Pretty much every London pub has a story to tell. But not many have been used as prisons and have a haunted basement. Morpeth Arms on Millbank does. As if it were not enough, it also boasts a spying room where visitors can spy on spies - the real ones, working at MI6 just across the street.
Built in 1845, this public house was originally established as a deportation facility. Adjacent underground tunnel system led from the old Millbank Prison (
https://reveal.world/story/the-lost-prison) to the temporary holding area beneath the pub. The prisoners walked from the prison through the tunnels to this basement where they waited for deportation to Australia.
The pub itself was built for the wardens from Millbank Prison. A prisoner is said to have tried escaping from the prison through a tunnel beneath the pub but died there. He now haunts the pub, according to a local legend.
The basement isn’t open to the public (probably, because it is too close to where all the beer barrels are kept?) but the visitors can see into it via a live feed on a “ghost cam”.
The prison is long gone, giving way to Tate Britain. Across the road from the Morpeth Arms pub, one bollard survives where convicts began their transportation to Australia.
The haunted basement is not the only feature of the Morpeth Arms. Located opposite the MI6 building, the pub is an obvious hangout for spies. It is often packed full of actual spies from across the street, who sometimes bring members of the FBI with them. On the second floor of the pub there is a spying room equipped with binoculars so customers can gaze into the windows of the British Intelligence Service across the street. The room has its own bar and is decorated in the 1920s style and themed after Mata Hari (infamous exotic dancer and courtesan who was convicted of being a spy for Germany during World War I).
