What did London brown plaque De Hems do at 11 Macclesfield St?

The Story

# De Hems, 11 Macclesfield Street Standing before 11 Macclesfield Street, you're looking at over three centuries of London's most distinctly Dutch haven—a place where a simple public house transformed into a cultural anchor for an entire community. Since 1690, this very address has poured drinks and served oysters, but it was in 1890 when De Hem, a Dutch seaman, gave the tavern its enduring name and began shaping it into something far more meaningful than just another London bar. What makes this location truly extraordinary is that during World War I, the upstairs room became a secret meeting place for the Dutch Resistance, where exiled Dutch patriots planned and organized from behind these walls while their homeland suffered under occupation. Those 300,000 oyster shells that once decorated these walls are long gone, but the legacy remains: De Hems proved that a single address could serve as sanctuary, gathering place, and keeper of cultural memory—a little piece of Amsterdam that Londoners came to depend on, generation after generation.