The following is a brief summary of the history of The Edgar Wallace pub and it's surroundings. Please click on the links to the left and right of each section to find out more.

Around 1160, a contingent of knights of the Military order of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem moved their London base from the Old Temple in Holborn to a site between Fleet Street and the banks of the Thames - an area now known as the Temple.

The Knights Templar fell into disrepute following the loss of the Holy Land in the 1290s and accusations of improprieties. In 1312, the Order of the Temple was dissolved. King Edward II seized the New Temple even though it had been granted to the Knights of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem by the Pope. The King conceded the consecrated part to the Knights Hospitalier and eventually sold the rest of the site to them.

The Temple was just a source of revenue for the Hospitaliers. When the Royal courts were permanently at Westminister (around 1350 onwards), lawyers rented the Temple as chambers. A manuscript dated 1388 mentioned the Inner and Middle Temples as independent legal societies — the Inner Temple(Inn) using the hall by the cloisters and the Middle Temple(Inn) using the unconsecrated buildings.

King Henry VIII abolished the Knights Hospitalier in 1540 and seized their property, but King James I granted the use of the church to the Inns of the Court in 1608. They continue to use the Temple as their chapel to this day.

In 1783 Dr. Samuel Johnson, aged 74 and suffering paralytic infirmities, decided to open a club which would meet close to his house. He chose the Essex Head (built in 1777) then kept by Samuel Greaves, an old servant of Mr. Thrale's. The Essex Head became known as "Sam's Club".

The Club met three days a week - Monday, Thursday and Saturday and included James Boswell, Johnson's biographer. Johnson dined at the club for the last time in June, 1784 and died on the 13^th of December 1784. The club still met eight years after Johnson's death.

In 1975, the pub was renamed "The Edgar Wallace" in memory of Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace, born 1^st April 1875.

His parents were Polly Richards and Richard Horatio Edgar Marriott(called Walter Wallace according to the birth records), both actors. He was abandoned and found at the age of nine days in Billingsgate by Dick Freeman, a fishmonger. Freeman and his wife adopted him and brought him up as their own son.

At age eleven, he began work by selling newspapers at Ludgate circus. He also held jobs as a ship's cook on a Grimsby trawler and in the late 1890s he served in the Royal West Kent Regiment and the Army Medical Corps before joining the newspaper profession as a war correspondent for the Daily Mail in South Africa during the Boer War. He got the sack for writing a libelous article.

He turned to writing crime thrillers and is credited with inventing the modern thriller novel. He was very prolific, especially during the last ten years of his life, writing more than 170 books. At one time he was selling five million books a year, nearly a quarter of all books sold.

He has had more books made into films than any other 20^th Century writer.

He died of pnuemonia in Hollywood on 10^th February 1932 while working on the script for King Kong. He is buried in Little Marlow.

His work earned him a fortune, but he lost it all due to his extravagant lifestyle, generosity and poor gambling skills.