Historic Pubs to Visit in London

The Cittie of Yorke
22 High Holborn, London, WC1V 6BS

The Prospect of Whitby
57 Wapping Wall, London, E1W 3SH

Ye Olde Mitre

We must admit The Mitre was the hardest pub to find. The Old Mitre is located in 1 Ely Court, Between Hatton Gardens & Ely Place, London EC1N 6SJ, but the key to finding this exact address is keeping your eyes wide open in order to see the alley that leads you to the pub, but this alley is quite easy to miss because of it's extremely narrow nature.

Once one arrives to this historic pub, one can't help but feel enchanted by its warmth and magic. As it can be seen in our pictures of The Mitre, it is quite populated by local people as well as some tourists.

Alley photo: http://marshawrites.blogspot.com/2009/06/hidden-london-ye-olde-mitre-pub.html

Pub Crawls

Cittie of Yorke

The Cittie of Yorke is a pub located on High Holborn, the current building is the result of the rebuilding in the 1920's but the site on which it stands has served as a pub since 1430.









The Prospect of Whitby



This is a famous historic pub in the banks of the river Thames at Wrapping. It claims to being the site of the oldest riverside tavern. Dating from 1520. It was formerly known as the Devıl's Tavern because of it's shady reputation. Before being given such a macabre name it was officially called a quite different name: The Pelican, home to sailors, smugglers, cut throats and footpads. All that's remaining from the building's earliest period is the 400 year old stone floor.

Vısıt to the Fullers Brewery

Our group recently visited Fullers brewery which is located on zone five. This brewery is most famous for brewing traditional English Ales. During our visit we had the opportunity to learn more about the brewing proccess and also to get acquainted with some of the most famous Ales.

History of Pubs in London Town

It's a common known fact to the masses that London is the home of pubs of the world. London has the greatest concentration of public houses in England. After the Great Fire in 1666 London was rebuilt to meet the expectations of an even thirstier population. The decades that came after the fire saw England develop rapidly as an industrial nation and the capital attracted those looking for new opportunities.

'London expanded into the adjacent countryside enveloping rural villages, its population grew exponentially, and its population was a thirsty one. By the mid eighteenth century, for example, Westminster boasted a pub for every 116 people. Improvements in roads and the increased need to transport goods and people for commercial purposes saw the creation of splendid coaching inns across the country and in London in particular. In the towns the working population drank in alehouses, whilst the better off wined and dined in the taverns.'


One can't help wonder why so few pubs have survived if there were so many in past times. İt is considered that many of the changes occurred during the 19th century. Due to the railway age which had arrived by the mid 1800’s many of the fine coaching inns were no longer needed. Steam trains travelled faster, further; a journey of two days by stagecoach, with the required changes of horses and an overnight stay, could now be accomplished in a few hours. All but a handful of London’s coaching inns were demolished, those that survived were either neglected or converted into goods warehouses for the railways.

'Almost as the coaching inns disappeared, the Beer Act of 1830 (aka Wellington’s Beer Act, for the Duke was Prime Minister) created pubs in almost every street, modest parlours of ordinary houses were opened as pubs; they could not sell spirits, as in part their creation was an attempt the counter the proliferation of gin and gin shops. Some of these modest ‘beerhouses’ are still open in London today, although they are now fully licensed.'


Throughout the 20th century the number of pubs in London gradually declined partly due to a more sober public, social improvement and the increase of other social distractions which didn't involve drinking (as much) such as restaurants, cinema, sports and motoring. Many of London’s pubs were destroyed during the Blitz in 1940 and post war clearances of large areas of London especially in the East End.

The 1950’s and 1960’s were decades of modernisation and corporatisation and many pubs again suffered from ‘improvement’ or ‘theme-ing’ therefore detaching from the original and antique atmosphere we all love currently. This was also the time when forward thinking brewers such as Ind Coope and Watneys were ditching traditional brewing in favour of more reliable and more profitable keg (pasteurised) beers. 'The Beer Orders Act of 1986 which made large brewers sell off vast swathes of their pub estates put the fox in charge of the hens, the consequences we see with every pub ‘For Sale’ board.'

Luckily some companies and pub owners have continued to keep the same antique look and feeling which distinguishes English pubs from any other beerhouse or bar in the world.


Excerpts from: http://www.pubs.com/main_site/heritage_content.php?id=london_pubs_history

Photo: Painting by William Hogarth

A Brief History of Beer...

Between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago, some humans discontinued their nomadic hunting and gathering and settled down to farm. Grain was the first domesticated crop that started that farming process.

