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The Crown & Anchor was situated on Shoe Lane.

This public house was colloquially known as “Aunties” and was widely used by printers from the Express and the Standard. It was situated on the Fleet Street side of Little New Street. I was an apprentice printer at Charles Skipper and East which was located where Deloitte LLP is now. There was another very small pub on the corner of Little New Street called the Black Dog. As I remember it, this pub had only one bar. The barmaid or possibly landlady was said to be a survivor of the atomic bombs in Japan. The Crown and Anchor was always absolutely solid on Christmas Eve, and I can remember the landlady being turned upside down and carried through the crowd, her dress covering her body and head and exposing her knickers. The printers were a very rowdy and unruly lot when inebriated. variously known as Aunties or the Slopers by the members of the newspaper printing staff who were regulars due to the proximity of the Express and the Evening Standard. I would guess that the term Slopers arose because printers were allowed breaks from the noise of the rotary presses, and would ‘slope off’ to the Rose and Crown or Aunties as it was known.

David Evans (April 2023)

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Name	Dates	Comments
Tim Doolan	1968	I worked here as a barman.