Good Friday, a Royal Navy sailor adds another bun to the collection held within a net hanging above the bar at the Bromley by Bow public house, The Widow's Son. Local legend has it that the tradition began upon the former site of an old widow’s cottage where the current 1848 built pub now stands and that the woman's only son left to go to sea, possibly during the Napoleonic Wars, and wrote to her to say that he would return home at Easter and would like to have a hot cross bun waiting for him. Unfortunately he never returned, but his mother kept his memory alive by keeping a fresh hot cross bun every Good Friday for the duration of her life. Upon her death, so the tale continues, a collection of buns was discovered in a net hanging from the ceiling of her cottage. A fire in the public house in the 1980s burnt many of the old buns in the net, but the charred remnants are included in the net as a memento of that fire. Pictured: A member of the Royal Navy enjoys a pint of beer before the ceremony takes place. // Lee Thomas, Flat 47a Park East Building, Bow Quarter, London, E3 2UT. Tel. 07784142973. Email: leepthomas@gmail.com. www.leept.co.uk