It’s a new pub but with a mighty history – and it has the support of a West Ham legend as Phil Mellows discovers

A pint of beer in the foreground with some bread on a plate in the background alongside some cutlery — Jon Sullivan, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s another hot day in Plaistow and the windows of the Buccaneer are thrown wide to let the air in. The air, though, is determined not to budge. A few drinkers cling to the bar gulping cold lager, and a family arrives, three generations, and orders pizza.

Newham’s newest pub is up and running. You might know it better as the Britannia, a legendary venue around here, especially among West Ham fans. At one point it was owned by Frank Lampard senior, then it fell into decline, eventually closing its doors in 2019. A developer converted the upper floors into flats but offered the former pub on the ground floor to his friend, Rishi Sharma Bhagi.

Rishi had run bars and clubs before taking a job with Newham Council, and he jumped at the opportunity to save the Britannia. As I reported last summer, it was due to reopen by Christmas. In the end it was July. But Rishi makes no apologies. “I’m a perfectionist,” he says.

“I wanted to do something to bring the local community together, and I fell in love with the history of this place. The Britannia was named after a ship owned by the East India Company.”

He wanted to keep the name, but feared it had bad associations. After West Ham stars such as Lampard, Bobby Moore and Geoff Hurst adopted it as their local in the 1960s, the notorious Inter City Firm fan-gang claimed it for a headquarters.

“We had to tell people this is something new,” explains Rishi. “A buccaneer was a licensed pirate, so that seemed to fit!”

And that’s not the only change. The pub is doing food for the first time, an exotic variety of pizzas that reflect this multi cultural area, influenced by Punjabi, Delhi and Chinese as well as Italian cuisine, cooked fresh from an open kitchen.

Rishi believes “pubs have forgotten to evolve”, and he’s delighted that Lampard senior has “given his blessing” to the changes.

“There’s such a community feel in this area, there are people who’ve been living here 50 or 60 years. The Buccaneer has to be a community pub first, amalgamating the old with the new.”

Unusually for these times, the pub is open from midday to midnight, seven days a week. Which means you’ve plenty of opportunity to find out what it’s like for yourselves.

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