51 High Street, Windsor · Est. 1597
The Story of Our
Tilted Home
Four centuries of scandal, stubbornness and very questionable carpentry — right next door to the Castle.
You're sitting — or standing, or leaning, perhaps instinctively — in one of the most obstinate buildings in England.
The building has been a butcher's shop, a brewery, an antique emporium, a tea room and a jeweller's. It has survived legal battles, royal decrees, Victorian demolition plans and the slow, inevitable pull of gravity. It has been photographed by millions, puzzled over by historians, and — if the stories are to be believed — used as a royal back door for one of history's most charming scoundrels. We're just the latest chapter.
How We Got Here
New Windsor is Born
Windsor as we know it — or at least the High Street bit you're on now — was formally laid out as a 'new town' in 1131. It would keep the name 'New Windsor' for the best part of 850 years, finally dropping the 'New' in 1972. Some things take a while around here.
A Market is Built
Windsor Corporation built a covered market right here, at the heart of the High Street, to serve the town's main trade: beer brewing. The grain market, known as the Cornmarket House, became the focal point of the whole town.
The First Tenants
By the 1630s, shops were springing up around the Cornmarket. Windsor's accounts record rent being paid by one Mr Robert Low and Mr William Smith for a small shop near the north end of the market — 6 shillings and 8 pence a year, about 67p in today's money, for a pitch at the commercial heart of a royal town.
Enter the Bradburys
A Mr Bradbury paid £82 for a butcher's shop and dwelling near the market house — a remarkably high price at the time. This was leased land, technically not his to buy, but nobody seems to have questioned the paperwork too closely. The Bradbury family would go on to cause considerable trouble for Windsor Corporation, and frankly, good for them.
Charles II Has Grand Plans
Post-Civil War, Charles II was busy renovating the Castle and modernising Windsor. His grand vision for the High Street was a sweeping Italian piazza — a huge fountain at one end, a new town hall at the other. The whole market was cleared. Unfortunately, the money ran out. Only the town hall got built.
The Guildhall Next Door
While all this was playing out on our plot, the building immediately to our right was going up. The Guildhall was begun in 1687 to a design by Sir Thomas Fitz, Surveyor of the Cinque Ports — but Fitz died before it was finished, and the job passed to Sir Christopher Wren, who had grown up in Windsor and knew the town well. Wren completed it around 1690.
The story that clings to it — and it's a good one — concerns the columns on the ground floor. Wren was confident the outer stone pillars were sufficient to hold the building up. The town councillors were not. They insisted he add four inner columns for support. Wren, not a man to be told what to do with a load-bearing wall, obliged — but made the extra columns just short enough that they don't quite touch the ceiling. They bear no weight at all. The gap is still there if you look. Historians now think the columns were probably added later anyway, and Wren's involvement may be partly legend — but then again, it's exactly the sort of thing he would have done.
The Shed That Started It All
Bradbury's heir quietly erected a 'shed or shop' on the footprint of the old butcher's — land that, strictly speaking, didn't belong to him. Windsor Corporation objected. His shed stood anyway. It became part of the butchers' shambles — the word, incidentally, from which we take our name, and from which the English language gets the expression 'what a shambles'. A low-status, noisy, rather bloody part of town.
The Legal Battle
Windsor Corporation tried to tear down the shed, erected iron railings to stop further building, and took the whole thing to court. The argument: did Bradbury's heir have a right to build, given the Corporation had moved the market and left him without a shop? Or did the Corporation own the land outright? In 1718, Bradbury won. The building we're sitting in today is the direct result of that stubbornness.
The Lean Begins
The court ordered a proper building. To save time and money, the builders used unseasoned green oak — timber still full of moisture. As it dried, it warped. The building slowly began to lean, to twist, to take on the tilt that makes it one of the most photographed buildings in Britain. Nobody planned this. Some of the best things aren't.
