The Rose & Crown in Wimbledon High Street, one of the oldest pubs in the Village, has a plaque on the outside which reads: “The Victorian poets Leigh Hunt and Algernon Swinburne often met here.”

This is unlikely as Swinburne was only ten years old when Hunt was living in Wimbledon. What’s more, he didn’t even move to the area until 20 years after Hunt’s death in 1859. Even so, both men were certainly customers at the pub.

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), essayist and poet, dined at the Rose & Crown with literary colleagues while staying in lodgings in 1846-7 opposite what is now Eagle House. He was a wholly respectable writer at the time, even though he had been imprisoned and heavily fined for insulting the Prince Regent many years earlier.

In contrast, Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), poet, playwright, novelist, and critic, whose 176th birthday falls today, was a regular at the pub for many years.

His chair is said to have been preserved to this day but his reputation was very different from that of Hunt. He may not have been that popular with other patrons.

Wimbledon Times: The plaque outside the Rose & Crown in Wimbledon High StreetThe plaque outside the Rose & Crown in Wimbledon High Street

According to one account he would “bustle in as though the place belonged to him and had full mouthed phraseology for any who stood in his way”.

Not that this would have seemed very threatening. As he was only just over five feet tall, his bark would have been a lot worse than his bite.

Nevertheless, Swinburne was a big literary name by the time he first arrived at the Rose & Crown.

Born to an aristocratic family in London, brought up in the Isle of Wight but spending much time in Northumberland, he had been to Eton and Oxford but was suspended for publicly supporting an assassination attempt on the French Emperor in 1860.

It was at Oxford that he met the Pre-Raphaelite artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris (see Heritage story 15 March 2013) and became associated with their brotherhood.

His writing career took off afterwards and his reputation established as an outstandingly innovative poet who used alliteration, melody and colourful imagery in his work.

In 1865 he was acclaimed for his verse drama Atalanta in Calydon in which he used English language to recreate the spirit and form of classical Greek plays.

His youthful political radicalism also continued and he idolized the Italian nationalist patriot Giuseppe Mazzini, meeting him in 1867.

Unfortunately he also outraged Victorian society with outspoken writings in support of masochism, flagellation, homosexuality, and paganism.

Years before Oscar Wilde’s historic downfall, open advocacy of such practices did not endear Swinburne to wider society. Unorthodox sexual orientation was definitely a no-no, which was probably why he also took to drink and became a chronic alcoholic.

But Wilde himself called Swinburne "a braggart in matters of vice”, who had done everything possible to convince his fellow citizens of his homosexuality and bestiality “without being in the slightest degree a homosexual or a bestialiser.”

True or not, he was referred to by the satirical magazine Punch as “Mr Swineborn”.

Age 42 he collapsed and nearly died from alcoholic dysentery but was rescued by a friend, Theodore Watts-Dunton, who took him into care at his home, The Pines, 11 Putney Hill, SW15.

Swinburne recovered and lived there for the rest of his life, renting the house with his friend. The Rose & Crown was at the other end of Parkside, hence his patronage during the next 30 years.

Watts-Dunton’s care was tactful and unobtrusive. He successfully weaned Swinburne off hard liquor and on to pale ale, doubtless to the pleasure of the Rose & Crown landlord.

Despite his drinking chair there, Swinburne gradually lost his youthful rebelliousness, adopted reactionary views, and produced a huge number of poems, plays and essays from his Putney home. Relations with Watts-Dunton thrived, even surviving a bizarre late marriage by his friend to a 21-year-old girl at the age of 73.

But four years later, Swinburne wandered off on to Wimbledon Common one day in pouring rain. Wet through, he caught a fatal chill which led to double pneumonia and he died on 10 April 1909, age 72. He was said to have a smile on his lips.

Still strongly against conventional religion, he had made Watts-Dunton promise there would be no burial service but to suit the family, there was a compromise - the vicar read prayers on the way to his grave on the Isle of Wight.