It’s 1931 and Mahatma Gandhi, in London for talks on the future of India, pops into the Boleyn after the West Ham game. Nursing a glass of cream soda he chats to the regulars about the footie and non-violent resistance. Probably.

According to local legend, that’s how one of the greatest figures of the 20^th Century liked to hang out away from the negotiating table, and it makes sense when you think about it.

The Boleyn Tavern, which reopened this week after an 18-month closure, while not quite the Taj Mahal, must have been a draw for any foreign visitor. It’s what they call a landmark pub. Even when you don’t see it, you hear the name as a destination or direction. Or read it on bus timetables. Landmark pubs are how people find their way about. Even when the pubs aren’t there any more, the name lives on, a sad ghost of the pints we once had.

Newham has quite a few of them. Up the road from the Boleyn there’s the Denmark Arms, promised to reopen soon, and further north the Earl of Essex in Manor Park, one of the lost.

There’s the Black Lion in Plaistow, the Red Lion on Barking Road, the Golden Fleece on Wanstead Flats, the Bridge House in Canning Town, a world-famous music venue that closed in 1982. And other names that resonate in the geography and history of the borough.

These pubs are plainly more than places to drink and eat. More than social centres, even, as important as that is. Somehow these landmark pubs are embedded in the identity of an area, known to all.

The good news is that while we have lost some, and will probably lose a few more, others will be rescued and restored.

Companies like Remarkable Pubs, which owns the Boleyn, and Antic, which has bought the Denmark, see potential in such sites as new people move into less fashionable localities such as Newham, and see the presence of a local pub with character as one of the attractions of living here.

Now it’s down to you, the potential customers, to do your bit on the other side of the bar. Who knows, you might bump into somebody famous.

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