The oldest proven records of brewing are about 6,000 years old and refer to the Sumerians. Sumeria lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers including Southern Mesopotamia. It is said that the Sumerians discovered the fermentation process by chance. No one knows today exactly how this occurred, but it could be that a piece of bread or grain became wet and a short time later, it began to ferment
The Sumerians were able to repeat this process and are assumed to be he first civilized culture to brew beer. They had discovered a "divine drink" which certainly was a gift from the gods.

The word beer comes from the Latin word bibere, meaning "to drink", and the Spanish word cerveza originates from the Greek goddess of agriculture, Ceres.
A vitamin-rich porridge, used daily, beer is reported to have increased health and longevity and reduced disease and malnutrition. The self-medicating properties of alcohol-rich beer also eased the tensions and stresses of daily living in a hostile world.
The use of yeast was not yet known at that time. The success of the fermentation process was left to chance, as the brewers unknowingly relied on yeast particles in the air.
Considerable scientific research took place in breweries in the 19th century. A famous work from 1876 by Louis Pasteur was Studies Concerning Beer where he revealed his knowledge of micro-organisms. By establishing that yeast is a living microorganism, Pasteur opened the gates for accurately controlling the conversion of sugar to alcohol.
Another discovery in beer brewing was the work of Christian Hansen. The Danish scientist, successfully isolated a single yeast cell and induced it to reproduce on an artificial culture medium. With the resulting yeast multiplication methods, the purity of the fermenting process has been improved and beer taste repeatable.

Information collected by Fuad

Progress Report

We decided to shift our focus on the history and making of beer, how pub culture and beer shaped London and the role that Dickens Inn is playing within this context today. The history we are going to include goes something like this: the area takes its name from the former hospital St Katharine’s by the tower. During the redevelopment of the area in 1850 more than one thousand buildings were demolished to make way for the docks. Fortunately our building was not one of them. The Dickens Inn pub, which is the current owner of the building, claims that the building may date as back as the beginning of the 18th century. After the redevelopment the building was turned in to a brewery by the Goodwyn Skinner and Thornton and later Hoare & Company. During the Second World War, we know for a fact that the building was undamaged from German bombs. After the war in the 1970’s when the site was being redeveloped again, the building was set for demolition , but fortunately they discovered the interesting timber frame concealed inside the drab exterior skin of brick so the building was saved from demolition, only to be moved some 70 meters away to its current location today. imageimage

Our last week visit to Dickens Inn with Fiona came at both a fortunate and an unfortunate time because we went at a time when the market was open so the Dickens Inn was literally packed with people. It was hard to analyse the customer profile of the pub since it was not a regular day and the pub was packed with people that were there for the market.


As far we observed there were tourists from all over the world as well as local businessman, there were people from all ages and indeed the pub seemed to be appealing to a very wide demographic. Meanwhile we ate at the top level restaurant which is a grill restaurant and talked about how much the pubs in London were becoming more and more commercialized, losing their unique identities to appeal to a larger demographic of customers especially the young generation. Because the restaurant was at the top floor, we got a chance to view the original timber frame that had saved the building from demolition during the reconstruction of St Katherine’s docks. Downstairs we enjoyed a few pints and got a chance to talk to the staff, whom were mostly new and knew nothing about the history of the building.

Warehouse G?

An interesting fact we learned was that the Dickens Inn was actually just a wooden warehouse for the Goodwyn Skinner and Thornthon Brewery (which was later the Hoare & Co. Brewery), called warehouse ‘G’ with data tracing back to the 1700’s.

The warehouse was originally located on a side of the Thames, about 70 metres away from its actual location. In the 1820’s its timber frame was covered by a brick layer to make it more similar and conforming to the whole ‘look’ of the St. Katarine’s dock, which was designed by the Scottish Thomas Telford. Even though the building was ‘untouched’ by the World War II 1939-1945 air raids the building was meant to be demolished in the 1970`s due to a site redevolepment and this is when the timber frame structure inside was discovered, hence the developers decided to move the 120 tones timber frame 70 meters and is now in its present site.

According to the book ‘The Brewing History: A Guide to Historical Records’ the company started as Red Lion Brewhouse, in Lower East Smithfield in 1492, Robert, the Earl of Leicester was the freeholder in Elizabethan times and interesting fact, it was owned by Sir John Parsons (Mayor of London) in the 1660’s. During the 1796 the partnership running the brewery consisted on Henry Goodwyn, William Skinner and Thomas Thornthon and then in 1802 Henry Hoare of Hoare’s Bank joined in, and in 1894 became part of Hoare & Co Ltd. Also according to the Guildhall library records, the warehouse was insured by the Company of London Insurers. Still the biggest mystery to me is how the warehouse was used in between its ‘layering’ of brick in 1828 and it’s moving of location in the 1970’s.