Notable British public houses

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The following is a list of notable British public houses.

One common claim to notability is "oldest pub"; a title claimed by many pubs in some form is "smallest pub".

Contents 1 East Anglia 2 East Midlands 3 London 4 North East England 5 North England 6 Northern Ireland 7 North West England 8 Scotland 9 South England 10 South East England 11 South West England 12 Wales 13 West Midlands 14 Yorkshire 15 See also 16 External links 17 References

[edit] East Anglia

• The Eagle in Cambridge, the pub in which Francis Crick and James Watson announced that they had "discovered the secret of life" (the structure of DNA). Was also frequented by Alan Turing and friends.
• The Nutshell, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Britain's smallest pub measuring just 5 metres by 2 metres (16.5 ft by 6.5 ft), according to the Guinness Book of Records.
• The Old Ferryboat Inn, Holywell, Cambridgeshire. A contender for Britain's oldest pub, on the basis that recent archaeology has shown that parts of the foundations may date to AD 460 and that there is evidence of ale being served as early as AD 560.

[edit] East Midlands

• Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem in Nottingham. It incorporates caves under Nottingham Castle and claims to be the oldest pub in the UK.
• The Strugglers Inn in Lincoln. It is in the shadow of the castle walls where public hangings used to take place. There are at least two schools of thought on the origin of the name: either there was a secret tunnel from the castle to the pub where the condemned man had his last drink, or it was the pub where the spectators went to for the duration of the hangings. The pub sign indicates that it is named after the people who would pull on the legs of a hanged man to expedite his demise.
• Victoria Hotel in Beeston (near Nottingham). This pub has won multiple awards for its beer, food and convivial atmosphere. It is located alongside the eastbound platform of Beeston railway station.
• Manners Arms in Knipton, a picturesque village located in the Vale of Belvoir, Leicestershire.This pub is owned by the Duke and Duchess of Rutland and features a luxury hotel and B&B. This is the only public place where you may be able to sample the Duke of Rutland's private wine cellar.

[edit] London

• The Blind Beggar, Whitechapel. Famous - or infamous - for its association with the Kray twins.
• The Angel, Rotherhithe. Another claimant for the title of oldest Thames bank pub. Claims ancestry from an inn on a site nearby dating back to the 11th century.
• The Angel, Islington. Formerly a coaching inn, the first on the route northwards out of London, possibly stayed in by Thomas Paine, mentioned by Charles Dickens it became a Lyons Corner House, and is now a Co-operative Bank. It is also on the board in the British version of the board game Monopoly.
• Canonbury Tavern, Canonbury. Prototype for George Orwell's ideal English pub, The Moon Under Water.
• Crocker's Folly, Maida Vale. Huge ornate late Victorian pub, currently closed, said to have been built by Frank Crocker on this site in the expectation that the Great Central Railway terminus in London would be built opposite and not in Marylebone.
• Dirty Dick's, Bishopsgate. Named after a local resident, recluse and infamously dirty person. Parts of the building fabric precede the Great fire of London.
• The Dove, Hammersmith. Definitely once the haunt of Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene, it also claims the smallest bar in Britain (according to the Guinness Book of Records), though not to be the smallest pub. It also makes the disputed claim to be the oldest surviving Thames-side pub.
• The Drayton Court in Ealing, converted into a pub from a hotel in the 19th Century, has the largest 'beer garden' in London and indeed any city pub in the UK.

