The Oldest London pubs

"Beautiful Boozers that have outlived empires, survived fires, and and still give people a reason to gather round, that's what the Oldest Haunts guide is all about"

This isn't your average pub crawl; it's a journey through time, featuring buildings that date back centuries and yes, many were here long before most of the city around them.

Here's a little secret between friends... those age claims painted on the walls - sadly, they're often less reliable than someone who says they're just popping out for one. That's exactly why we've done the digging - our list is rooted in the official records of Historic England. If a pub isn't structurally old, it's not on the list. We're sticklers for the truth - what can we say?

Oh, and if your "ancient" favourite isn't here? Two possibilities: either it's younger than it claims (awkward), or it simply didn't meet our standards. Because some pubs might be old… but not all old pubs are Beautiful Boozers.

Let's be straight - the Anchor is a busy Greene King pub on one of London's most walked stretches. It pulls crowds, it gets called a tourist trap, and no, you're probably not settling in for the evening. But write it off and you'd be missing something. 

The building dates from the 1770s, a pub has stood on this site since at least the early 1600s. You feel the history in the authentic 18th-century elements like wood panelling found in the ground-floor rooms along with...

Before the Anatomy Act of 1832 made it legal to obtain bodies for medical research, surgeons had to get creative. The Flask's Committee Room is where that creativity allegedly got very dark indeed.

During London’s body-snatching boom between 1800 and 1832, medical researchers needed more corpses than the law could legally supply, which makes stories like this entirely plausible. The pub’s own website claims that “the pub's Committee Room was allegedly the scene of one of the first-ever autopsies...

Talk about refusing to die! The George has survived two fires, endured the partial demolition of its three galleries, and still stands defiantly - a stubborn survivor of centuries of change. The current building dates from 1676, though the inn’s story stretches back to the 1540s. Not many drinking spots come with Grade I listed credentials, do they?

So if you’re near Borough Market or The Shard and craving a pint with a side of history, you’ve just found your spot. Yes, it gets...

At first glance, the Lamb & Flag seems like a neat Covent Garden pub. Look closer and things get interesting: the 1958 brick skin lies a 17th-century frame - and a past so violent the place was once known locally as “The Bucket of Blood.”

Bare-knuckle prize fights packed the upstairs room through the 1800s, leaving floorboards stained and pockets heavy when Covent Garden was considerably rougher than today's street performers suggest. The alley next door earned its own reputation in 1679...

Three centuries later, you’re drinking where Wren’s workforce rested their boots after long days rebuilding St Bride’s from the ground up. This wasn’t a pub to begin with - it was a lodging house built for the masons and craftsmen tasked with bringing Wren’s church back to life after the Great Fire.

It’s a story rooted in place and timing rather than surviving records. But with both building and church rising in the 1670s and only a few paces between them, the link feels plausible enough and...

Wine, tobacco, textiles, whatever needed moving - when this place was a merchant's house in 1663, goods came straight off the Thames through a private tunnel and into the cellar. No paperwork, no taxman, no questions asked. The passage collapsed under Blitz bombs in 1940, but the bricked-up mouth of it is still down there in the Olde Wine Shades cellar.

The Blitz wasn't the first time this place dodged destruction. Three years after it was built, the Great Fire tore through the City - and somehow...

Plenty of pubs claim to be the oldest. Seven Stars actually is - its internal timber frame has been here since 1602, and that's all the proof it needs. No myths, no marketing - - well, apart from The General - a cat in a legal ruff, the only one who answers to no one … all a wig's throw from the Royal Courts of Justice.

Roxy Beaujolais has been landlady here since 2001 - cookbook author, BBC presenter, and perhaps the most refreshingly forthright pub philosopher in London. Her manifesto? "The secret to a real London pub is...

Highway robberies, a landlord who outsmarted a mob, and enough intrigue to fill a Netflix series - The Spaniards Inn has been watching over Hampstead Heath since 1585, and blimey, if these walls could talk... The History section has all the gripping tales!

Inside...yes, it's gone a bit gastro over the years - more napkins than sawdust these days - but The Spaniards still oozes historic character; low beamed ceiling, a crackling fireplace and...

When Mooney's, the Dublin pub chain, took over the old Boar's Head on Fleet Street in 1895, they brought something with them: Guinness. The pub has claimed ever since to be the first outside Ireland to serve it - a boast historians have unpicked, given Guinness was already shipping to England by 1825. But on Fleet Street, the story is part of the furniture.

Note that The Tipperary is temporarily closed as part of the £600m redevelopment of 65 Fleet Street ...

Most historic London pubs claim Charles Dickens. The Cheshire Cheese has an entire roll call - novelists, poets, and even a lexicographer - Johnson, Dickens, Twain, Conan Doyle, Wodehouse.

But the sharpest tongue in the place...belonged to someone who never wrote a single word. Someone who could out-curse a sailor and who never left. Polly the parrot - foul-mouthed and fearless...

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OLDEST HAUNTS GUIDE

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