The Lean Gets Worse
The building stayed more or less upright for a century, propped by neighbouring buildings on either side. But when those neighbours were demolished to extend the Guildhall, our building lost its support and began to really lean. The then-owner, a Mr Pearse, saw his moment: he demanded £1,500 from Windsor Corporation for his now-precarious shop. They refused. He kept the building. It leaned further. To everyone's surprise, it didn't fall down. It just settled — defiantly, permanently, magnificently — into the angle you see today.
The Shambles Opens
After stints as a butcher's, a brewery, a beer shop called The Royal Standard, a tea room, an antique shop and a jeweller's, the building is now home to us. It hasn't leaned any further since we arrived, which we're choosing to take as a good sign.
A deflection that remains a curiosity to this day — as does its incongruous 'stone' elevations, achieved with plaster rendering and corner quoins. A status improvement intended to fool the eye. — Dr David Lewis FSA, Windsor Historian
The Building Through the Ages
Inside The Shambles today — the beams haven't changed much.
The Royal Standard Beer House, W.J. Redworth, c.1900. Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead collection.
The building at dusk — still drawing a crowd after 300 years.
The Stories We Can't
Quite Confirm
The Tunnel to the Castle
Down in the basement of this building — yes, the very floor beneath your feet — there's said to have been a secret underground passage connecting directly to Windsor Castle. The official explanation is that it allowed market produce to be delivered quietly to the Castle kitchens. Fresh meat from the butcher's shambles, straight to the royal table.
But the passage has also been credited with a rather more entertaining purpose. According to local legend, it provided a discreet route for King Charles II to slip away from the Castle and visit his most celebrated mistress. The tunnel is said to have been bricked up long ago — though if you sit very still and listen carefully, you might wonder.
Nell Gwynn & the Merry Monarch
Charles II kept a house for Nell on Church Street, barely two minutes' walk from here — you can still see the plaque. She was an orange-seller turned actress turned royal favourite, described by contemporaries as 'pretty, witty Nell'. Whether the tunnel story is true hardly matters. The two of them were absolutely here, in this part of Windsor, in this era — and the building on this site at the time was run by a family who'd just won a court case against the Crown. The sort of place a king might very reasonably want to visit quietly.
Why Does It Lean?
The most widely told story is the unseasoned green oak — wet timber used to rebuild cheaply and quickly after the 1718 court case, which warped as it dried. Plausible, and it does have a certain karmic satisfaction to it.
But there's a rival theory: the building may have been perfectly straight for over a century, held upright by its neighbours. When those neighbours were demolished in the 1820s, it lost its support and began to tilt. A Victorian-era painting in the Guildhall next door appears to show it without any lean at all — suggesting the angle came much later than the legend implies.
The Shortest Street in Britain
Step outside and turn left. The small cobbled passage running alongside us is Queen Charlotte Street, named after the wife of George III. It measures just over 50 feet from end to end and is officially recorded as the shortest street in Britain. It even has a plaque. Windsor is the kind of place where streets this short get plaques.
The Latest Chapter
We opened The Shambles because we wanted Windsor to have somewhere proudly independent — somewhere that felt genuinely like somewhere, rather than another outpost of somewhere else. Good coffee in the morning, a decent lunch, and a properly considered glass of wine when the evening calls for it.
The building, we'll admit, does a lot of the work. Three storeys of listed timber-frame, a floor that makes you feel slightly sea-sick in the best possible way, exposed beams, and a view straight up to the Castle. We've won Best Bar in Berkshire two years running, which we're quietly very pleased about.
Mostly though, we're the latest tenants of one of Windsor's great survivors — a building that has outlasted the Cornmarket, a royal piazza scheme, the Corporation's legal team and a century of demolition threats. We think it's earned a nice glass of wine.
Pip & Hamish — your hosts.
Come and have a look around.
51 High Street, Windsor · A stone's throw from the Castle · Very dog friendly
Reserve a table