• The Eagle, 2 Shepherdess Walk, London N1 7LB off City Rd, immortalised in nursery rhyme Pop Goes the Weasel.
• The Feathers, Linhope Street, Marylebone. Claims to be the smallest pub in London, with only three tables and a small bar.
• Fitzroy Tavern, Fitzrovia. Famous for being frequented by Virginia Woolf and others of the Bloomsbury Set
• The George, Southwark is London's only remaining galleried coaching inn. Famous for being visited by Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare.
• The Grapes, Limehouse. A Thames waterfront pub, immortalised as the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters in Charles Dickens' work, Our Mutual Friend (though some commentators claim that Dickens amalgamated descriptions of several waterside taverns). Built in 1720, the pub is now a listed building.
• King's Head, Upper street,Islington. Famed pub with theatre that charges for drinks in predecimal currency.
• The Lamb, Lamb's Conduit Street, Holborn. Built in 1720s, frequented by Charles Lamb but refurbished in Victorian times and remains similar to as it was when Dickens used to frequent it. One of the few remaining pubs with 'snob screens' to protect the well-to-do in the saloon bar being seen by the common folk in the public bar.
• Old Queen's Head, St John Street, London, Islington. V.I. Lenin met together with colleagues from the Russian Social Democratic Party in a room on the first floor.
• The Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street. Formerly a favourite haunt of Samuel Johnson, many other famous men of letters and many many journalists.
• Princess Louise, High Holborn notable for its rare, preserved and listed interior
• The Prospect of Whitby, Wapping. Historic East End pub, a famous customer being the Hanging Judge Jeffreys. Another claimant to be the oldest surviving Thames-side inn.
• Red Lion, St John Street, Islington. Old public house where, it is claimed, Thomas Paine wrote parts of The Rights of Man.
• Spaniards Inn, Hampstead. Built in 1585, it is a quaint, oak panelled and atmospheric pub with one of the best gardens in Hampstead and is possibly the most myth-saturated pub in London. Dick Turpin, John Keats, Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, William Blake, Joshua Reynolds, John Constable, Mary Shelley, William Hogarth, Lord Byron, A. E. Housman and Evelyn Waugh all have some association with the place.
• White Hart on the corner of Drury Lane and High Holborn. Claims to be the oldest licensed pub in London.

[edit] North East England

• Marsden Grotto, currently the only pub in Europe that is built on a cliff face and partially into cliff caves.

[edit] North England

• The Bitter End, Cockermouth, situated in the ancient and historic Kirkgate area of the "Gem" town and home of the smallest brewery in Cumbria.

[edit] Northern Ireland

• The Crown Liquor Saloon, one of the few pubs in the UK to be owned by the National Trust. Grade A listed (The Northern Ireland equivalent of Grade I.)
• The House of McDonnell, Grade A listed traditional country pub in Ballycastle, Co. Antrim. Listed (alongside The Crown) in the UK National Inventory of historic pub interiors.
• Grace Neill's, claims to be the oldest pub in Ireland, but that title is held by Sean's Bar in Athlone (Confirmed by the Guinness Book of World Records, Sean's Bar dates back to 900, pre-dating Grace Neill's by over 700 years).
• McHugh's Bar is the oldest building in Belfast. Grade A listed.

[edit] North West England

• The Philharmonic Dining Rooms, Liverpool ('The Phil'). Grade II listed Victorian pub with Art Deco lighting and mosaic floor and bar. Once much favoured by the Liverpool Poets.
• The Scotch Piper, Lydiate, Merseyside is the oldest Pub in the traditional county of Lancashire
• The Cat and Fiddle Inn in Cheshire is the second-highest inn or public house in England.
• Ye Olde Man and Scythe is one of the oldest pubs in the country, and the oldest in Bolton, dating back to 1251
• The Old Wellington Inn, Shambles Square, Manchester. The birthplace of the writer John Byrom and along with its neighbour, Sinclair's Oyster Bar, probably one of the only two pubs in the world to have been physically moved twice. They were both raised 4ft 9 inches in the 1970s to be incorporated into a redevelopment and then dismantled and re-erected in a new location after the IRA 1996 Manchester bombing.^[1]

[edit] Scotland

• The Baltasound Hotel, Unst, Shetland Islands. Definitely the northernmost drinking establishment in the UK.
• The Clachan Inn, Loch Lomond. Claims to be the oldest pub in Scotland, definitely known to be serving drinks from 1734. Once said to have had Rob Roy's sister as a landlady.

[edit] South England

• The Bat & Ball Inn, Clanfield, Hampshire. Next to the 'Cradle of Cricket' at Broadhalfpenny Down.
• The Bear Inn, Oxford, dates back to 1242.
• The Eagle and Child in Oxford (frequented by The Inklings, a writing circle that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis)
• The Turf Tavern, Oxford, where former U.S. president Bill Clinton infamously "did not inhale" marijuana.
• The Red Lion, Southampton, a very old timber-beamed pub where King Henry V tried traitors to the crown in 1415 on the eve of his departure to France.

