The Queen Victoria

For the Queen, see Victoria of the United Kingdom. Queen Vic is also the nickname of the Queen Victoria Market.

The Queen Victoria (often referred to as The Vic or The Queen Vic) is a fictional Victorian public house in the BBC soap opera, EastEnders. It has the fictional address of 46 Albert Square, Walford, London E20.

Appearance and development

In the series' backstory the Square was built around 1860 during the reign of Queen Victoria. Originally the pub was to be called The Balmoral but after the death of Prince Albert it was re-named as a tribute to the mourning Queen. Initially, the pub's exterior was painted brown. This was later changed to a green and cream colour scheme only for Grant Mitchell set fire to the Queen Victoria after which it was painted red. Following another blaze in 2010, the pub was painted to its current colours of red, green and cream.

During the first months of the show, The Queen Victoria had a partition wall down the middle of the bar which separated it into two sections. The smaller section, known as the 'snug', housed a dart board and fruit machines, whilst the larger section, known as the saloon bar, was used primarily as the customer seating area. Den Watts got permission from the brewery to remove the partition in 1985, and hired Tony Carpenter to do the job. In 2007 the pub had its first refurbishment in 15 years and underwent a second refurbishment in late 2010.

In reality the pub exterior shell on the outdoor permanent set was built...
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