The Thatched House Tavern operated as a venue for large social gatherings and fine dining for the upper echelons of society. Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) dined there with friends in 1711, though they had to send out for wine.
James Willis took over from Benjamin Frere in 1770, by which time the Tavern was in its heyday and was catering for various clubs and societies, prior to gentlemen’s clubs obtaining their own premises and business taking a downturn during the first half of the 19th century. James was a member of the Vintners Company and wine was available! There was a large public room decorated with an impressive ceiling and it was lit by chandeliers. The Society of Dilettanti held dinners there and displayed their collection of paintings by artists including Sir Joshua Reynolds. Other clubs and societies included the Carlton Club, the Royal Naval Club and the Literary Club.
Dinner wasn’t always up to expectations. There’s an account repeated on various websites of a very smelly, unappetising beef pie being served and I’m sure that I also read about someone dying after overindulging at the Tavern the previous evening. I can’t find a source for that one at the moment!
Two cooks from the Tavern took the opportunity to publish their own cookbooks. Both are readable and downloadable on the internet for free - see below.
Cookery Made Easy by Michael Willis - First published in 1824.
Read the book here or download it from Google Books here
Michael Willis was obviously a family member but there were quite a few Michaels in the family and I can’t be sure which one he was. I think that the most likely candidate is Michael Thomas Willis, born 1785. He was the son of James Willis and Elizabeth Tebb and younger brother to James Willis and William Willis, who ran the Thatched House Tavern and Almack’s after their father’s death in 1794. In 1799, Michael was apprenticed to Edward Green of the Vintner’s Company, which sounds like a good step into the family businesses.
There are plenty of illustrations and instructions on preparing meat for cooking and carving. I quite like this one, though I don’t think that I’ll be trying out any of the recipes.
The Cook’s Dictionary by Richard Dolby - first published in about 1830.
read the book or download it here
As with Michael Willis above, it’s difficult to work out which Richard Dolby was which. I think that the cookery book writer was probably Richard Dolby, who was apprenticed to William Willis in 1816. He would have been born in around 1800 and was the son of Richard Dolby of Colchester, a bricklayer who went bankrupt in 1807. He seems to be the obvious candidate.
The Willis family also had a connection to the Dolby surname in Egham and Winkfield, Berkshire through William Willis’s wife, Mary Bartholomew. Mary’s sister Ann married George Dolby of Winkfield, a bricklayer. I don’t think that they had a son called Richard, but there was another Richard Dolby, born Winkfield around 1800, who set up in business with his brother-in-law as a hotel keeper and omnibus proprietor in Liverpool some time after the publication of the cookery book - all very confusing! I suspect that Richard Dolby of Thatched House fame was related to the Dolbys of Winkfield and may well have become the Liverpool hotel keeper and omnibus proprietor.
Richard Dolby’s book was the first cookery book where recipes were printed in alphabetical order. Advertisements claimed that the book contained over five thousand recipes (receipts) in double columns over more than five hundred pages, at a price of only 9s 6d. “In this famous volume will be found receipts for dishes of every kind, from the sumptuous preparations fitted for regal banquets, to those over which domestic parties in the middle classes make merry on holiday occasions.”
Various reviews of the book refer to “Mr Richard Dolby, of the Thatched House Tavern, whose ability to “rule the roast” is well known”.
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