[edit] South East England

• The Hole in the Wall, Brighton, claims to be the smallest pub in Britain, with a certificate stating this fact on the wall.
• The Evening Star (pub), Brighton, birthplace of the Dark Star Brewery.
• The John Brunt V.C., Paddock Wood, is the only pub in the country to be named after a holder of the Victoria Cross
• The King's Head, Aylesbury, the oldest pub with a coaching yard in the south of England and one of only two pubs in England run by the National Trust
• Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, St Albans, Hertfordshire. Considered to be the oldest pub in Britain (8th century) by the Guinness Book of Records. Claim disputed by other establishments who maintain that the inn was entirely rebuilt in 1485, not quite in the same location.
• The Royal Standard of England, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire named for The Royal Standard (United Kingdom) and situated in Forty Green, claims to have evolved from an Anglo-Saxon alehouse, an ordinary domestic house in which people were allowed to come into the kitchen or front room to drink.
• The Seven Stars Inn, Robertsbridge, East Sussex, oldest pub in the Harveys Brewery stable, built in the 14th Century on the main road north of Hastings, and said to be haunted.

[edit] South West England

• Jamaica Inn, Bodmin Moor, Cornwall. Location of the 1936 novel Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, made into the film Jamaica Inn by Alfred Hitchcock in 1939.
• The Top House, Lizard, Cornwall. The most southerly pub in the UK (ignoring the Turks Head on St Agnes, Isles of Scilly
• The Llandoger Trow, Bristol. Robert Louis Stevenson’s inspiration for the Admiral Benbow in Treasure Island.

[edit] Wales

• The Skirrid Mountain Inn, at Llanfihangel Crucorney just a few miles north of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire. Perhaps the oldest pub in Wales, listed in chronicles from 1100. Owain Glyndŵr is said to have rallied his forces in the cobbled courtyard when he set out from here in the early 15th century to burn Abergavenny town. The inn was used as a courtroom under Judge Jeffries and convicted sheep stealers were hanged from an oak beam over the well of the staircase. Rope marks remain.
• The Plume of Feathers, Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire. The smallest pub in Wales.

[edit] West Midlands

• The Crooked House, Dudley, Staffordshire. Not a metaphor - due to mining subsidence, the inn began to fall into a hole in the early 19th century, but was saved by buttressing. It has retained its dizzying tilt ever since. (Officially called The Glynne Arms.)
• The Old Crown, Birmingham. One of the oldest buildings in the city and the oldest pub in the city dating back to 1368.
• The Nag's Head, Burntwood. Though the current building is more recent, there has been a pub on the site since before the Domesday Book was written.
• The Lad in the Lane, (formerly known as the Green Man), Erdington, Birmingham. Though reconstructed at a later date, some of the beams are said to date to the 13th century.
• The Leopard, in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. The Leopard was once referred to as "The Savoy of the Midlands". It was frequented by notable people such as Charles Darwin. The Leopard is famous as the place where Josiah Wedgwood and James Brindley met to discuss building the Trent and Mersey Canal in 1765. It is locally believed to be haunted, having appeared on the television programme, Most Haunted Live and has many interesting features, including tunnels leading from the cellars to the old prison cells underneath the old town hall, and over 50 original Victorian hotel bedrooms.

[edit] Yorkshire

• The Tan Hill Inn in Yorkshire is the highest inn in England at 1,732 feet (528 m) above sea level. Tan Hill is a high point on the Pennine Way. It also won the right to continue to call its Christmas dinner a "family feast" which Kentucky Fried Chicken had registered as a trademark.

• The The Old Queen's Head, opened as a public house in the mid-19th century, but is one of the oldest Grade II* listed buildings in Sheffield, dating from around 1475.
• Ye Olde White Harte in Kingston upon Hull, the home of 'The Plotting Parlour' where it was decided not to allow King Charles I into the city, supposedly starting the English Civil War in 1642.
• The Counting House, a pub in Pontefract, West Yorkshire is built in the remains of a 13th Century taxation house, and is noted as being one of the oldest buildings still in use in the local area.
• The Cross Keys, Handsworth, Sheffield is the only pub in the UK built on holy ground^{[citation needed]} (that of the neighbouring St. Mary's Church). It is a very old building, but it has not always been a public house. The original structure was built around 1250 though extensive re-building and modifications have occurred over its history. Initially it was used as a Church House for the chaplains and lay clerks attached to St. Mary's Church. Later it was further modified and became a school, and finally in 1804 it was granted an ale license and became a public house.
• The Bingley Arms, claiming to be the oldest recorded inn in Britain, located in the small village of Bardsey, West Yorkshire.
• The Golden Slipper, Monkgate, York, so called because it was built on the site of a Viking settlement and contains a glass case with the almost perfectly preserved remains of a Viking shoe found on the site.

[edit] See also

List of pubs in Sheffield

[edit] External links

• Portsmouth Pubs website
• Pub Review Website
• The Guide to London Pubs
• The Lost Pubs Project: Lost and closed pubs of the UK.

[edit] References