Attend the Hot Cross Bun Ceremony at the Widow's Son

Just as last year, your author is once again away for Easter, and will be therefore conducting his annual tradition of missing the Hot Cross Bun Ceremony at the Widow's Son, E3, an East London tradition which takes place each year on Good Friday.

The pub takes its name from a cottage which once stood on the site, inhabited by a widow and her only son, a sailor due to return home on Good Friday 1824, who had asked for hot cross buns to mark his return. When the son failed to materialise, his mother continued to bake Hot Cross Buns every Good Friday, and left them waiting for him. The ceremony sees a new bun hung from a beam in the pub, as the mother had hung them from the beam in her cottage, and has been kept alive since 1848, when the cottage was replaced by a pub

For more, see http://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/04/06/the-widows-buns-at-bow-2/

_{^Picture by Ewan Munro^}